Western Yugur (Western Yugur: (Yugur speech) or (Yugur word)) also known as Neo-Uygur is the
Turkic language spoken by the
Yugur
The Yugurs, Yughurs, Yugu (; Western Yugur: ''Sarïg Yogïr''; Eastern Yugur: ''Šera Yogor''), traditionally known as Yellow Uyghurs, are a Turko- Mongolic ethnic group and one of China's 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, consisting o ...
people. It is contrasted with
Eastern Yugur, a
Mongolic language spoken within the same community. Traditionally, both languages are indicated by the term "Yellow Uygur", from the
endonym
An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, o ...
of the Yugur.
There are approximately 4,600 Turkic-speaking Yugurs.
Classification
Besides similarities with Uyghuric languages, Western Yugur also shares a number of features, mainly
archaisms, with several of the
Northeastern Turkic languages, but it is not closer to any one of them in particular. Neither Western nor Eastern Yugur are
mutually intelligible with
Uyghur.
Western Yugur also contains
archaisms which are attested in neither modern Uyghuric nor Siberian, such as its
anticipating counting system coinciding with Old Uyghur, and its
copula ''dro'', which originated from Old Uyghur but substitutes the Uyghur copulative personal suffixes.
Geographic distribution
Speakers of Western Yugur reside primarily in the western part of
Gansu province's
Sunan Yugur Autonomous County
Sunan Yugur Autonomous County () is an autonomous county under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Zhangye, Gansu Province, China, bordering Qinghai province to the south. It is home to the majority of the Yugur ethnic group. The sea ...
.
Phonology
A special feature in Western Yugur is the occurrence of
preaspiration, corresponding to the so-called
pharyngealised
Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound.
IPA symbols
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can be indicated b ...
or low
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...
s in
Tuva and Tofa, and
short vowels in
Yakut and
Turkmen
Turkmen, Türkmen, Turkoman, or Turkman may refer to:
Peoples Historical ethnonym
* Turkoman (ethnonym), ethnonym used for the Oghuz Turks during the Middle Ages
Ethnic groups
* Turkmen in Anatolia and the Levant (Seljuk and Ottoman-Turkish desc ...
. Examples of this phenomenon include "thirty", "good", and "meat".
The
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, me ...
system, typical of Turkic languages, has largely collapsed. However, it still exists for a-suffixes (back ''a'' : front ''i''), however for stems containing last close vowels are chosen unpredictably ( "knowing" vs. "pushing").
Voice as a
distinguishing feature in
plosives and
affricates was replaced by
aspiration, as in
Chinese.
Consonants
West Yugur has 28 native consonants and two more (indicated in parentheses) found only in loan words.
Vowels
Western Yugur has eight vowel phonemes typical of many Turkic languages, which are .
Diachronical processes
Several sound changes affected Western Yugur phonology while evolving from its original
Common Turkic form, the most prolific being:
Vowels
* High vowels were delabialized in non-initial syllables: CT *tütün > *tütin > WYu ''tuʰtïn'' "to smoke", CT *altun'' > *altïn > WYu ''aʰltïm'' "gold"
* CT *u was lowered to WYu ''o'' in some words, most commonly around velars and ''r'': CT *burun > WYu ''pʰorn'' "before, front"
* All high vowels were merged – as front vowels in palatal contexts, and as back otherwise: CT *üčün > WYu ''utɕin'' "with, using", CT *yïlan > WYu ''yilan'' "snake"
** This had several consequences:
**# It made the Common Turkic allophonic difference between *k and *q phonemic.
**# Vowel harmonic class of resulting words was thus determined lexically in Western Yugur.
**# Former vowel harmonic suffixes with high vowels became invariable: CT: *-Ki/*-Kï > WYu ''-Kï'' "attributive noun suffix"
* Front vowels *ä, *e, *ö were raised to *i, *ü except before *r, *l, *ŋ and (excluding *ö) *g: CT *ärän > WYu ''erin'' "man", CT *kȫk > WYu ''kük'', CT *-lar/*-lär > WYu ''-lar''/''-lir'' "plural suffix"
* CT *ay is reflected as WYu ''ey''~''e'' in the initial syllable and as ''i'' otherwise.
* In the initial syllable exclusively, short vowels acquire pre-aspiration of the following consonant, length distinction is otherwise lost.
Consonants
* As in most Turkic language, initial *b was assimilated to *m in words containing nasals.
* Initial plosives and affricates, CT *b, *t, *k, *g, *č, are all reflected as voiceless with unpredictable aspiration: CT *temir > WYu ''temïr'', CT *bog- > WYu ''pʰoɣ-'' "to tie with a rope"
* Labials are merged into *w intervocally and after liquids which later in some cases forms diphthongs or get elided: CT *yubaš > WYu ''yüwaʂ'' "calm", CT *harpa > WYu ''harwa'' "barley"
* Finally and in most consonant clusters *p is preserved and *b elided.
* Dental and velar voiceless plosives are preserved in most positions, with aspiration occurring almost exclusively in the initial position.
* CT *g is spirantized into ''ɣ'' and CT *d into ''z''.
* With some exceptions, CT *š develops into ''s'': CT *tāš > WYu ''tas'' "stone"
* CT *z is preserved, except for devoicing when final in polysyllabic words: CT *otuz > WYu ''oʰtïs'' "thirty"
* CT *č generally becomes WYu ''š'' in syllable codas.
* CT *ñ develops into WYu ''y''; initial CT *y- is mostly preserved; CT *h- is seemingly preserved in some words but the extent to which WYu ''h-'' corresponds to it is unclear.
Vocabulary
Western Yugur is the only Turkic language that preserved the
anticipating counting system, known from
Old Turkic
Old Turkic (also East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic language, Old Uyghur) is the earliest attested form of the Turkic languages, found in Göktürk and Uyghur Khaganate inscriptions dating from about the eighth to the 13th century. It is the ...
. In this system, upper decimals are used, i.e. ''per otus'' (''per'': one, ''otus'': thirty) means "one (on the way to) thirty", is 21.
For centuries, the Western Yugur language has been in
contact with Mongolic languages,
Tibetan, and Chinese, and as a result has adopted a large amount of
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s from these languages, as well as grammatical features. Chinese dialects neighboring the areas where Yugur is spoken have influenced the Yugur language, giving it loanwords.
Grammar
Personal markers in
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Organism, Living creatures (including people ...
s as well as in
verb
A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...
s were largely lost. In the verbal system, the notion of
evidentiality
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational) is the particul ...
has been
grammaticalised, seemingly under the influence of Tibetan.
Grammatical cases
Four kinship terms have distinct vocative forms, and used when calling out loudly: ''aqu'' (← ''aqa'' "elder brother"), ''qïzaqu'' (← ''qïzaqa'' "elder sister"), ''açu'' (← ''aça'' "father"), and ''anu'' (← ''ana'' "mother"). There are two possessive suffixes, first and second person ''-(ï)ŋ'' and third person ''-(s)ï'', but these suffixes are largely not used outside of kinship terms (''anaŋ'', ''anasï'' "mother"), similar to the concept of
inalienable possessions. Four kinship nouns have irregular 1st and 2nd person forms by eliding the final vowel and using the consonantic variant: ''aqa'' → ''aqïŋ'' "elder brother".
Writing system
Grigory Potanin recorded a glossary of
Salar language, Western Yugur language, and
Eastern Yugur language in his 1893 Russian language book ''The Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia''.
History
Modern Uyghur and Western Yugur belong to entirely different branches of the Turkic language family, respectively the
Karluk languages spoken in the
Kara-Khanid Khanate (such as the Xākānī language described in
Mahmud al-Kashgari's ''Dīwān al-Luġat al-Turk''
) and the
Siberian Turkic languages, which include
Old Uyghur.
The
Yugur
The Yugurs, Yughurs, Yugu (; Western Yugur: ''Sarïg Yogïr''; Eastern Yugur: ''Šera Yogor''), traditionally known as Yellow Uyghurs, are a Turko- Mongolic ethnic group and one of China's 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, consisting o ...
are real descended from the
Ganzhou Uyghur Kingdom
The Ganzhou Uyghur Kingdom (), also referred to as the Hexi Uyghurs, was established in 894 around Ganzhou in modern Zhangye. The kingdom lasted from 894 to 1036; during that time, many of Ganzhou's residents converted to Buddhism.
The Hexi Corri ...
,
Qocho and the
Uyghur Khaganate
The Uyghur Khaganate (also Uyghur Empire or Uighur Khaganate, self defined as Toquz-Oghuz country; otk, 𐱃𐰆𐰴𐰕:𐰆𐰍𐰕:𐰉𐰆𐰑𐰣, Toquz Oγuz budun, Tang-era names, with modern Hanyu Pinyin: or ) was a Turkic empire that e ...
.
References
Bibliography
*
* Chén Zōngzhèn & Léi Xuǎnchūn. 1985. Xībù Yùgùyǔ Jiānzhì
oncise grammar of Western Yugur Peking.
*
* Léi Xuǎnchūn (proofread by Chén Zōngzhèn). 1992. Xībù Yùgù Hàn Cídiǎn
estern Yugur - Chinese Dictionary Chéngdu.
* Malov, S. E. 1957. Jazyk zheltykh ujgurov. Slovar' i grammatika. Alma Ata.
* Malov, S. E. 1967. Jazyk zheltykh ujgurov. Teksty i perevody. Moscow.
*
* Roos, Marti, Hans Nugteren, Zhong Jìnwén. 1999. On some Turkic proverbs of the Western and Eastern Yugur languages. ''Turkic Languages'' 3.2: 189–214.
* Tenishev, È. R. 1976. Stroj saryg-jugurskogo jazyka. Moscow.
External links
Slide Shows and maps of author Eric Enno Tamm's visit to Lianhua and Hongwansi
*
ttps://archive.org/details/tangutskotibets00obshgoog The Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia by Grigory Potanin (Russian)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yugur, Western, Language
Agglutinative languages
Uyghurs
Siberian Turkic languages
Languages of China
Turkic languages