This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
In this paper I discuss the various functions of nominalization in Wutun, a mixed Sinitic languag... more In this paper I discuss the various functions of nominalization in Wutun, a mixed Sinitic language spoken by ca. 4000 people in Qinghai Province, Northwest China. Nominalization in Wutun is expressed by the multi-purpose marker -de (cognate to Standard Mandarin de 的), which functions on both the lexical and clausal levels. Lexical nominalization takes the verb as its domain to derive nouns or adjectives, while clausal nominalization takes the entire clause as its domain and allows the clause to be treated as a noun phrase. Clausal nominalization in Wutun is used to form nominal complement clauses, relative clauses and adverbial subordinate clauses. In addition, the multi-purpose marker -de in Wutun has functions that go beyond nominalization, including pronominal function, pre-nominal modification and stand-alone usage, which is related to aspect and emphasis and plays an important role in stance-taking.
This article discusses how evidential and egophoric making is used to manage knowledge in interac... more This article discusses how evidential and egophoric making is used to manage knowledge in interaction. To this end, it analyzes interactional data from Wutun (mixed Sinitic, Northwest China) and Upper Napo Kichwa (Quechuan, Ecuador). Wutun has an egophoric marking system, which, according to the definition of egophoricity, encodes involvement/lack of involvement in the described event. Upper Napo Kichwa has a set of evidentials, which, according to theory, encode the source of evidence for a given proposition. The two languages are typologically unrelated. However, when we look closely at how speakers of Wutun and Kichwa use epistemic markers, we discover functional similarities not predicted by the dominant definitions of epistemicity and evidentiality. In both languages, the use of the markers is conditioned by the interpersonal context of the interaction, and speakers use egophoric and evidential marking to signal their epistemic rights and responsibilities with respect to other ...
In this chapter, different types of data for evidentiality studies are discussed. We first discus... more In this chapter, different types of data for evidentiality studies are discussed. We first discuss reference grammars, which are necessary for any crosslinguistic study of evidentials. This is followed by a discussion of (different types of) usage-based data, as well as natural language data and stimulusbased data collection used in linguistic fieldwork. We end our discussion by examining data collected by means of questionnaires and acceptability judgements. It is shown that all the types of data discussed are relevant for a full understanding of evidentiality, but they differ in their contribution and complement each other. For example, usage-based data is necessary for studying frequencies in languages, while reference grammars reveal what is common across languages.
This paper investigates the level of language and cultural shift among the Kurds of Jordan, a lar... more This paper investigates the level of language and cultural shift among the Kurds of Jordan, a large minority group inhabiting the country for 100 years. The Kurds of Jordan are assumed to be experiencing a kind of shift in their language and culture. The main aim of this study is to gauge the shift and to highlight the sociodemographic factors enhancing it. The data were collected by means of questionnaires and interviews. The results of the study have shown that Arabic is used mainly in most social domains. However, the Kurdish language is found to be used in very restricted situations and by a very small number of people, particularly the elderly. The paper proves that the Kurds of Jordan are experiencing a gradual shift toward Arabic that may lead on their part to language loss. By calibrating the results of this study against those of previous works on other minority groups inhabiting the country for the same period of time, it has been shown that patterns of language and cultural maintenance within these communities are not the same. The distinction between them is accounted for in terms of the size of each group, demographic concentration, and types of occupations being occupied by each of them, among other sociopsychological factors. 1. the physical and demographic dislocation of language groups due to, for example, famine, population expulsion policies and the urbanization of rural populations; 2. the social dislocation, whereby members of the minority speech community are frequently but not inevitably less socially, educationally and economically fortunate than the average surrounding population. LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL SHIFT AMONG THE KURDS OF JORDAN 9 Building on Fishman's (1966) views and drawing on Kloss's (1966) observations of language maintenance among the German speech community in the USA, a plethora of theoretical work has appeared in an attempt to identify the possible social correlates of maintenance and shift (e.g.,
This paper discusses the various functions of the multifunctional case marker-ha in Wutun, a mixe... more This paper discusses the various functions of the multifunctional case marker-ha in Wutun, a mixed Sinitic language with Northwest Mandarin lexicon and Amdo Tibetan syntax spoken in Tongren County, eastern part of Qinghai Province, Amdo Sprachbund. I will show that the use of-ha is connected to Differential Argument Marking and it is motivated partly by semantic factors and partly by information structure. The case marker-ha often occurs on the Recipient, Patient or Causee argument in clauses with two animate arguments and it can therefore be used to disambiguate arguments. Its use is also connected to affectedness, which can be operationalized in terms of definiteness and saliency. Patient arguments are more likely to be marked with-ha if they are totally affected (e.g. The dog ate the dumplings) than only partially affected (e.g. The dog ate some dumplings). However, the use of-ha cannot be explained solely on the basis of semantic factors and it is often connected to information structure, such as expressing contrastiveness, activating previously mentioned topic or differentiating between topical and focal parts of the sentence. In summary,-ha is used with highly affected non-Agent arguments that often play a special role in information structure.
and many others. Special thanks are due to Pekka Posio and Katja Västi for being such great compa... more and many others. Special thanks are due to Pekka Posio and Katja Västi for being such great company during many conference trips and the 2010 summer school in Leipzig, and for Piia Mikkola for our regular lunches and much-valued peer-support.
Wutun Mandarin is a small Sinitic language heavily influenced by Amdo Tibetan. However, the langu... more Wutun Mandarin is a small Sinitic language heavily influenced by Amdo Tibetan. However, the language also exhibits clear signs of having been influenced by certain Mongolic languages of the Gansu-Qinghai region. The aim of this article is to give an overview of the morphosyntactic features that Wutun shares with Bonan. These features are not found in Mandarin Chinese or Amdo Tibetan, and thus they most probably represent neither genetically inherited Sinitic features nor contact features acquired from Amdo Tibetan. Instead, the existence of these features suggests that Wutun has been in contact with certain Mongolic languages and has acquired some Mongolic features through language contact. Because the languages and dialects of the Gansu-Qinghai region form a Sprachbund, it is difficult, if not impossible to identify one single language as the actual source of borrowings or structural interference. Nonetheless, since both Wutun and Bonan are minority languages spoken at the local le...
Nivkh is a seriously endangered language spoken on Sakhalin Island and in the Amur region of the ... more Nivkh is a seriously endangered language spoken on Sakhalin Island and in the Amur region of the Russian Far East. Due to a variety of historical reasons, even the most fluent Nivkh speakers nowadays prefer to communicate in Russian. The current linguistic situation is inevitably leading to a decrease of Nivkh language proficiency and to the reduction and simplification of the language. This paper examines attritional phenomena in the realms of consonant alternations, kinship terminology, and numeral classifiers. The authors’ fieldwork on Sakhalin in 2014 revealed that these elaborate and authentic systems have undergone substantial changes in the speech of modern Nivkh speakers.
This paper is based on my fieldwork in a Tibetan farming and semi-pastoral village located in the... more This paper is based on my fieldwork in a Tibetan farming and semi-pastoral village located in the Amdo (Chinese: Qinghai) Repkong area. The villagers resemble ordinary rural Tibetan householders: farming, herding, and raising their children. For extra income, they collect caterpillar fungus, a medicinal mushroom endemic to the Tibetan Plateau. They are not ordinary householders, however. They observe daily and periodical commitments to tantric Buddhist practices and rituals. Their supervising teacher, the present lineage-holder at a local hillside monastery, has given as prerequisites to both his male and female disciples at least two of the five Buddhist lay precepts. The most salient of these precepts is not taking life. The majority of the sources of livelihood practiced by the villagers, however, involve the killing of insects at least. Based on my interviews and observations, I will first describe the living environment of the tantric practitioners, concentrating mostly on the ...
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
In this paper I discuss the various functions of nominalization in Wutun, a mixed Sinitic languag... more In this paper I discuss the various functions of nominalization in Wutun, a mixed Sinitic language spoken by ca. 4000 people in Qinghai Province, Northwest China. Nominalization in Wutun is expressed by the multi-purpose marker -de (cognate to Standard Mandarin de 的), which functions on both the lexical and clausal levels. Lexical nominalization takes the verb as its domain to derive nouns or adjectives, while clausal nominalization takes the entire clause as its domain and allows the clause to be treated as a noun phrase. Clausal nominalization in Wutun is used to form nominal complement clauses, relative clauses and adverbial subordinate clauses. In addition, the multi-purpose marker -de in Wutun has functions that go beyond nominalization, including pronominal function, pre-nominal modification and stand-alone usage, which is related to aspect and emphasis and plays an important role in stance-taking.
This article discusses how evidential and egophoric making is used to manage knowledge in interac... more This article discusses how evidential and egophoric making is used to manage knowledge in interaction. To this end, it analyzes interactional data from Wutun (mixed Sinitic, Northwest China) and Upper Napo Kichwa (Quechuan, Ecuador). Wutun has an egophoric marking system, which, according to the definition of egophoricity, encodes involvement/lack of involvement in the described event. Upper Napo Kichwa has a set of evidentials, which, according to theory, encode the source of evidence for a given proposition. The two languages are typologically unrelated. However, when we look closely at how speakers of Wutun and Kichwa use epistemic markers, we discover functional similarities not predicted by the dominant definitions of epistemicity and evidentiality. In both languages, the use of the markers is conditioned by the interpersonal context of the interaction, and speakers use egophoric and evidential marking to signal their epistemic rights and responsibilities with respect to other ...
In this chapter, different types of data for evidentiality studies are discussed. We first discus... more In this chapter, different types of data for evidentiality studies are discussed. We first discuss reference grammars, which are necessary for any crosslinguistic study of evidentials. This is followed by a discussion of (different types of) usage-based data, as well as natural language data and stimulusbased data collection used in linguistic fieldwork. We end our discussion by examining data collected by means of questionnaires and acceptability judgements. It is shown that all the types of data discussed are relevant for a full understanding of evidentiality, but they differ in their contribution and complement each other. For example, usage-based data is necessary for studying frequencies in languages, while reference grammars reveal what is common across languages.
This paper investigates the level of language and cultural shift among the Kurds of Jordan, a lar... more This paper investigates the level of language and cultural shift among the Kurds of Jordan, a large minority group inhabiting the country for 100 years. The Kurds of Jordan are assumed to be experiencing a kind of shift in their language and culture. The main aim of this study is to gauge the shift and to highlight the sociodemographic factors enhancing it. The data were collected by means of questionnaires and interviews. The results of the study have shown that Arabic is used mainly in most social domains. However, the Kurdish language is found to be used in very restricted situations and by a very small number of people, particularly the elderly. The paper proves that the Kurds of Jordan are experiencing a gradual shift toward Arabic that may lead on their part to language loss. By calibrating the results of this study against those of previous works on other minority groups inhabiting the country for the same period of time, it has been shown that patterns of language and cultural maintenance within these communities are not the same. The distinction between them is accounted for in terms of the size of each group, demographic concentration, and types of occupations being occupied by each of them, among other sociopsychological factors. 1. the physical and demographic dislocation of language groups due to, for example, famine, population expulsion policies and the urbanization of rural populations; 2. the social dislocation, whereby members of the minority speech community are frequently but not inevitably less socially, educationally and economically fortunate than the average surrounding population. LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL SHIFT AMONG THE KURDS OF JORDAN 9 Building on Fishman's (1966) views and drawing on Kloss's (1966) observations of language maintenance among the German speech community in the USA, a plethora of theoretical work has appeared in an attempt to identify the possible social correlates of maintenance and shift (e.g.,
This paper discusses the various functions of the multifunctional case marker-ha in Wutun, a mixe... more This paper discusses the various functions of the multifunctional case marker-ha in Wutun, a mixed Sinitic language with Northwest Mandarin lexicon and Amdo Tibetan syntax spoken in Tongren County, eastern part of Qinghai Province, Amdo Sprachbund. I will show that the use of-ha is connected to Differential Argument Marking and it is motivated partly by semantic factors and partly by information structure. The case marker-ha often occurs on the Recipient, Patient or Causee argument in clauses with two animate arguments and it can therefore be used to disambiguate arguments. Its use is also connected to affectedness, which can be operationalized in terms of definiteness and saliency. Patient arguments are more likely to be marked with-ha if they are totally affected (e.g. The dog ate the dumplings) than only partially affected (e.g. The dog ate some dumplings). However, the use of-ha cannot be explained solely on the basis of semantic factors and it is often connected to information structure, such as expressing contrastiveness, activating previously mentioned topic or differentiating between topical and focal parts of the sentence. In summary,-ha is used with highly affected non-Agent arguments that often play a special role in information structure.
and many others. Special thanks are due to Pekka Posio and Katja Västi for being such great compa... more and many others. Special thanks are due to Pekka Posio and Katja Västi for being such great company during many conference trips and the 2010 summer school in Leipzig, and for Piia Mikkola for our regular lunches and much-valued peer-support.
Wutun Mandarin is a small Sinitic language heavily influenced by Amdo Tibetan. However, the langu... more Wutun Mandarin is a small Sinitic language heavily influenced by Amdo Tibetan. However, the language also exhibits clear signs of having been influenced by certain Mongolic languages of the Gansu-Qinghai region. The aim of this article is to give an overview of the morphosyntactic features that Wutun shares with Bonan. These features are not found in Mandarin Chinese or Amdo Tibetan, and thus they most probably represent neither genetically inherited Sinitic features nor contact features acquired from Amdo Tibetan. Instead, the existence of these features suggests that Wutun has been in contact with certain Mongolic languages and has acquired some Mongolic features through language contact. Because the languages and dialects of the Gansu-Qinghai region form a Sprachbund, it is difficult, if not impossible to identify one single language as the actual source of borrowings or structural interference. Nonetheless, since both Wutun and Bonan are minority languages spoken at the local le...
Nivkh is a seriously endangered language spoken on Sakhalin Island and in the Amur region of the ... more Nivkh is a seriously endangered language spoken on Sakhalin Island and in the Amur region of the Russian Far East. Due to a variety of historical reasons, even the most fluent Nivkh speakers nowadays prefer to communicate in Russian. The current linguistic situation is inevitably leading to a decrease of Nivkh language proficiency and to the reduction and simplification of the language. This paper examines attritional phenomena in the realms of consonant alternations, kinship terminology, and numeral classifiers. The authors’ fieldwork on Sakhalin in 2014 revealed that these elaborate and authentic systems have undergone substantial changes in the speech of modern Nivkh speakers.
This paper is based on my fieldwork in a Tibetan farming and semi-pastoral village located in the... more This paper is based on my fieldwork in a Tibetan farming and semi-pastoral village located in the Amdo (Chinese: Qinghai) Repkong area. The villagers resemble ordinary rural Tibetan householders: farming, herding, and raising their children. For extra income, they collect caterpillar fungus, a medicinal mushroom endemic to the Tibetan Plateau. They are not ordinary householders, however. They observe daily and periodical commitments to tantric Buddhist practices and rituals. Their supervising teacher, the present lineage-holder at a local hillside monastery, has given as prerequisites to both his male and female disciples at least two of the five Buddhist lay precepts. The most salient of these precepts is not taking life. The majority of the sources of livelihood practiced by the villagers, however, involve the killing of insects at least. Based on my interviews and observations, I will first describe the living environment of the tantric practitioners, concentrating mostly on the ...
My dissertation is a comprehensive grammatical description of the Wutun language (ISO 639-3 WUH),... more My dissertation is a comprehensive grammatical description of the Wutun language (ISO 639-3 WUH), a distinct local form of Northwest Mandarin spoken by approximately 4000 people in Upper Wutun, Lower Wutun and Jiacangma villages in Tongren County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, People s Republic of China. While the basic vocabulary and grammatical morphemes of Wutun are mainly of Chinese origin, it has adapted phonologically and structurally to its current linguistic environment, where varieties of Amdo Tibetan are dominant regional languages and lingua francas. The Tibetan influence manifests itself in all domains of Wutun grammatical structure, including phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon. This has yielded some phonological and grammatical properties that are unusual for a Sinitic language and cross-linguistically rare, including the size of the phoneme inventory, multiple aspect marking and egophoricity. In addition, there are some grammatical features, such as the paucal-plural distinction and sociative case marking, which represent areal interference from Bonan, a small Mongolic language spoken in the immediate vicinity of Wutun-speaking villages. The dissertation is based on first-hand field data collected during three field trips to the province of Qinghai in June-August 2007, June-August 2010 and June-July 2013. My data consists of approximately 1300 clauses of descriptive and narrative texts as well as conversations that were complemented by elicitation and grammaticality judgements. The theoretical framework used for language description is based on an informal descriptive theory referred to in the literature as Basic Linguistic Theory (BLT) (Dixon 1997, 2010; Dryer 2006). My dissertation aims to detail aspects of Wutun phonology, morphology and syntax, including phoneme inventory, noun phrase, verb complex, minor word classes, clause structure, non-declarative speech acts and clause combining. It also includes an appendix with three oral texts in Wutun. It is my hope that the present study will be accessible to a wide audience, including linguists working on Sino-Tibetan languages, languages of Northwest China, linguistic typology and historical linguistics.
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