 | This article shouldspecify the language of its non-English content, using{{langx}},{{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and{{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriateISO 639 code. Wikipedia'smultilingual support templates may also be used - notably ybe for West Yugur.See why.(October 2024) |
| Western Yugur | |
|---|---|
| Yellow Uyghur | |
| yoğır lar yoğır śoz | |
| Native to | China |
| Region | Gansu |
| Ethnicity | 7,000Yugur (2007)[1] |
Native speakers | ~2,000 (~1,000 fluent) (2019)[2] |
Turkic
| |
Early forms | |
| Old Uyghur alphabet (until 19th century) Latin alphabet (current) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | ybe |
| Glottolog | west2402 |
| ELP | Yellow Uyghur |
 Western Yugur (lower part of the map, center) | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Western Yugur (Yoğır lar[5] 'Yugur speech' orYoğır śoz 'Yugur word'), also known asNeo-Uygur,[6] is theTurkic language spoken by theYugur people. It is contrasted withEastern Yugur, aMongolic language spoken within the same community. Traditionally, both languages are indicated by the termYellow Uygur, from theendonym of the Yugur.
There are approximately 2,000 speakers of Western Yugur.[2]
Besides similarities with Uyghuric languages, Western Yugur also shares a number of features, mainlyarchaisms, with several of theNortheastern Turkic languages, but it is not closer to any one of them in particular. Neither Western nor Eastern Yugur aremutually intelligible with the modernUyghur language spoken amongst theUyghurs of China'sXinjiang autonomous region.[7]
Western Yugur also containsarchaisms which are attested in neither modern Uyghuric nor Siberian, such as itsanticipating counting system coinciding with Old Uyghur, and itscopuladro, which also originated from Old Uyghur but substitutes the Uyghur copulative personal suffixes.[8]
Speakers of Western Yugur reside primarily in the western part ofGansu province'sSunan Yugur Autonomous County. They are concentrated in theDahe and Minghua townships and the northern portion of the Huangcheng township.[2]
A special feature in Western Yugur is the occurrence ofpreaspiration, corresponding to the so-calledpharyngealised low vowels inTuvan andTofa, andshort vowels inYakut,Turkmen, andKhalkha Mongolian. Examples of this phenomenon include/oʰtɯs/ 'thirty',/jɑʰʂ/ 'good', and/iʰt/ 'meat'.
Thevowel harmony system, typical of Turkic languages, has largely collapsed. However, it still exists for a-suffixes (backa; fronti), however for stems containing last close vowels are chosen unpredictably (/pɯlɣi/ 'knowing' vs./ɯstqɑ/ 'pushing').Voicing as adistinguishing feature inplosives andaffricates was replaced byaspiration, as inChinese.
West Yugur has 28 native consonants and two more (indicated in parentheses) found only in loan words.
Western Yugur has eight vowel phonemes typical of many Turkic languages, which are/i,y,ɯ,u,e,ø,o,ɑ/. The phoneme/e/ is currently merging with/i/, especially for speakers in the younger generation.[5] In the table below, theIPA symbol for each vowel is given and alongside it the standardTurcological orthographic form is provided in angular brackets.
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
| High | i ⟨i⟩ | y ⟨ü⟩ | ɯ ⟨ï⟩ | u ⟨u⟩ |
| Low | e ⟨e⟩ | ø ⟨ö⟩ | ɑ1 ⟨a⟩ | o ⟨o⟩ |
1 Zhong, 2019 uses the symbol/a/, used by the IPA for the front low unrounded vowel, but describes it as "low back unrounded" (p. 93).[2] The IPA symbol matching that description, low back unrounded/ɑ/, is used in this article for descriptions of the phoneme, while ⟨a⟩ is used in most practical orthographies of the language.
The following allophonic realizations may occur.[2]
Several sound changes affected Western Yugur phonology while evolving from its originalCommon Turkic form, the most prolific being:
Western Yugur has retained many words from EastOld Turkic language and is the only Turkic language that preserved the anticipating counting system, known fromOld Turkic.[9] In this system, upper decimals are used, i.e.per otus (per: one,otus: thirty) means "one (on the way to) thirty", is 21.[10]
For centuries, the Western Yugur language has been incontact with Mongolic languages,Tibetan, and Chinese, and as a result has adopted a large number ofloanwords 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.[11]
Personal markers innouns as well as inverbs were largely lost. In the verbal system, the notion ofevidentiality has beengrammaticalised, seemingly under the influence of Tibetan.[citation needed]
| After obstruents | After nasals | After-z | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -∅ | |||
| Accusative | -ti | -ni | ||
| Genitive | -tiŋ | -niŋ | ||
| Dative | Back | -qa | -ɣa | |
| Front | -ki | |||
| Locative | Back | -ta | ||
| Front | -ti | |||
| Ablative | Back | -tan | ||
| Front | -tin | |||
Four kinship terms have distinct vocative forms, and used when calling out loudly:aqu (←aqa "elder brother"),qïzaqu (←qïzaqa "elder sister"),açu (←aça "father"), andanu (←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 ofinalienable 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".
Western Yugur verbal system, likeSalar, is characterized by contact-induced (namely, under the influence ofChinese)[citation needed] loss of person-number copular markers in finite verb forms, e.g. contrast the sentence “I have eaten enough”Mentoz-dï in Western Yugur with theUzbek equivalentMento’y-dïm; the latter has a first-person marker suffix-(I)m attached to the verb while the equivalent Western Yugur sentence does not.
Modern Uyghur and Western Yugur belong to entirely different branches of the Turkic language family, respectively theKarluk languages spoken in theKara-Khanid Khanate[12] (such as the Xākānī language described inMahmud al-Kashgari'sDīwān al-Luġat al-Turk[13]) and theSiberian Turkic languages, which includeOld Uyghur.[14]
TheYugur are descended from theGanzhou Uyghur Kingdom,Qocho and theUyghur Khaganate.
Grigory Potanin recorded a glossary ofSalar language, Western Yugur language, andEastern Yugur language in his 1893 Russian language bookThe Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia.[15][5][16][17][18]
| Proto-language |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common Turkic |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Oghur | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Disputed classification | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Potentially Turkic languages | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Creoles andpidgins | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
