Daur language
Encyclopedia
The Daur or Dagur language is a Mongolic language
primarily spoken by members of the Daur ethnic group.
, the Nonni Daur on the west side of the Nonni River from south of Qiqihaer up to the Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner
, Hailar Daur to the south-east of Hailar and far off in Xinjiang
in the vinicity of Tacheng
. There is no written standard in use, although a Pinyin
-based orthography has been devised; instead the Daur make use of Mongolian or Chinese, as most speakers know these languages as well. During the time of the Qing dynasty
, Daur has been written with the Manchu alphabet
.
consonants with most Mongolian
dialects that have not been developed in the other Mongolic languages. It also has /f/, which is, however, limited to loan words. Word-final short vowels were lost and historically short vowels in non-initial syllables have lost phoneme status. Daur is the only Mongolic language to share this development with Mongolian (i.e. Mongolian proper, Oirat
, Buryat
). Due to the merger of /ɔ/ and /ʊ/ with /o/ and /u/, vowel harmony
was lost.
system that distinguishes between first person plural inclusive /bed/ and exclusive /baː/ and, even more archaic, it distinguishes between third person singular /iːn/ and plural /aːn/. While the phoneme /t͡ʃ/ (< *t͡ʃʰ) has been retained, the second person singular pronoun has become /ʃiː/ nevertheless, resembling a more thorough sound change in the Khorchin dialect
. The second person plural is retained as /taː/.
The genitive and accusative have fused in some variants, becoming –ji, and the ablative may assume the form of the instrumental case
. The old comitative has been lost, while the innovated comitative is the same as in Mongolian. In addition, several other cases have been innovated that are not shared by Mongolian, including a new allative, -maji.
Daur has a fairly simple tense
-aspect
system consisting of the nonpast markers -/bəi/ and (marginally) -/n/ and the past forms -/sən/ and (marginally) /la/ and the non-finite imperfective marker -/d͡ʒa/-. These may be inflected for person. The attributive particle
forms are limited to –/ɡʷ/ (< Written Mongolian -γ-a) for imperfective aspect
and future tense
, -sən (< -γsan) for perfective aspect
, -/ɡat͡ʃ/ (<-gči) for habituality (instead of -daγ which used to fulfil this function) and -/mar/ for potential and probable actions. It has acquired a highly complex converbal system containing several innovations. Notably, -mar which is a participle in Mongolian serves as a converb as well.
and also some vocabulary from Evenki and Russian
– leaving about 20% vocabulary that is specific to Daur only.
Mongolic languages
The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in East-Central Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas plus in Kalmykia. The best-known member of this language family, Mongolian, is the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia and the Mongolian residents of Inner...
primarily spoken by members of the Daur ethnic group.
Distribution
Daur is a Mongolic language consisting of four dialects: Amur Daur in the vicinity of HeiheHeihe
Heihe is a city in Heilongjiang, China.It is located at , on the Russian border, on the south bank of the Amur River, across the river from the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk...
, the Nonni Daur on the west side of the Nonni River from south of Qiqihaer up to the Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner
Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner
Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner is one of three autonomous banners in Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China, created for the Daur people. It lies on the Nen River, borders Heilongjiang province to the east, south, and southwest, and is under the administration of Hulunbuir City.-References:*...
, Hailar Daur to the south-east of Hailar and far off in Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
in the vinicity of Tacheng
Tacheng
-References:* Khālidī, Qurbanʻali, Allen J. Frank, and Mirkasym Abdulakhatovich Usmanov. An Islamic Biographical Dictionary of the Eastern Kazakh Steppe, 1770-1912. Brill's Inner Asian library, v. 12. Leiden: Brill, 2004....
. There is no written standard in use, although a Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
-based orthography has been devised; instead the Daur make use of Mongolian or Chinese, as most speakers know these languages as well. During the time of the Qing dynasty
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
, Daur has been written with the Manchu alphabet
Manchu alphabet
The Manchu alphabet was used for recording the now near-extinct Manchu language; a similar script is used today by the Xibe people, who speak a language descended from Manchu...
.
Phonology
Daur phonology is peculiar in that some of its dialects have developed a set of labialized consonants (eg /sʷar/ 'flea' vs. /sar/ 'moon'), while it shares palatalizedPalatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
consonants with most Mongolian
Mongolian language
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
dialects that have not been developed in the other Mongolic languages. It also has /f/, which is, however, limited to loan words. Word-final short vowels were lost and historically short vowels in non-initial syllables have lost phoneme status. Daur is the only Mongolic language to share this development with Mongolian (i.e. Mongolian proper, Oirat
Oirat language
Oirat belongs to the group of Mongolic languages. Scholars differ as to whether Oirat is a distinct language or a major dialect of the Mongolian language...
, Buryat
Buryat language
Buryat is a Mongolic variety spoken by the Buryats that is either classified as a language or as a major dialect group of Mongolian. The majority of Buryat speakers live in Russia along the northern border of Mongolia where it is an official language in the Buryat Republic, Ust-Orda Buryatia and...
). Due to the merger of /ɔ/ and /ʊ/ with /o/ and /u/, vowel harmony
Vowel harmony
Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
was lost.
Daur consonants
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless stop | p | t | k | ||
| Voiced stop | b | d | g | ||
| Voiceless affricate | ch | ||||
| Voiced affricate | j | ||||
| Voiceless fricative | s | sh | x | ||
| Nasal | m | n, ñ | |||
| Lateral | l | ||||
| Flap or trill | r | ||||
| Semivowel | w | y | |||
Grammar
Daur has a pronominalPronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
system that distinguishes between first person plural inclusive /bed/ and exclusive /baː/ and, even more archaic, it distinguishes between third person singular /iːn/ and plural /aːn/. While the phoneme /t͡ʃ/ (< *t͡ʃʰ) has been retained, the second person singular pronoun has become /ʃiː/ nevertheless, resembling a more thorough sound change in the Khorchin dialect
Khorchin dialect
The Khorchin dialect is a variety of Mongolian spoken in the east of Inner Mongolia, namely in Hinggan League, in the north, north-east and east of Hinggan and in all but the south of the Tongliao region...
. The second person plural is retained as /taː/.
Daur Personal Pronouns
| | Singular | | Plural | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Case | 1st Person | 2nd Person | 3rd Person | 1st Person (exclusive) | 1st Person (inclusive) | 2nd Person | 3rd Person |
| Nominative | bii | šii | ing | biede | baa | taa | aang |
| Genitive | minii | šinii | inii | biednii | (maanii) | taanii | aanii |
| Dative | namd | šamd | yamd (ind) | biedende | maande | taande | aande |
| Accusative | namii | šamii | yamii | biednii | (maanii) | taanii | aanii |
| Ablative | namaase | šamaase | yamaas | biedenaas | maanaas | taanaas | aanaas |
| Instrumental | namaare | šamaare | yamaar | biedenaar | maanaar | taanaar | aanaar |
| Comitative | namtij | šamtij | yamtij | biedentij | maantij | taantij | aantij |
The genitive and accusative have fused in some variants, becoming –ji, and the ablative may assume the form of the instrumental case
Instrumental case
The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
. The old comitative has been lost, while the innovated comitative is the same as in Mongolian. In addition, several other cases have been innovated that are not shared by Mongolian, including a new allative, -maji.
Daur has a fairly simple tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
-aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
system consisting of the nonpast markers -/bəi/ and (marginally) -/n/ and the past forms -/sən/ and (marginally) /la/ and the non-finite imperfective marker -/d͡ʒa/-. These may be inflected for person. The attributive particle
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
forms are limited to –/ɡʷ/ (< Written Mongolian -γ-a) for imperfective aspect
Imperfective aspect
The imperfective is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed with internal structure, such as ongoing, habitual, repeated, and similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future...
and future tense
Future tense
In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
, -sən (< -γsan) for perfective aspect
Perfective aspect
The perfective aspect , sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed as a simple whole, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms...
, -/ɡat͡ʃ/ (<-gči) for habituality (instead of -daγ which used to fulfil this function) and -/mar/ for potential and probable actions. It has acquired a highly complex converbal system containing several innovations. Notably, -mar which is a participle in Mongolian serves as a converb as well.
Lexicon
Daur has 50% common Mongolic vocabulary, while it has borrowed 5 to 10% of its words from Chinese, 10% of its words from ManchuManchu language
Manchu is a Tungusic endangered language spoken in Northeast China; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus...
and also some vocabulary from Evenki and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
– leaving about 20% vocabulary that is specific to Daur only.
Numerals
| English | Classical Mongolian | Daur | |
| 1 | One | Nigen | Nyk |
| 2 | Two | Qoyar | Xoyir |
| 3 | Three | Ghurban | Gwarbyn |
| 4 | Four | Dorben | Durbun |
| 5 | Five | Tabun | Taawyn |
| 6 | Six | Jirghughan | Jirgoo |
| 7 | Seven | Dologhan | Doloo |
| 8 | Eight | Naiman | Naimyn |
| 9 | Nine | Yisun | Isyn |
| 10 | Ten | Arban | Xarbyn |