Spoken Sibe: Morphology of the Inflected Parts of Speech

Spoken Sibe: Morphology of the Inflected Parts of Speech
Zikmundová, Veronika
Distributed for Karolinum Press, Charles University
231 pages | 6 3/4 x 9 1/2 | © 2013
ISBN-13: 978-8024621036 ISBN-10: 8024621037
 $24.37

At present, the Sibe language is the only still-active oral variety of Manchu, the language of the indigenous tribe of Manchuria. With some 20,000 to 30,000 speakers it is also the most widely spoken of the Tungusic languages, which are found in both Manchuria and eastern Siberia. The Sibe people, who live at the northwestern border of the present-day Sinkiang Uyghur Autonomous province of China, are descendants of the garrison men of the Manchu army from the eighteenth century. After annexing the area, the Manchus sent the Sibe’s predecessors there with the task of guarding the newly established border between the Manchu Empire and Russia. They remained isolated from the indigenous Turkic and Mongolian peoples, which resulted in the preservation of the language. In the 1990s, when the oral varieties of Manchu became either extinct or on the verge of extinction, Sibe survived as a language spoken by all generations of Sibe people in the Chapchal Sibe autonomous county, and by the middle and older generations in virtually all other Sibe settlements of Xinjiang.Spoken Sibe is a carefully researched study of this historically and linguistically important language

List of abbreviations
Introduction

1. Characteristics of spoken Sibe
1.1 Notes on the phonetics and phonology
1.2 Questions of transcription
1.3 Remarks on the Sibe vocabulary
1.4 Remarks on syntax—negation
1.5 World classes in spoken Sibe
2. The Noun
2.1 The category of number
2.2 The category of case
3. Qualitative nouns
3.1 Qualitative nouns formed by derivational suffixes
4. Pronouns
4.1 Personal pronouns
4.2 Remarks on the personal pronouns
4.3 Demonstrative pronouns
4.4 Interrogative pronouns
4.5 Notes on demonstrative and interrogative pronouns
5. Numerals
5.1 The cardinal numerals
5.2 The ordinal numerals
5.3 The idiomatic use of numerals
6. Spatials
6.1 The spatial system in written Manchu
6.2 The spatial system in spoken Sibe
7. The verb
7.1 The verbal system of spoken Sibe
7.2 Finite verbs
7.3 Imperative and optative forms
7.4 Verbal nouns
7.5 Converbs
7.6 Deverbal suffixes
7.7 Vicarious verbs

Acknowledgments
Appendix
Vocabulary
References
Summary