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A Grammar of Wutun

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A Grammar of Wutun University of Helsinki A Grammar of Wutun PhD Thesis Department of World Cultures Erika Sandman ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki in auditorium XV (Main Building), on the 26th of November, 2016 at 10 o’clock. Helsinki 2016 Cover image: A thangka painter in Wutun ISBN 978-951-51-2633-7 (paperback) ISBN 978-951-51-2634-4 (PDF) Printed by Unigrafia Helsinki 2016 Abstract This study is a grammatical description of Wutun (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 Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, People’s Republic of China. While the Wutun language is genealogically a Sinitic language, it has adapted phonologically and structurally to is 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 Sintic language and cross-linguistically rare, including the size of a phoneme inventory, multiple aspect marking and egophoricity. The present study is based on first-hand field data collected during three field trips to Qinghai province in June-August 2007, June-August 2010 and June-July 2013. My data includes descriptive and narrative texts, conversations, as well as elicited sentences and grammaticality judgements. The theoretical framework used for language description is based on an informal descriptive theory referred in the literature as Basic Linguistic Theory (BLT) (Dixon 1997, 2010; Dryer 2006). My study 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, historical linguistics and explanatory theories. i Acknowledgements Completing this dissertation has been a long and winding road. Describing a virtually undocumented language with many intriguing grammatical features that are still inadequately understood in linguistics would not have been possible without the much-valued practical help, support and encouragement from a number of colleagues and friends from all over the world. I feel deep gratitude when I think about the many people who have stood by me during this process. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to all the Wutun speakers who have welcomed me to their homes and shared the intricacies of their language with me. Writing this grammar would not have been possible without your patience, helpfulness and hospitality. Special thanks go to ”Frank” Xiawu Dongzhou, Cairangji and ”Myrtle” Cairangji who have helped me with collecting, transcribing and analyzing much of the data and who have introduced me to other members of the language community. My study has also benefited greatly from their intelligent and insightful comments on their mother tongue. I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to my supervisors, Juha Janhunen and Seppo Kittilä. Juha Janhunen was the person who introduced me to the topic of my dissertation. During both my undergraduate and postgraduate studies, he has been the most inspiring teacher and mentor whose lectures and seminars on languages and cultures of Amdo-Qinghai and countless anecdotes from the field have fueled my long-lasting interest in the area. He has also shared with me his encyclopedic knowledge of the minority languages of Western China and an enormously wide contact network in the region that have crucially helped me to succeed with the fieldwork necessary for this project. My second supervisor, Seppo Kittilä, has been the most efficient, energetic and helpful supervisor one could ever imagine. He has always been ready to answer my questions and to give detailed and well-informed feedback on my texts from the perspective of typology, general linguistics and grammar writing. I also thank Seppo for many delightful moments in informal gatherings among colleagues. I am very grateful to my preliminary examiner and opponent, Scott Delancey, for his constructive feedback on the thesis and valuable recommendations concerning my future research. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to my other preliminary examiner, Carol Genetti, for her truly encouraging review and insightful comments for improving the manuscript. In addition to my supervisors and preliminary examiners, I have received many ii helpful comments from Jouko Lindstedt, who has provided feedback on the chapter on aspect marking, and Matti Miestamo, who has commented on the chapter on interrogation, negation and imperatives. Many colleagues and friends in Amdo-Qinghai have provided both practical help and invaluable friendship during my field trips to the area. I wish to thank Limusishiden, Sangguo, Wang Shiyong, Wuqi Chenaktsang, Keith Slater, Gerald Roche and Elena McKinlay. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Charles Kevin Stuart for continuous inspiration, encouragement and hospitality and for putting me into contact with wonderful Wutun-speaking students who later became the most important collaborators in this project. Kevin, you are one of my greatest mentors! Another person to deserve special thanks is Lhundrub Dorje for teaching me Amdo Tibetan. I would also like to express my gratitude to the staff and fellow students at the Inner Mongolia University College of International Education where I spent a year learning Chinese before starting to study Wutun, and to my supportive colleagues in Inner Mongolia University: Wu Yingzhe, Gao Wa and Sechengua. I am grateful to my colleagues in Asian and African Studies in Helsinki for providing a lively research environment. I would like to thank Mikko Suutarinen, Anja Lahtinen, Aila Pullinen, Mari Rissanen and Mitra Härkönen for being such inspiring colleagues in the Amdo-Qinghai research seminar organized by professor Janhunen. Special thanks go to Marja Kaurila who accompanied me during my 2007 and 2010 field trips to Qinghai and shared the joys and challenges of fieldwork, as well as her in-depth knowledge of Chinese syntax. Thank you Marja, without you linguistic fieldwork would have been much less fun! Another important network has been the Society for Himalayan Studies in Finland. Riika Virtanen, Thupten K. Rikey, Pilvi Vainonen, Anni Paltta, Ilkka Tanner and Jaakko Takkinen, thank you for your encouragement! Many thanks are also due to my office-mates Miika Pölkki, Aleksi Järvelä, Maria Pakkala and Kuel Jok for numerous illuminating conversations and unforgettable dinner parties. On the financial side, my work on this study has been made possible by the support from LANGNET, the Finnish Doctoral Program on Language Studies, and Kone Foundation. I wish to thank the funding organizations not only for granting me a full-time PhD student position, but also for providing travel grants, which made it possible for me to make field trips to China and present my work in international conferences. In addition, participating in a doctoral program has provided me much more than just funding. I have been privileged to attend many enriching courses and seminars and to become part of the wonderful community of Finnish linguists. I would like to thank the leaders of our subprogram Grammar and theory iii of language, Urho Määttä, Jussi Niemi and Urpo Nikanne, and my colleagues at LANGNET, Hanna Lantto, Elina Pallasvirta, Aki-Juhani Kyröläinen, Anni Jääskeläinen, Riikka Ala- Risku, Sonja Dahlgren, Milla Luodonpää-Manni, Liisa-Maria Lehto 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. After my funding periods from LANGNET and Kone Foundation, I have been lucky to work in the General Linguistics section at the University of Helsinki as a part of Seppo Kittilä’s research project Interactional, cross-linguistic, theoretical and areal perspectives on evidentiality and egophoricity funded by the Academy of Finland. My dissertation was finished in this project. I am grateful to my fantastic colleagues with whom I have been privileged to share an office: Lotta Jalava, Francesca Di Garbo, Ksenia Shagal, Nailya Philippova and Olli Silvennoinen. Thank you for providing an atmosphere where I have always felt like home and have been able to share both joys and grievances of a PhD student’s life. Many thanks are also due to other staff of the subject, in particular Fred Karlsson, Ekaterina Gruzdeva, Kaius Sinnemäki, Heini Arjava, Don Killian and Robert Östling. For inspiring discussions on Tibeto-Burman linguistics, I wish to thank Sami Honkasalo. I also thank colleagues from other subjects who have always been supportive to my project and who have shared their thoughts on linguistic fieldwork: Riho Grünthal, Janne Saarikivi, Merja Salo, Sachiko Sosa and Merja Pikkarainen. For the invaluable technical assistance at the last stage of finishing my work, thanks are due to Jouni Harjumäki and my brother Nils Sandman. I thank numerous international colleagues who have provided valuable feedback on my work in many conferences and seminars, and encouraged me in completing my dissertation. I would particularly like to mention Henrik Bergqvist, Simeon Floyd, Elisabeth Norcliffe, Lila San Roque, Camille Simon, Bettina Zeisler, Andreas Hölzl and Benjamin Brosig. Last but not least, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my family, Paula, Matz and Nils Sandman, to all my wonderful friends, especially Marja-Liisa Knuth, Matti Karttunen and Petra Vallisaari, and to all the other supportive people outside academia who are too numerous to mention.
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