MASTER THESIS A comparative study on the Sayan languages (Turkic; Russia and Mongolia) Author: Supervisor: Tessa de Mol-van Valen Dr. E.I. Crevels Second reader: Dr. E.L. Stapert A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Research Master of Linguistics June 2017 For Tuba, Leo Hollemans, my students and dear family “Dus er is een taal die hetzelfde heet als ik? En u moet daar een groot werkstuk over schrijven? Wow, heel veel succes!” Acknowledgements I am indebted to my thesis supervisor Dr. E.I. Crevels at Leiden University for her involvement and advice. Thank you for your time, your efforts, your reading, all those comments and suggestions to improve my thesis. It is an honor to finish my study with the woman who started my interest in descriptive linguistics. If it wasn’t for Beschrijvende Taalkunde I, I would not get to know the Siberian languages that well and it would have taken much longer for me to discover my interest in this region. This is also the place where I should thank Dr. E.L. Stapert at Leiden University. Thank you for your lectures on the ethnic minorities of Siberia, where I got to know the Tuba and, later on, also the Tuvan and Tofa. Thank you for this opportunity. Furthermore, I owe deep gratitude to the staff of the Universitätsbibliothek of the Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, where I found Soyot. Thanks to their presence and the extensive collection of the library, I was able to scan nearly 3000 pages during the Christmas Holiday. I want to acknowledge Steve Hetem. Thank you, Steve, that you found some time in your crammed schedule to read my thesis. Your style suggestions are valuable to me and I enjoyed going through all your comments. Finally, I want to thank my husband Gerard de Mol and my parents. Thank you, Gerard, for all the hot chocolate you made for me. Thank you for your patience, which I have empirically tested. The results are in, your patience lasted, my brain almost did not. Furthermore, I am obliged to thank my parents, “without whom I would never be”. Thank you for your never ending support and interest! I did not see you as much as I wanted, but for now, that (and peace) is over. See you next Sunday! iv Abstract In this study, the grammar and basic lexicon of the Sayan languages (Turkic), spoken in Russia and Mongolia, are compared by means of the features found in WALS (Dryer & Haspelmath 2013). The main goal of this thesis is to provide a comparative study on four Sayan languages, namely Tuvan, Tofa, Soyot, and Dukha. Tuba, the fifth Sayan language, became extinct before it was described and studied and, therefore, it is excluded from the linguistic study. The data in this study came from the grammars by Anderson & Harrison (1999 and 2006, Tuvan), Rassadin (1971, 1978 and 2010, Tofa and Soyot) and Ragagnin (2011, Dukha). Another question that will be discussed in this thesis is the reason why Tuvan is not moribund, while its sister and daughter languages are. To answer this question, I looked at the history of the Sayan peoples and their current social status. Of all Sayan languages, Tofa showed the least Mongolian influences. This is probably because the Tofa people moved away from the Tuva Basin before the Mongols had a linguistic influence on the Tuvan language. Together with data from the grammars and historical information, a Sayan tree diagram is reconstructed. From the history and the current social status of the Sayan peoples could be concluded that the number of speakers and isolation together form the reason why Tuvan is not extinct and flourishes, while the other Sayan languages struggle to survive. v Table of contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. iv Abstract .................................................................................................................................................... v Glosses and symbols ................................................................................................................................ xi List of tables, map and figure ................................................................................................................. xii 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Geographical and demographic situation ..................................................................................... 1 1.2 History of the Tuvan people .......................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Linguistic situation ......................................................................................................................... 6 1.4 Previous studies ............................................................................................................................. 7 1.5 Research questions........................................................................................................................ 7 1.6 Method .......................................................................................................................................... 8 2. Results: Tuvan ............................................................................................................................... 10 2.1 Phonology .................................................................................................................................... 10 2.1.1 Vowel inventory and vowel harmony .................................................................................. 10 2.1.2 Consonant inventory ............................................................................................................ 11 2.1.3 Syllable structure .................................................................................................................. 12 2.2 Morphology ................................................................................................................................. 13 2.2.1 Nominal morphology ............................................................................................................ 13 2.2.1.1 Plural marking ................................................................................................................ 13 2.2.1.2 Nominal case marking ................................................................................................... 14 2.2.1.3 Articles ........................................................................................................................... 15 2.2.1.4 Possession ..................................................................................................................... 15 2.2.1.5 Pronouns ....................................................................................................................... 17 2.2.1.6 Numerals ....................................................................................................................... 22 2.2.1.7 Adjectives ...................................................................................................................... 23 2.2.1.8 Postpositions ................................................................................................................. 24 2.2.2 Verbal morphology ............................................................................................................... 25 2.2.2.1 Copula constructions ..................................................................................................... 25 2.2.2.2 Tense-Aspect-Mood ...................................................................................................... 27 2.2.2.3 Evidentiality ................................................................................................................... 31 2.2.2.4 Valency .......................................................................................................................... 32 2.2.2.5 Participles and gerunds ................................................................................................. 34 2.2.2.6 Modals ........................................................................................................................... 35 vi 2.2.2.7 Negation ........................................................................................................................ 36 2.3 Syntax .......................................................................................................................................... 37 2.3.1 Word order ........................................................................................................................... 37 2.3.2 Conjunction .......................................................................................................................... 38 2.3.2.1 Coordination .................................................................................................................. 38 2.3.2.2 Subordination ................................................................................................................ 39 2.3.2.2.1 Relative clauses ...................................................................................................... 39 2.3.2.2.2 Complement clauses .............................................................................................. 40 2.3.2.2.3 Adverbial clauses ...................................................................................................