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CLASSIFICATION


Linguists working on Tungusic have proposed a number of different classifications based on different criteria, including morphological, lexical, and phonological characteristics. One classification which seems to be advocated for a little more than the other alternatives is that the Tungusic languages can be divided into a northern branch and a southern branch, with the southern branch further subdivided into southeastern and southwestern groups.

Northern Tungusic

Southern Tungusic

  • Southwest Tungusic (or the Jurchen-Manchu group)

  • --- Manchu of Manchuria , the language of the Manchus, who founded the Qing dynasty of China.

  • --- Sibe - spoken in Xinjiang province, descendants of the Manchus brought to Xinjiang as a military garrison.

  • --- Jurchen - an extinct language of Jin Dynasty .

    • Jurchen-Manchu (Jurchen and Manchu are simply different stages of the language; in fact, the ethnonym "Manchu" did not come about until 1636 when Emperor Hong Taiji decreed that the term would replace "Jurchen") is the only Tungusic language with a literary form which dates back to at least the mid- to late-1100s, as such it is a very important language for the reconstruction of Proto-Tungusic. The earliest extant text in Jurchen is the ''Da Jin deshengtuo songbei'' inscription (The Jin Victory Memorial Stele), which dates from the Dading period (1161-1189).



COMMON CHARACTERISTICS

The Tungusic languages are of an Agglutinative morphological type, and some of them have complex Case systems and elaborate patterns of Tense and Aspect marking. They also exhibit a complex pattern of Vowel Harmony , based on the parameters of vowel Rounding and vowel Tenseness , also known as ATR.


RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER LANGUAGES

Tungusic has traditionally been linked with Turkic and Mongolian languages in the Altaic Language Family . Korean and Japanese are also considered by some to belong to the Altaic family, but this theory is not universally accepted. Some linguists have proposed a closer relationship within Altaic between Tungusic, Korean and possibly Japanese, though this remains speculative.


REFERENCES

  • Kane, Daniel. ''The Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary of the Bureau of Interpreters''. Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series, Volume 153. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1989.

  • Miller, Roy Andrew. ''Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971.

  • Poppe, N.N. ''Vergleichende Grammatik der Altaischen Sprachen'' Comparative Grammar of the Altaic Languages . Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1960.

  • Tsintsius, V. I. ''Sravnitel'naya Fonetika Tunguso-Man'chzhurskikh Yazïkov'' Phonetics of the Manchu-Tungus Languages . Leningrad, 1949.



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