Material on Manchurian Khamnigan Mongol

Preface

The present publication contains in a preliminary form some of the results of the author’s field work among the Manchurian Khamnigan in northern Inner Mongolia, China. The publication has three goals: firstly, to systematize the material for the purposes of further field work in the future; secondly, to make the most essential part of the fresh data available to others involved in comparative Mongolic studies; and thirdly, to present for evaluation and discussion some new ideas about how certain details concerning the structure of Khamnigan Mongol should perhaps be understood from the synchronic and diachronic points of view.

The material comes from Adagai, the more important one of the two settlements with Khamnigan populations in China. The period of field work at Adagai remained, as always, regrettably short, lasting only two weeks, from July 20 to August 3, 1989. One more week, from August 7 to August 14, was spent at Shinebulag, the other settlement with a Khamnigan population, but for various reasons no linguistic field work was possible there, although general demographic and ethnographic observations were, of course, made. Some additional verification of the Khamnigan Mongol linguistic material was, however, carried out in Hailar, where the author stayed the rest of the time between July 13 and August 20.

It goes without saying that the material now published is extremely restricted in scope, covering only the essentials of phonology and morphology, with syntax and the lexicon remaining largely unexplored. The author hopes to be able to continue the field work in
the future with the aim of gradually obtaining a more comprehensive corpus. It is not excluded that the future work will also ultimately
make necessary a revision of some of the interpretations presented now. Nevertheless, the author feels that even preliminary material on Manchurian Khamnigan Mongol is worth being published rapidly in the interests of comparative Mongolic studies. Moreover, in view of the recent political developments in China, one should never count too much on the future.

This publication forms part of the results of the author’s project at the Academy of Finland (Helsinki) on the minority peoples and
languages of northern China. The field research among the Khamnigan was financed through a travel grant from the Academy. On the
Chinese side, cooperation was effectively organized by the Inner Mongolian Academy of Social Sciences (Huhehoto). The author
thanks especially Prof. He Yibing and Mr. Wu Ente, who kindly made the necessary prearrangements with the central and provincial
authorities. In the field, the work was greatly facilitated by the constant practical assistance provided by Mr. Ju Leping.

The language material was supplied by several informants, whom the author had the opportunity to interview in the field. Systematic work was carried out with three persons resident at Adagai: Mr. Ssarpiim (Ru. Serafim Alekseyevich Petrov), Mr. Kvler (Chi. Huerlei), and Ms. Ssalmin (Chi. Shangmin). All of them, and particularly the one mentioned last, showed a genuine understanding of the goals and methods of linguistic fieldwork, of which none of them had previous experience. The author wishes to dedicate this modest
publication to them, and through them to the whole Khamnigan community in China.

February, 1990
Helsinki