Acknowledgments
I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to my thesis committee members, Dr.
Veronica Grondona and Dr. Beverley Goodman, whose guidance and support enabled me to
develop an understanding of the subject. I am tremendously thankful to Dr. Grondona, thesis
chair and my graduate advisor, who has been greatly helpful and supportive during the years of
my academic journey at Eastern Michigan University and whose kind advice mentored me in
many ways. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Beverley Goodman, who raised my
interest in the field of phonology and phonetics and whose encouragement and support led me
throughout the work on my thesis.
I would like to gratefully acknowledge Dr. Helen Aristar-Dry for giving me a chance to
step into the journey of graduate assistantship and awaking in me an awareness of the linguistic
community.
I owe my gratitude to my language technology professor, Damir Cavar, who instilled my
interest in the technical aspects of linguistics and language documentation.
I would like to thank Sara, Stephanie, James, Ashley and my parents for moral support
and encouragement throughout my project development.
Lastly, I owe my gratitude to all those who stood by my side and supported me during the
completion of this thesis.
iv
Abstract
This thesis describes the phonemic inventory and morphophonological properties of the Shor
language. Shor is a Turkic language spoken in southwest Siberia, in the area designated as
Mountainous Shoriya. It is one of more than 100 minority languages spoken in the territory of
Russia, and it is currently on the verge of extinction. The language is characterized by
agglutinative morphology, vowel harmony, and consonant assimilation typical of Turkic
languages, which are discussed in the project. The main phonological processes, morphotactics,
and some aspects of grammar are described and discussed in this thesis. Along with the
discussion of the morphophonology of Shor, the paper describes the geographic spread of the
language, including important ethnographic and sociolinguistic data and information.
v
Table of Contents
Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... iii
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. ix
List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. xiii
Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................... xiv
Notations ...................................................................................................................................... xiv
Diacritics ...................................................................................................................................... xiv
1. Introduction and Background .................................................................................................. 1
1.1 Objective ................................................................................................................... 2
1.2 Project Significance .................................................................................................. 2
1.3 Structure of This Thesis ............................................................................................ 3
1.4 Ethnography of Shors ............................................................................................... 4
1.4.1 Geographic spread of the language. ............................................................... 4
1.4.2 Origin. ............................................................................................................ 7
1.4.3 History. ........................................................................................................... 9
1.4.4 Typology. ..................................................................................................... 11
1.4.5 Dialects. ........................................................................................................ 13
vi
1.4.6 Writing system. ............................................................................................ 18
1.5 Sociolinguistic Situation ......................................................................................... 18
1.5.1 Current status of Shor as an indigenous language of Siberia. ...................... 18
1.5.2 Cultural assimilation and shift to the Russian language. ............................. 23
2. Previous Research of the Shor Language .............................................................................. 25
2.1 Review of Related Literature and Preliminary Studies ........................................... 25
2.2 Comparison Study of the Shor Phonemic Inventory .............................................. 30
3. Shor Vowels .......................................................................................................................... 32
3.1 Overview of the Existing Descriptions of the Shor Vowel Inventories.................. 32
3.1.1 Dyrenkova, 1941. ......................................................................................... 33
3.1.2 Babushkin and Donidze, 1966. .................................................................... 34
3.1.3 Borodkina, 1977. .......................................................................................... 34
3.1.4 Chispiyakova and Shavlova, 1991. .............................................................. 36
3.1.5 Chispiyakov, 1992a ...................................................................................... 39
3.1.6 Chispiyakov, 1992b ...................................................................................... 40
3.1.7 Donidze, 1996. ............................................................................................. 41
3.1.8 Musaev, 2014 ............................................................................................... 41
3.2 Summary of the Existing Descriptions of the Shor Vowel Inventories .................. 42
3.3 Shor Vowel Inventory ............................................................................................. 44
3.3.1 Detailed description of the Shor vowel phonemes. ...................................... 48
vii
3.3.2 Phonological processes: Vowel harmony.. .................................................. 56
3.3.3 Summary. ..................................................................................................... 62
3.4 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................... 63
4. Shor Consonants .................................................................................................................... 64
4.1 Overview of the Existing Descriptions of the Shor Consonant Inventories ........... 64
4.1.1 Dyrenkova, 1941. ......................................................................................... 64
4.1.2 Babushkin and Donidze, 1966 ..................................................................... 65
4.1.3 Pospelova, 1977 ........................................................................................... 66
4.1.4 Chispiyakova and Shavlova, 1991.. ............................................................. 71
4.1.5 Chispiyakov, 1992a ...................................................................................... 73
4.1.6 Chispiyakov, 1992b. ..................................................................................... 73
4.1.7 Donidze, 1996. ............................................................................................. 74
4.1.8 Musaev, 2014 ............................................................................................... 75
4.1.9 Phonetic notation differences. ...................................................................... 75
4.2 Summary of the Existing Descriptions of the Shor Consonant Inventories ........... 76
4.3 Shor Consonant Inventory ...................................................................................... 80
4.3.1 Distribution of the Shor consonants. ............................................................ 80
4.3.2 Alphabetical notations and phonetic representations. .................................. 84
4.3.3 Detailed description of the Shor consonant phonemes. ............................... 87
4.3.4 Phonological processes. Consonant assimilation. ...................................... 100
viii
4.3.5 Summary. ................................................................................................... 106
4.4 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................. 106
5. Syllable Structure, Stress, Dialectal Variation .................................................................... 108
5.1 Syllable Structure .................................................................................................. 108
5.2 Stress ..................................................................................................................... 108
5.3 Mrassu and Kondoma Dialectal Variation ............................................................ 110
6. Grammatical Features .......................................................................................................... 119
6.1 Language Structure ............................................................................................... 119
6.2 Morphosyntactic Properties .................................................................................. 121
6.2.1 Nouns. ........................................................................................................ 121
6.2.2 Adjectives. .................................................................................................. 126
6.2.3 Pronouns. .................................................................................................... 128
6.2.4 Numerals. ................................................................................................... 131
6.2.5 Verbs. ......................................................................................................... 133
6.3 Chapter Summary. ................................................................................................ 140
7. Conclusion and Recommendations for Further Research ................................................... 141
References ................................................................................................................................... 144
ix
List of Tables
Table Page
Table 1. The Population of Shors Through the Years 1897 to 1989............................................. 20
Table 2. Distribution of the Indigenous Peoples of Shor in the Russian Federation ................... 21
Table 3. Distribution of the Shor Population Among Rural and Urban Areas ............................ 21
Table 4. Knowledge of the Shor language by Ethnic Groups of the Russian Federation ............ 22
Table 5. Number of People in Other Ethnic Groups that Consider Shor to Be Their
Native Language ............................................................................................................... 23
Table 6. Comparison of Shor Alphabets ....................................................................................... 26
Table 7. Classification of Shor Vowels by Babushkin and Donidze, 1966 ................................... 34
Table 8. Shor Vowels, Chispiyakova and Shavlova, 1991, p. 11 .................................................. 38
Table 9. Shor Vowel Phonemes, Chispiyakova and Shavlova, 1991, p. 11 .................................. 38
Table 10. Shor Long Vowel Phonemes, Chispiyakova and Shavlova, 1991 ................................. 39
Table 11. Comparison of Shor Vowel Inventories Proposed by Various Authors in Cyrillic ...... 43
Table 12. Comparison of Shor Vowel Inventory Proposed by Various Authors Interpreted
with IPA ............................................................................................................................ 44
Table 13. Shor Vowel Dimensions ................................................................................................ 45
Table 14. Shor Vowel Dimensions with Corresponding Allophones ............................................ 45
Table 15. Distinctive Features of the Shor Vowels ....................................................................... 46
Table 16. Shor Phonemes with Corresponding Allophones and Graphemes ............................... 46
Table 17. Shor Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondence ................................................................. 47
Table 18. Shor Vowel Phonemes with Example Words ................................................................ 48
x
Table 19. Backness Harmony in the Word Base\/Stem .................................................................. 57
Table 20. Violation of Backness Harmony ................................................................................... 58
Table 21. Backness Harmony in Suffixation ................................................................................. 59
Table 22. Rounding Harmony Vowel Sequencing ........................................................................ 60
Table 23. Rounding Harmony Vowel Sequencing with \/\u0254\/ and \/\u00f8\/ ............................................... 60
Table 24. Rounding Harmony Vowel Sequencing ........................................................................ 61
Table 25. Rounding Harmony Vowel Sequencing with \/u\/ and \/y\/ ............................................... 61
Table 26. Backness and Rounding Harmony Vowel Sequencing ................................................. 62
Table 27. Examples of Regressive Assimilation ........................................................................... 62
Table 28. Classification of Shor Consonants by Babushkin and Donidze, 1966 .......................... 66
Table 29. Consonant Phonemes of the Shor Language by Chispiyakova and Shavlova, 1991 .... 72
Table 30. Consonant Phonemes of the Shor Language by Donidze, 1996 ................................... 75
Table 31. Comparison of Shor Vowel Inventories Proposed by Various Authors in Cyrillic ...... 77
Table 32. Comparison of Shor Vowel Inventories Proposed by Various Authors in IPA ............ 78
Table 33. Distribution of Shor Consonants .................................................................................. 81
Table 34. Distribution of Shor Consonants with Allophones ....................................................... 82
Table 35. Shor Consonant Phonemes with Corresponding Allophones and Orthographic
Representations ................................................................................................................. 83
Table 36. Consonant Inventory of Shor with Corresponding Orthographic Representations ..... 85
Table 37. Voiced Consonants in Word-Internal Position ........................................................... 101
Table 38. Voiceless Consonants in the Word-Initial and Word-Final Position ......................... 101
Table 39. Voicing at the Morpheme Boundary ........................................................................... 102
Table 40. Consonant Assimilation in the Word Bases ................................................................ 103
xi
Table 41. Consonant Assimilation in the Process of Suffixation ................................................ 104
Table 42. Exceptions to the Voicing Assimilation in the Word Bases ........................................ 104
Table 43. Exceptions to the Voicing Assimilation in the Process of Suffixation ........................ 105
Table 44. Nasal Assimilation in Shor, b \u2192 m ............................................................................ 105
Table 45. Nasal Assimilation in Shor, d \u2192 n ............................................................................ 106
Table 46. Dialectal Alternation of Intervocalic and Word-Final z(s) \u2013 j ................................... 111
Table 47. Dialectal Alternation of Word-Initial \u035c t\u0283 \u2013 j ................................................................ 112
Table 48. Dialectal Alternation of Word-Initial n \u2013 \u035c t\u0283(j) ............................................................ 112
Table 49. Dialectal Alternation of Word-Initial and Word-Final \u0283(\u0292) \u2013 \u035c t\u0283 ................................. 112
Table 50. Dialectal Alternation of Word-Initial m \u2013 p ............................................................... 113
Table 51. Dialectal Alternation of Intervocalic b \u2013 m ................................................................ 113
Table 52. Dialectal Alternation of Word-Iinternal v \u2013 b ............................................................ 114
Table 53. Dialectal Alternation of Word-Internal and Word-Initial y \u2013 i .................................. 114
Table 54. Dialectal Alternation of Word-Initial and Word-Internal \u0254(\u0252)\/\u00f8 \u2013 u\/y ....................... 114
Table 55. Dialectal Alternation of Word-Internal and Word-Final u\u2013\u026f(\u026a\u0308) ................................ 115
Table 56. Dialectal Alternation of Word-Initial and Word-Internal \u025b\u2013i .................................... 115
Table 57. Rounding Harmony in the Mrassu Dialect versus Disruption of the Rounding Harmony
in the Kondoma Dialect .................................................................................................. 117
Table 58. Disruption of the Backness Harmony in the Kondoma Dialect .................................. 117
Table 59. Compensatory Lengthening in the Mrassu Dialect .................................................... 118
Table 60. Metathesis in the Mrassu Dialect ............................................................................... 118
Table 61. Allomorphy in Pplural Suffixes ................................................................................... 122
Table 62. Possessive Suffixes ...................................................................................................... 122
xii
Table 63. Predicative Suffixes ..................................................................................................... 124
Table 64. Comparison of Declension Paradigms ....................................................................... 124
Table 65. Case Markers in Shor ................................................................................................. 125
Table 66. Personal Pronouns ..................................................................................................... 129
Table 67. Declension of Pronouns .............................................................................................. 129
Table 68. Personal-Possessive Pronouns ................................................................................... 130
Table 69. Reflexive Pronouns ..................................................................................................... 130
Table 70. Numerals ..................................................................................................................... 132
Table 71. Verb Person Suffixes ................................................................................................... 135
xiii
List of Figures
Figure Page
Figure 1. Geographical spread of the Shor language, Kemerovo Region, southwest Siberia
(Dallmann, 2012). ............................................................................................................... 5
Figure 2. Position of the Shor language within the Turkic language family, based on Baskakov,
1962................................................................................................................................... 12
Figure 3. Classification of the Shor language according to Baskakov, 1962. .............................. 18
Figure 4. Current Shor alphabet\u201438 characters. ......................................................................... 30
Figure 5. Classification of vowels by Borodkina, 1977. .............................................................. 35<\/p>\n
\u539f\u6587\u5730\u5740\uff1a<\/p>\n
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