Contact, attrition, and structural shift evidence from Oroqen

Contact,attrition,and structural shift:

evidence from Oroqen

LI FENGXIANG*

Abstract

Oroqen is a Tungusic language spoken in Northeast of China and Inner Mongolia.A considerable amount of data from Oroqen reveal patterns that shed light on our understanding of the complex interplay between language contact and language attrition induced changes.Oroqen has un-dergone drastic restructuring over a relatively short time span of a few decades.I demonstrate that time depth and intensity of contact correlate very closely with the rate and extent of structural borrowing and structural shift that occurred in Oroqen.I argue that the determining factors are soci-olinguistic in nature though some of the changes were initially internally motivated.

1.Introduction

Oroqen is a Tungusic language1spoken by roughly2,500people in two provinces of northeastern China:Heilongjiang Province and Inner Mon-golia Autonomous Region.The ancestors of this remarkably peaceful and harmonious people traversed the treacherous terrain of the Siberian taiga,crossed the mighty Amur and Argun rivers,braved through the formidable almost impenetrable virgin forests of the Hinggan mountains and thrived in their hunter-gatherer lifestyle between the game rich moun-tains and?sh-?lled rivers in Northeastern China and Inner Mongolia deep in the Greater and Lesser Hinggan Mountains.According to Jan-hunen(1997:131),‘‘the ancestors of the Orochen seem to have entered the Chinese side in several waves,mainly during the eighteenth century. The Orochen then gradually spread over the two Khingan Ranges...’’Unfortunately,in recent history they su¤ered the same fate as the other native groups in many parts of the world,such as the American Indians, and the Australian Aborigines.They were ruthlessly trampled by the

0165–2516/05/0173–0055Int’https://www.360docs.net/doc/cd6693907.html,ng.173(2005),pp.55–74 6Walter de Gruyter

56Li F.

army of the Russian Czar in the17th century,and were subjected to the unspeakable atrocities of the Japanese invaders in the1930s,and the Chi-nese warlords in the1940s.Like so many people in China,the Oroqens had their share of tribulations and persecution during the Cultural Revo-lution of1966through1976.Since their settlement in the early1950s, they have been losing their language along with their traditions and cultural heritage at an alarming rate.Sadly,in the very near future,the Oroqen Tungus as a distinctive ethnic group will cease to exist for it will soon be completely engulfed by the invincible superstratum Chinese lan-guage and culture.While their older generation is trying to hold on to their language,culture and traditions,their younger generations are being assimilated into the mainstream Chinese culture at an incredibly fast pace.The Oroqen lived as hunter-gatherers until the early1950s,when the Chinese government began its e¨ort to settle them.Before this time very little was known about the Oroqen language in China outside of piecemeal information provided by the great Russian ethnographer,S. M.Shirokogorov,(Shirokogorov1923[1999],1929±1933,1935,1944). During the early1960s,after the demise of Oroqen nomadism,more comprehensive research on the language began with the pioneering work of Hu Zengyi,resulting in the?rst grammatical sketch of Oroqen(ulti-mately published as Hu1986).One additional grammatical sketch has since appeared(Zhang et al.1989)as well as two phrase books(Han and Meng1993;Saxirong1981),a collection of texts(Meng1993),and work on more speci?c aspects of the grammar(Doerfer1983;B.Li 1992,1996;F.Li1996;S.Li1981;Li and Whaley1998,2000;Whaley and Li1998,2000;Whaley et al.1999;Whaley2001;Zhang1996).It is glaringly obvious among these works that hardly any attention has been devoted to the rapid changes that Oroqen has been undergoing over the last a few decades.Therefore,the aim of this article is to explore both the internal and external factors that led to the drastic changes that have taken place in Oroqen,focusing on the dismantling and reordering of its structural system.Section one of this article is a brief introduction.Sec-tion two is devoted to a discussion of the changes that are attributable to language attrition.Section three deals with contact-induced changes.The ?nal section of the article o¨ers some explanations and systematic pat-terns about contact and attrition situations.

2.Morphological attrition

It has been abundantly demonstrated in the literature that the structure of endangered languages undergoes a certain amount of changes at all

Contact,attrition,and structural shift57 levels:phonological,morphological,syntactic,semantic,and lexical,Hill (1980),Dorian(1989),Maher(1991),Grenoble and Whaley(1998).The changes that have been described in the literature display systematic pat-terns.As Schmidt(1985)and Maher(1991)point out,the patterns found in endangered languages are remarkably similar;many show allomorphic reduction;radical simpli?cation and regularization of certain paradigms; generalization of a single case a?x to cover various peripheral case func-tions;a tendency to eliminate verbal inˉectional a?xes;a breakdown in agreement rules;replacement of synthetic forms by analytic ones or by periphrastic constructions;and so on.Fieldwork on Oroqen done by Lindsay J.Whaley and Fengxiang Li over the past nine years has yielded data consistent with some of the characteristic features given in Maher (1991).Maher(1991:68)points out that indigenous languages undergo-ing attrition due to the encroachment of a dominant language reveal a restructuring or recon?guration of morphological and syntactic structures that display the following characteristics:

(a)Reduction in the number of allomorphs(i.e.,more invariable forms,

or fewer context sensitive rules).Increased paradigmatic regularity.

(b)Replacement of synthetic forms by analytic ones or by periphrastic

constructions.

(c)Progressive reduction in inˉectional morphology,entailing lessˉexi-

ble word order.

(d)Preference for coordinate rather than embedded constructions.

(e)Distinctive aspectual constructions in verbal systems.

For example,in Oroqen,morphological processes that have restricted applications are no longer present in younger speakers'speech.Li and Whaley(2000)give a detailed description of one of the intensive marking strategies utilized in Oroqen,namely,emphatic reduplication.Emphatic reduplication operates in Oroqen by copying the?rst syllable of an adjec-tival stem onto a CVC template and pre?xing the copied material to the adjective.If the?rst syllable of the adjective is open,then[b]is inserted into the post-vocalic slot of the CVC template.These patterns are demon-strated in example(1).

(1)bagdarin`white'bag-bagdarin`very white,white as snow'

?i3ar K n`yellow'?ib-si3ar K n`very yellow,golden yellow' kara`dark,glossy'kab-kara`very dark,glossy black'

k?3?r K n`black'k?b-k?3?r K n`very black'

For some speakers,the post-vocalic[b]in the last three forms in(1)has assimilated in voicing to the following obstruent,and so is pronounced [p].

58Li F.

Emphatic reduplication occurs only with a small number of adjective stems,perhaps only the four presented in example(1).Notably,all the adjectives are color terms,and all of them are commonly associated with the hue of certain domestic animals.For example,kara is typically used for describing dogs and horses,and?i3ar K n for dogs,though not exclu-sively.Speakers routinely reject emphatic reduplication with other adjec-tives,even if they are color terms,as shown in example(2).

(2)g K lbar K n`sky blue'*g K l-g K lbar K n

t?ú3g y?n`deep blue'*t?ú3-t?ú3g y?n

èla:r K n`red'*èb-èla:r K n

t?uturin`green'*t?ub-t?uturin

The restrictive application of reduplication has made it highly vulnera-ble to rapid loss as Oroqen becomes obsolescent.Data from four female speakers demonstrate that younger speakers no longer have emphatic re-duplication in their grammar.Our two older speakers A(70-years-old) and B(60-years-old)both used Oroqen as their primary language until their early twenties.Since that time they have increasingly used Mandarin Chinese.Both use the reduplicated adjectives in example(1),though the younger of the two does not recognize or accept the last of these forms. Our two younger speakers C(46-years-old)and D(30-years-old)no longer accept or recognize any of these forms.Though both learned Oroqen in the home as a?rst language,both have grown up and been educated in a Mandarin-dominated context.

Similar patterns were found with other morphological processes indi-cating the same process of loss.Among the nominalizers in Oroqen,-3ki is by far the most productive.It occurs with practically any verb to yield a noun.Examples are given in(3).

(3)kad K-rú-n`cut-non-future-3S'

kad K-3ki`sickle/scythe'

minú-rú-n`cut-non-future-3S'

minú-3ki`cutting board with one endˉat and the other end

concave,shaped to hold meat or with both endsˉat

and the middle concave'(usually called ninan) d?ik-tú-n`slice-non-future-3S'

d?iki-3ki`cutting board'

gèld?K-ra-n`lock-non-future-3S'

gèld?K-3ki`lock/latch'

túk-tú-n`sit-non-future-3S'

tú?ú-3ki`something to sit on'

Contact,attrition,and structural shift59 Both our older speakers A and B readily produced many examples using this and other less productive nominalizers.For example,they em-ployed the nominalizer-wun(kad K-wun`knife',tukti-wun`ladder')when they produced the forms for`knife'and`ladder'.

What is noteworthy is that quite a few of the less productive nominal-izers are no longer in the repertoire of our speakers C and D.Our speaker C only used the su?x-3ki,even in forms where older speakers do not use it.Although she retains this most productive nominalizer-3ki,and in fact uses it more generally than older speakers,she alternates between having the velar nasal and leaving it out.A similar pattern held for speaker D's speech.Only the most productive nominalizer was employed.However, for her,nasal deletion in the su?x-3ki is compulsory,which is shown in the examples in(4).

(4)l?x?-r?-n`hang something up-non-future-3S'

l?x?-ki`hook'

tú?ú-rú-n`sit-non-future-3S'

tú?ú-ki`something to sit on'

mu:-lú:`water-LOC'

mu:-lú:-ki`water bucket'

tukti-rú-n`go up/climb-non-future-3S'

tukti-ki`ladder'

gèld?K-rú-n`lock-non-future-3S'

gèld?i-ki`lock(noun)'

A clear pattern emerges in the data from the four speakers A,B,C,and D.The older speakers have a much richer repertoire of derivational mor-phology than the younger ones,and there is a gradual phonological ero-sion of the productive su?xal nominalizer-3ki that correlates with the age of the speakers,which is illustrated in the table in example(5). (5)A

B

C D

tú?ú-3ki tú?ú-3ki tú?ú-3ki/tú?ú-ki tú?ú-ki

mu:-lú:-3ki mu:-lú:-3ki mu:-lú:-3ki/m·:lú:-ki mu:-lú:-ki

tukti-wun tukti-wun tukti-3ki/tukti-ki tukti-ki

kad K-wun kad K-wun kad K-3ki/kad K-ki kad K-ki

`something to sit on'

`water bucket'

`ladder'

`sickle/scythe'

These data demonstrate,for the younger generation of Oroqen speakers,the wholesale loss of certain limited derivational strategies such

as emphatic reduplication,and the replacement of low productivity deri-vational morphemes such as -wun by equivalent,yet more productive,strategies.The drastic reduction in the number of nominalizers in the younger speakers'speech,needless to say,provides supporting evidence for princi-ple (a).In fact,we also found cases conforming to Maher's principle (b).Speci?cally,our speaker D employs the periphrastic adverbial form mani `very'in place of the emphatic reduplication strategy to express degree of intensity.Such changes are not con?ned to the realm of derivational morphol-ogy.A reduction of inˉectional morphology is also found in several of our speakers'speech displaying a pattern of varying degrees of loss,con-forming to part of principle (c),shown in example (6).

(6) a.tari 3rd .sg.múmi self-múnaxa self-reˉ.suxú-rú-n hit-non-future-3rd .sg.`He hit himself.'b.bi:1st .sg.múmi self-múnaxa self-reˉ.suxú-rú-n hit-non-future-3rd .sg.`I hit myself.'c.?i:2nd .sg.múmi self-múnaxa self-reˉ.suxú-rú-n hit-non-future-3rd .sg.`You hit yourself.'d.tari 3rd .sg.mèr K n-múhorse-def.acc.suxú-rú-n hit-non-future-3rd .sg.`He hit the horse.'e.bi:1st .sg.mèr K n-múhorse-def.acc.suxú-m hit-non-future-1st .sg.`I hit the horse.'f.?i:2nd .sg.mèr K n-múhorse-def.acc.suxú-rú-n hit-non-future-3rd .sg.

`You hit the horse.'This speaker is in her late ?fties,and the data in example (6)were col-lected in July 1997.She has lost most of her subject-verb agreement using the third person singular nonfuture form for all persons.Notice that she did use the ?rst person singular verb form in sentence (6e).The examples in (6d)to (6f )were collected after we reminded her of the agreement rule by feeding her the correct forms.Even so,she still used the 3rd person singular non-future form for the second person as is shown in sentence (6f ).However,she does retain the case marking system.She used the ac-cusative markers on the noun `horse'unfailingly.In contrast,a slightly

60Li F.

younger speaker,who is 44-years-old,has lost not only

subject-verb agreement,but part of the case system as well,which is illustrated in the

examples given in examples (7)to (10).(7) a.bi:1st .sg d?úktú-yúfood-indef.acc.

d?úb-tú-n /d?úb-tú-m eat-non-future-3rd .sg./eat-1st .sg.

`I am eating (food).'

b.?i:2nd .sg

d?úktú-yúfood-indef.acc.d?úb-tú-n eat-non-future-3rd .sg.

`You are eating (food).'

c.n?nin 3rd .sg

d?úktú-yúfood-indef.acc.d?úb-tú-n eat-non-future-3rd .sg.

`He is eating (food).'

d.bu:1st .pl.excl.d?úktú-yúfood-indef.acc.

d?úb-tú-n eat-non-future-3rd .sg.

`We are eating (food).'e.biti 1st .pl.incl.

d?úktú-yúfood-indef.acc.d?úb-tú-n eat-non-future-3rd .sg.

`We are eating (food).'

f.?u:2nd .pl.d?úktú-yúfood-indef.acc.

d?úb-tú-n eat-non-future-3rd .sg.

`You are eating (food).'

g.tari-l 3rd .pl.d?úktú-yúfood-indef.acc.d?úb-tú-n

eat-non-future-3rd .sg.

`They are eating (food).'The examples in (7)show that almost

all of the

agreement

markers

between subject and verb are lost in this speaker's speech.The only excep-tion is the ?rst person singular in sentence (7a),which she uses some of

the time.Curiously,the same behavior can be observed in her use of the ?rst person plural exclusive agreement marking,which is demonstrated in

example (8).(8) a.bi:1st .sg.d?anda-rú-n sing-non-future-3rd .sg.

`I am singing.'

b.?i:2nd .sg.d?anda-rú-n sing-non-future-3rd .sg.

`You are singing.'

c.n?nin 3rd .sg.d?anda-rú-n

sing-non-future-3rd .sg.

`He is singing.'Contact,attrition,and structural shift 61

d.

biti 1st .pl.incl.d?anda-rú-n sing-non-future-3rd .sg.`We are singing.'e.

bu:1st .pl.excl.d?anda-rú-n /d?anda-rú-wun sing-non-future-3rd .sg./sing-non-future-1st .pl.`We are singing.'f.

?u:2nd .pl.d?anda-rú-n sing-non-future-3rd .sg.`You are singing.'g.tari-l 3rd .pl.d?anda-rú-n sing-non-future-3rd .sg.`They are singing.'

Clearly,all of the agreement markers are lost in sentences (8a)to (8g),except for sentence (8e)in which case the speaker sometimes put the agreement marker in.When asked what the di¨erence is between the two forms with and without the agreement marker,the speaker explains that older people prefer forms with the agreement marker,and it is too verbose to talk that way.This indicates that for speakers like her,it is not a matter of imperfectly learning the grammatical system of their L1.They use certain structures by choice,which is counter evidence to some of the claims made in the literature on language attrition situa-tions (e.g.,Dorian 1989).In terms of case markings,the speaker seems to have a preference for the inde?nite accusative marker over the de?nite accusative case marker.Notice that in example (7),the case marking used on the direct object `food'is the inde?nite accusative marker `-yú'.This is no accident,which can be proven by the sentences in example (9).

(9) a.

n?nin 3rd .sg.d?axal thing ?ilki-rú-n wash-non-future-3rd .sg.`He is washing something.'b.n?nin 3rd .sg.túti clothes ?iki-rú-n wash-non-future-3rd .sg.`He is washing clothes.'c.n?nin 3rd .sg.min-3i 1st .sg.-poss.túti-yi clothes-indef.acc.?iki-rú-n wash-non-future-3rd .sg.`He is washing my clothes.'d.n?nin 3rd .sg.min-3i 1st .sg.-poss.túti-wúclothes-def.acc.?iki-rú-n wash-non-future-3rd .sg.`He is washing my clothes.'62Li F.

e.bi:1st .sg.min-3K 1st .sg.-poss.túti-yi múmúxan clothes-inde

f.acc.1st

.sg.reˉ.

?iki-m wash-non-future-3rd

.sg.`I am washing my own clothes.'

In sentences (9a)and (9b),there is no accusative

marking on the di-rect object `thing'and `clothes'respectively.When a determiner is added,the speaker produced the sentences (9c)to (9e).The determiner seemed to have some

sort of triggering e¨ect inducing the use of the accusative markers in all of the three examples.However,the speaker apparently has a preference for the inde?nite accusative marker over the de?nite one,though she switches between the two shown in sentences (9c)to (9e)although the context requires the de?nite accusative marker.Also,

in sentence

(9e)

we again

see

the ?rst person singular agreement marker on the verb showing up.It is interesting to note that a deletion of the

consonant in the coda position of the initial syllable in the verb ?ilki-rú-n `wash'occurred in sentences (9b)to (9e),a phenomenon observed in other speakers as discussed earlier in the case of nominalizers.In both

cases,the deleted consonant is preceded by the voiceless velar stop.

The missing accusative marking in sentence (9a)

is not an

isolated

case.In

fact,this and some other speakers of a comparable age rou-

tinely leave out accusative markers,as shown in the sentences in example (10).(10) a.bi:1st .sg.araxi wine im-nú-n drink-non-future-3rd

.sg.

`I am drinking wine.'b.?i:2nd .sg.

araxi wine im-nú-n

drink-non-future-3rd .sg.

`You are drinking wine.'c.n?nin 3rd .sg.araxi wine im-nú-n drink-non-future-3rd

.sg.

`He is drinking wine.'d.biti 1st .pl.incl.araxi wine im-nú-n drink-non-future-3rd .sg.

`We are drinking wine.'

e.bu:1st .pl.excl.araxi wine im-nú-n drink-non-future-3rd

.sg.

`We are drinking wine.'

f.n?ntin /tari-l 3rd .pl.araxi wine im-nú-n

drink-non-future-3rd .sg.

`They are drinking wine.'Contact,attrition,and structural shift 63

The sentences in example (10)demonstrate that for this speaker,the accusative case marking is no longer obligatory.In fact,she only uses it infrequently.Notice also,that in example (10),all of the agreement markers have been leveled,reducing them to the default choice of the third person singular form.It is safe to say that this particular speaker has lost most of the agreement case distinctions.When asked about the di¨erences between m?:-duki ,m?:-lak ,m?:-li:,and m?:-ki the speaker said without hesitation that they all meant the same thing,despite the fact that in each case we have the root morpheme m?:`tree'plus a case marker:-duki `ablative (from)'-la:k `loco-ablative (from inside)',-li `pro-lative (pass by,along the side)',and -ki `allative (to)'.None of these cases is in the grammatical system of this speaker.This is also true with another speaker comparable in age with this speaker.Both speakers learned Oro-qen as their ?rst language at home.They did not learn Chinese until they started elementary school at the age of seven or eight.It should be pointed out that the language of instruction from grade one through grade ?ve was Oroqen.This means that their dominant language was Oroqen up until they were around ?fteen years of age,indicating that they lost those forms in a very short period of time,about three decades.A systematic pattern emerges among the speakers we have worked with over the years.The varying degree of loss of the grammatical system cor-relates quite closely with age.This particular speaker is representative of the speakers aged 45or younger,while the earlier speaker is typical of those who are between 45and 55,and those who are sixty or older still have the grammatical system mainly intact.All of the older speakers we have worked with so far never failed to use the traditional agreement markers,and they always readily rejected any violations of the agreement rules.The following paradigm was elicited from a 71-year-old speaker in Baiyina in Huma County,Heilongjiang Province.

(11) a.

bi:1st .sg.d?anda-m sing-non-future.1st .sg.`I am singing.'b.?i:2nd .sg.d?anda-ni sing-non-future.2nd .sg.`You are singing.'c.n?nin 3rd .sg.d?anda-rú-n sing-non-future-3rd .sg.`He is singing.'d.bu 1st .pl.excl.d?anda-rú-w sing-non-future-1st .pl.excl.`We are singing.'64Li F.

e.miti 1st .pl.incl.d?anda-rap sing-non-future-1st

.pl.incl.

`We are singing.'

f.su 2nd

.pl.d?anda-ra-y

sing-non-future-2nd .pl.

`You are singing.'g.n?ntin 3rd

.pl.d?anda-ra

sing-non-future.3rd .pl.

`They are singing.'The data from speakers with di¨erent degrees of conservatism in Oroqen presented so far show a clear tendency that the younger speakers are moving

away from inˉectional devices and favoring unmarked forms,showing a preference for

periphrastic

constructions over synthetic ones to express

grammatical relations.For instance,they favor the use of the

lexeme mani `very'instead of the emphatic reduplication process in the sentences in example (9)for expressing degree of emphasis.The data reveal a restructuring and recon?guration of morphological and syntac-tic structures

that display

characteristics that provide some insight into

longitudinal aspects of language obsolescence.Further investigation is

needed to answer some intriguing questions.For instance,we do not fully understand why when subject-verb agreement is lost,second person seems to go ?rst,followed by ?rst person.It is possible that the ?rst person not

only has a higher frequency of occurrence but has ego centric prominence

as well,resulting in its being more salient,which provides a certain degree

of resistance

to loss.Why third person singular is chosen as the default

agreement for all persons is unclear.One possible explanation could be that third person is less deictic.Consequently,it is relatively more stable (Lenore Grenoble personal communication).It is also unclear why the de?nite accusative case marker is lost ?rst.It is likely that the de?nite accusative case is more cognitively demanding in production since it is semantically more complex.One can argue that the unmarked form is

normally retained or lost last.This means that the inde?nite accusative

case is unmarked with respect to the de?nite accusative

case and the third

person singular

agreement marking is unmarked in relation to the other

agreement markers.Frequency of occurrence could also be a factor since third person

has the highest frequency (Bradley personal communica-tion).One of our speakers once commented that when children learn Or-oqen,they initially only use the third person singular agreement forms of

all verbs.

It is possible that frequency of occurrence,saliency,and func-

tional load all have a role to play in the retention and rate of loss of the

grammatical forms.It would be of bene?t to sort out what goes ?rst and Contact,attrition,and structural shift 65

66Li F.

why in terms of the various grammatical components of an obsolescing language.It is equally important to answer the question:What factors led to those changes and why the changes took place in such a remark-ably short period of time?Answers to such questions would help unravel the complexity of language obsolescence taking place in a number of other seriously endangered languages in China.

https://www.360docs.net/doc/cd6693907.html,nguage contact

As Seliger and Vago(1991)pointed out,many,though not all,of the lin-guistic changes attendant to attrition are simpli?catory in nature.This is de?nitely true in the case of Oroqen.The patterns evident in this simpli?-cation process are remarkably similar to what have already been docu-mented elsewhere,for example,Schmidt(1985)as is mentioned earlier. However,not all of the changes in Oroqen are explainable through such attrition induced internal motivations.

I argue that,in the case of Oroqen,some of the changes are exter-nally motivated because Oroqen has had massive contact for an extended period of time with several genetically related and non-genetically related languages,such as Chinese(Sinitic),Dagur(Mongolic),Ewenki(Machu-Tungusic),and to some extent Russian(Slavic)in the Lesser Hinggan Mountain region.It is eminently clear that for all speakers(except a few elderly speakers),Oroqen is at best a second language,which is being rapidly replaced by Mandarin Chinese.Section three of this article is an attempt to identify the changes taking place as speakers replace one lan-guage by another,with an emphasis on the role of the contact languages upon the phonological,morphological and syntactic changes which take place,as well as the rate,extent and order in which these changes occur. The situation Oroqen o¨ers in this respect is quite complex because all theˉuent Oroqen speakers are multilingual,at least in Oroqen,Mandarin Chinese,Dagur,and most importantly,some other Tungusic variety, such as Solon or Ewenki.

Among the linguistic e¨ects common to situations of language con-tact are convergence,loss of morphological and syntactic complexity, transfer,interference,and an overall increase in semantic transparency (Dorian1989).In the case of Oroqen,we observe borrowing,including structural borrowing.That is to say,some of the structural changes in this moribund language may be the result of inˉuence from linguistic patterns of the dominant languages.Before the encroachment of Man-darin Chinese in the1950s,Oroqen had had a lengthy and persistent contact with the Dagurs.The two ethnic groups coexisted in a symbiotic

Contact,attrition,and structural shift67 relationship for centuries.The traditionally nomadic Oroqen relied on the sedentary Dagur for certain agricultural goods,while in exchange supply-ing the Dagur with pelts and meat.The commercial relationship,while mutually bene?cial,established Dagur as the dominant language,and it became the norm for Oroqen speakers to learn to speak Dagur,resulting in the borrowing of certain grammatical structures.A case in point is the emphatic reduplication strategy to mark intensity seen in example(1), which is no longer present in the grammatical system of younger speakers of Oroqen as is discussed above.Whaley and Li(2000)demonstrated quite convincingly that Oroqen borrowed the emphatic reduplication strategy from Dagur,a Mongolic language.

Dagur has a formally identical reduplication strategy that copies the ?rst syllable and inserts[b]or[m]in the coda position of the pre?x (Zhong1982),as is illustrated in the examples in(12).

(12)xulam`red'xub xulam`thoroughly red'

t?i?a:n`white't?im t?i?a:n`very white'

dasu3`sweet'dab dasu3`really sweet'

súru:3`cool'súb súru:3`really cool'

xordu3`fast'xob xordu3`very fast'

Like Oroqen,Dagur employs reduplication to indicate intensity.How-ever,the process in Dagur is fully productive and operates on adjectives denoting di¨erent sorts of properties,not just colors.

The Oroqen lexicon has taken on many Dagur words,and Oroqen grammar has borrowed from Dagur,particularly in the area of deriva-tional morphology.Thus,the borrowing of reduplication can be seen as part of a more general Dagur inˉuence on Oroqen grammatical structure. As a point of comparison,consider another example of morphological borrowing.Dagur has a plural marker-nur2used for kinship terms and human nouns illustrated in example(13).

(13)(from Zhong1982:33)

úkúú`sister'

úkúú-nur`sisters'

gut?`comrade'

gut?-nur`comrades'

Oroqen uses the phonologically similar su?x-nVr,but it is only used for kinship terms.Among Tungusic languages,the su?x is only found in Oroqen and some dialects of Ewenki which are also in contact with Dagur.This fact indicates that the su?x is a borrowing.Some examples from Oroqen are given in example(14).

68Li F.

(14)(Hu1986:56)

naat?è`uncle(on mother's side)'

naat?è-n?r`uncles(on mother's side)'

amaakaa`uncle(on father's side)'

amaakaa-nar`uncles(on father's side)'

júújú`grandfather'

júújú-núr`grandfathers and those of their generation'

In Dagur,the marker-nur simply signals plurality of kinship terms and other human nouns.The borrowed marker-nVr in Oroqen,how-ever,is more restricted in two ways.It is used solely with kinship terms, and it has taken on other connotations beyond plurality.On the one hand,it can indicate an exhaustive set.The word naat?è-n?r in example (14)thus connotes all the uncles on the mother's side together.The su?x can also indicate age association,as in the?nal form in(14)júújú-núr, which designates grandfathers and everybody else belonging to their generation.

The instance of the-nur borrowing is reminiscent of the facts surround-ing the borrowing of reduplication.In both cases,a morphological strat-egy is borrowed,but in a more restricted way such that in Oroqen it can only be applied to a subset of those forms to which it can be applied in Dagur.Furthermore,perhaps as part of its limited distribution in Oro-qen,it takes on connotations that it did not have in Dagur.This pattern, which we have only discussed with respect to two morphological borrow-ings,appears to hold true for other cases of probable structural borrow-ing that we have identi?ed to date.

The sort of structural inˉuence that Dagur has had on Oroqen re-quires an extended period of relatively intimate contact.It is useful here to review the history of these groups which points to just this type of interaction.

Both the Dagurs and the Oroqens are believed to originate from the re-gion north of the Amur River,that is,in present day Russia.They both crossed the mighty Amur River several hundred years ago(most likely in the1600s)and spread over the Greater and Lesser Hinggan Mountains in Manchuria.Janhunen(1997)suggests that migrations of small Dagur populations occurred in tandem with the Oroqen and Solon migrations. Regardless,it is widely accepted that all these groups have co-existed harmoniously in Inner Mongolia and the Northeast of China for several centuries.

Trading among them was ubiquitous,usually involving the exchange of fur,game products and animal hide handicrafts from the Oroqens and Ewenkis and animal husbandry or agricultural products from the Dagurs.

Contact,attrition,and structural shift69 The frequency of the trading led to multilingualism,and some mixing of the populations through intermarriages.

Since the borrowing being discussed here is structural rather than lexical in nature,massive bilingualism on the part of the Oroqen speakers in the lending language persisting over a long period of time is a crucial prerequisite.

Another social factor frequently invoked in accounting for borrowings across languages,especially languages belonging to di¨erent families,is a prestigious status of the source language.As Moravcsik(1978:109)puts it,in perhaps an overstatement,``nothing can be borrowed from a lan-guage which is not regarded[as]prestigious by speakers of the borrow-ing language.''The Dagur people have historically held the necessary position of prestige:According to Janhunen(1997),``since Qing times (1644±1911),the Dagurs have been known as an ethnic group interested in acquiring higher learning through dominant languages such as Man-chu and Chinese.''This may help explain why the Qing emperor en-trusted the Dagurs with the control of the ethnically diverse diaspora army sent to guard Chinese borders against the potential invaders in bor-dering areas.

Dagur is not the only contact language that has had an impact on the structure of Oroqen.In more recent time,Mandarin Chinese has un-doubtedly inˉuenced Oroqen.Although the period of time that Mandarin Chinese has been in intense contact with Oroqen is relatively short,it seems to have had a strong impact on its grammatical structure.We found that for most speakers of Oroqen,the plural marker is no longer required,which could be seen as the consequence of Chinese inˉuence (cf.,Whaley forthcoming).Although Hu(1986)documented both-l and -sal as plural markers in Oroqen,they are no longer readily attested in any of the Oroqen dialects.As Whaley(forthcoming)points out,a zero morpheme is the unmarked,preferred plural marking in all of the Oroqen dialects.They also noted that Oroqen is the only Northwestern Tungusic language in which unmarked plurals are more common than su?xa-tion.Assuming that Hu's(1986)description is accurate,it is noteworthy that Oroqen has moved further on the path to losing the plural marker. We have yet to elicit any naturally occurring examples of Oroqen in which the plural markers are employed.The speakers we have worked with from southeastern,western and central Oroqen dialect regions occasionally very reluctantly accepted the plural marker-l and-sal in a highly restricted number of lexical items,most of which denote animate beings with a high frequency of occurrence.The only speaker who readily accepted forms with the plural markers-l and-sal was from the north-eastern Oroqen dialect region,speci?cally from Baiyina.Some of the

examples are :kumaxa-l `deer',utú-l `sons',ilga-l `ˉowers',búyú-xúl `per-sons',ahi-húl `women',utú-húl `sons'.Even for her,the preferred form is the analytic construction of baran kumaxa `many deer'.It is highly likely that this loss is contact induced.Chinese inˉuence is also manifested in other ways.It seems to have im-pacted those areas that had the longest and most intensive contact with Chinese much more extensively,notably the southeastern and central dia-lect regions,more than the areas that did not have any Han Chinese until after the settlement in the late 1950s and early 1960s.Our speaker from the central dialect region used the adverb ma?a3,which is a Chinese bor-rowing meaning `immediately'spontaneously without noticing it.When fed the Oroqen word diyald?i meaning the same thing,he accepted it,but strongly prefers the Chinese borrowing.Interestingly enough,our speakers from the western and northeastern dialect regions adamantly re-jected the Chinese form insisting that it is not an Oroqen word.Even in the northeastern dialect region where Oroqen is preserved the best,we saw strong Chinese inˉuence,which is shown in the examples in (15).

(15) a.

?i you t K mana tomorrow 3únú-ni go-2nd .sing.prest.yúni question part.-2nd sing.present `Are you going tomorrow or not?'b.yabu?a walk-past ha?i still-be yú?a question part.-past `Did you go or not?'In example (15),we have two examples of the A-not-A question forma-tion in Oroqen.Notice that the speaker used the Chinese haishi `still be:or not'in sentence (15b).She did so without realizing it at all until it was pointed out to her.This speaker feels at ease with both languages.In other words,she possesses native pro?ciency in both Chinese and Or-oqen.This kind of phenomenon indicates that when a speaker reaches a certain level of bilingual pro?ciency,borrowing between the languages is much easier than is generally assumed in the literature.Thus it may not take a very long time for a language to shift to a completely di¨erent ty-pological pattern in its grammatical structures.Central to the rate of such structural shifts are sociolinguistic factors.

4.Conclusion

Although some linguists would consider structural similarity and func-tional congruence as important factors in cases of grammatical borrowing

70Li F.

Contact,attrition,and structural shift71 (e.g.,Weinreich[1953]),I argue that Oroqen provides a counter-example. Dagur has both su?xes and pre?xes whereas Oroqen is purely su?xal, with the exception of emphatic reduplication.Since,in terms of genetic a?liation,Oroqen,the borrowing language,and Dagur,the lending lan-guage,belong to two di¨erent families,Tungusic and Mongolic respec-tively,typological distance and structural similarity do not obviously hold in this case.Needless to say,the di¨erence between Oroqen and Chi-nese is even greater in terms of both genetic relatedness and structural similarities.In this respect,I agree with Thomason and Kaufman(1988: 35)who contend that``it is the sociolinguistic history of the speakers, and not the structure of their language,that is the primary determinant of the linguistic outcome of language contact.Purely linguistic consid-erations are relevant but strictly secondary overall.''The case of Oroqen borrowing provides evidence in support of Thomason and Kaufman's contention.

These phenomena pose the question:What factors led to those changes and why the changes took place in such a remarkably short period of time?The complex set of conditions responsible for the restructuring are only partly explainable by internally and externally motivated principles proposed in the literature.A profound understanding of the situation must take account of the dynamic changes that take place in not only lin-guistic structures but in the social conditions as well.There is a range of social factors that contribute to language obsolescence and structural shifts.In the case of Oroqen,encroaching bilingualism with a powerful dominant language(along with schooling and social mobility),aban-donment of traditional lifestyle and values,settlement,dispersion,cross-marriages,drastic reduction of?rst language use in social functions (even at home),failure of children to acquire the traditional mother tongue,lack of social cohesion as a barrier against the rival dominant language,psychological perception of the traditional language as a liabil-ity for upward social mobility,and a prevalent negative attitude towards the cultural traditions of the dominated population are among the most prominent factors that lead to not only language attrition but particular type of changes as well.

The conditions responsible for the changes in Oroqen are mostly so-ciolinguistic.Oroqen was surrounded by several languages for centuries without su¨ering any attrition,which is attributable to the cohesion of the community,its self-imposed rule forbidding intermarriages with other ethnic groups and its strong adherence to traditional lifestyle and values prior to settlement in the late1950s.However,dramatic social changes in the1950s and1960s quickly resulted in Oroqen's very rapid ceding to the superstratum language Mandarin Chinese.The construction of a

72Li F.

railroad,massive Chinese migration to the area due to the development of the logging and mining industries,settlement of the Oroqens,schooling in Chinese,extensive intermarriage with nearby ethnic groups,abandon-ment of traditional values and lifestyle,and the local government's lack of interest in maintaining the Oroqen language and cultural traditions led to a situation characterized by an increasing use of Mandarin Chinese in more and more situations,which quickly brought about the current pro?ciency continuum determined by age among those who still speak Oroqen.The diminishing use of Oroqen severely limits the younger generation's exposure to the language,which is the major cause for their imperfect learning of their obsolescing?rst language.It is quite obvious that the Oroqen language in China is on an irreversible course to its de-mise,and we are far short of attaining our goal of having a full picture of the conˉuence of factors that led to its current sad state of a¨airs.

In this article I only presented a few salient characteristic features.I would like to emphasize that what is discussed here is a sampling which should not be construed as an attempt to provide a full picture,but rather to illustrate the attrition and contact phenomena in this rapidly dis-appearing language,contributing to the general e¨ort to achieve a com-plete description and explanation of contact induced changes and changes attendant to the attrition process.

The rapid changes taking place in languages like Oroqen make it imperative that the nature of the speech community be speci?ed in far more detail than it is now and as quickly as possible.We can already see that extensive language change in these particular languages whose speaker community is constituted by bi-or multilingual linguistic and ethnic minorities but the details need to be documented and the paths of change need to be examined.A lot more work needs to be done and done quickly before the languages in question cease to exist.

California State University Notes

*I would like to thank Juha Janhunen and David Bradley who read my article and gave very useful comments.I would also like to thank Graham Thurgood and Lenore Greno-ble for helpful discussions.I am indebted to Lindsay J.Whaley who worked with me in collecting the data on Oroqen used in this article.I am very grateful to all of the Oroqen consultants I have worked with over the past nine years in Inner Mongolia and north-east of China.This project was partially funded by NSF grants SBR9710091and BCS0220354.

Contact,attrition,and structural shift73 1.A number of Tungusic scholars treat Oroqen as an Evenki dialect.It is probably more

appropriate to refer to this variety as one of the dialects on a continuum that includes all of the sixty or so Evenki dialects spoken in both China and Siberia.For instance, Janhunen(1997)recognizes four dialectal and geographical subgroups of Oroqen,and treats them as idioms within the conglomeration of Ewenki varieties.

2.Juha Janhunen pointed out to me that``in Dagur,-nur is used to mark the plural of per-

sons,mainly kin,or groups associated with a kinship category.By contrast,the regular plural-sul(which is a borrowing from Solon)does not have such restrictions.''(Juha Janhunen personal communication)Notice that in Oroqen,-nur is even more restricted.

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