Language contact in modern Uyghur

Más información sobre el libro

This work explores Modern Uyghur, a Turkic language spoken by approximately 11 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. It analyzes the linguistic and historical impacts of contact-induced changes in Modern Uyghur, focusing on both linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects, supported by empirical data. The primary contact languages differ significantly from each other and from Turkic, belonging to various genetic groups: Semitic (Arabic), Iranian (Persian), Slavic (Russian), and Sino-Tibetan (Chinese). The only typologically similar languages are Mongolic, a contact situation that has been largely overlooked in academic discussions. While much of the analysis pertains to historical contexts, contemporary examples illustrate five distinct types of language interaction. The work provides detailed accounts of how foreign morphological units have integrated into Uyghur, along with phonetic and phonological changes influenced by both spoken and written forms of the source languages. It also categorizes semantic classifications observable among the contact languages, examining the competition between terms from these languages in both historical and modern contexts within the Uyghur linguistic landscape.