Yi Language Grammar

Author: Chen Kang et al.
Editor-in-Chief: Ning Yu
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1998-12-01
Features:
The Yi language is the language used by the Yi ethnic group. It belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family and is closely related to Burmese. It shares the same language branch—the Yi branch—with other languages such as Lisu, Hani, Lahu, Naxi, Kini, Mpi-Lisu, Sangko, Gazo, and Nusu; as well as Akha in Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand; and Pnoi in Vietnam and Laos. The Yi language described in this book is the Nuosu dialect, which is spoken in the main areas of Yi settlement in Sichuan and Yunnan, including the Greater and Lesser Liangshan Mountains. Approximately 2.5 million people speak the Nuosu dialect. Currently, the Yi script is used by the Yi people in the Greater and Lesser Liangshan Mountains, and it is a standardized syllabic script for writing the Nuosu dialect.
The study of Yi grammar began as early as the 1930s. Ethnolinguists such as Fu Maodong, Yuan Jiahua, Ma Xueliang, Gao Huayan, and Chen Shilin have successively published various grammatical works. Subsequently, some grammar textbooks were published, such as Li Min and Ma Ming's Grammar of Liangshan Yi (1987) and Zhang Yurong and Cai Kun's Modern Grammar of Liangshan Yi (1995). All of these laid a foundation for systematic and comprehensive research on Yi grammar in the future.
The Yi ethnic group traces its origins to the ancient Qiang people. The Yi language is a representative language of the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Yi branch. To this day, the Yi language still retains some ancient morphological features and agglutinative elements of the Tibeto-Burman branch, such as: the automatic and causative categories of verbs, the alternation of initials and finals in consonants; inflectional forms such as genitive case of pronouns and tone changes; and agglutinative forms such as verb affixes indicating "mood" and "aspect." However, the Yi ethnic group has historically been a people's community formed by the fusion of various clans, tribes, and ethnic groups. The ancestors of the Yi people migrated from northwest to southwest, integrating with local Pu and Yue ethnic groups, developing, and being deeply influenced by Han Chinese culture and economy. As a result, the structural type of the language has undergone qualitative changes. Most word forms have become fixed and do not change; the function of words in a sentence is often indicated by word order and the combination of word meanings; the role of particles that are independent of the root word and stand in the sentence to express grammatical categories has become stronger, in both quantity and structure. In terms of structure, the Yi language has developed into an analytic language.
This book focuses on the following aspects in its methodology: the sequential position of words in a sentence; the function of words in different positions; the complex combination and internal structure of words; the formal changes of word morphology and affixed components of the root word; the relationship and role of words combined with degrammatized words; and the semantic connection between words. To reveal general patterns, sentences are divided into standard and non-standard sentences, and syntactic exploration is carried out with a focus on word class classification. The book is divided into five chapters: Chapter 1: Phonetics and Word Formation; Chapter 2: Word Order and Classification; Chapter 3: Sentence Patterns and Functions; Chapter 4: Parts of Speech; Chapter 5: Compound Sentences. Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 5 were written by Chen Kang, while Chapter 4 was written by Wu Da.
This book was supported by the Publishing Fund of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Language Office of the State Nationalities Commission. We are grateful to Director Wu Jinhua and Mr. Sun Hongkai for taking the time to write the preface, and to Mr. Huang Xing for his recommendations. The Research Bureau of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Institute of Ethnicology, and the Central University for Nationalities Press provided strong support and assistance for the publication of this book. Comrades Ning Yu and Xie Ying contributed significantly to the layout and production. We extend our sincere thanks to all of them.
We apologize for any omissions or errors in the book and welcome readers' corrections.
Author
May 1998