Kalmyk Particle җе: Etymology, Functioning and Semantics (a Case Study of Kalmyk National Corpus and Informant Discourse)

Particles have always served as a part of speech with somewhat ‘hidden semantics’. In Kalmyk linguistics, this part of speech remains most understudied, and despite there had emerged certain fragmentary works, no complete description and classification of particles – neither functional, nor semantic – have been made. Goals. The paper analyzes etymology, functioning and semantics of the particle җе. Materials. The work examines informant discourse and texts of Kalmyk National Corpus (http://kalmcorpora.ru), the latter including approximately 9 mn tokens of which 7 mn are actual word usage patterns. The continuous sampling method was employed to select examples with the analyzed particle җе ‘all right, okay; well’. Results. The insight into Kalmyk National Corpus shows the particle җе is not used that frequently, and is rarely found in texts – primarily in folklore, historical narratives, and works by Kalmyk writers and poets whose language tends to be identified as Torghut dialect. Analysis of informant discourse attests to that the particle has almost become obsolescent to contemporary Kalmyk speech. Still, it performs discursive functions: firstly, it may express consent to the incentive of the preceding statement; secondly, it may introduce an initial incentive to be expressed in further predication. The etymological analysis concludes the particle җе is reconstructed from the Proto-Mongolic *ǯïɣa which can be traced to the Proto-Altaic *di̯òge. The particle was borrowed from Mongolic languages into some Turkic ones (Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tuvan, etc.), and is likely to have entered Tungusic languages too: *ǯïɣa with the initial *ǯ transformed into *g.

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