The New Dominion

There are people with linguistic training that are far more qualified than I am to write about Uyghur grammar, but I think my complete lack of grammar knowledge actually will help underscore the point I’m making here about the delightful experience of being stumped by, struggling through, and then coming to love what is known as the “Mood Category” (Meyl Katégoriyisi) of the Uyghur language. I’ll use my own layman’s terms to try (awkwardly) to explain what exactly this is.’

You’ve probably been to a Wikipedia article littered with [citation needed] all over the place. Whenever it’s placed into an article by a conscientious Wikipedia editor, what’s really happening is that someone is asking the question, “Where did you get this information?” The “real meaning” of [citation needed] has, in fact, attained a life of its own, becoming quite like scare quotes where usage is just as much meant to convey a sharp skepticism of the statement-maker’s qualifications – xkcd has captured this sentiment quite well in a comic.

The Uyghur language – not just “Uyghurs,” mind you, but the Uyghur language – like Wikipedia has an intense occupation with the question “Where did you get this information?” As such, an explanation of where the information came from, or how the conclusion was reached, is actually built into the grammar of the verb in the sentence. Time to take a look at some examples. I’m not saying, of course, that in other languages the source of the information is incapable of being conveyed. In Chinese, we have useful qualifiers like ting1shuo1 (听说) “I heard that” or hao3xiang4 (好像), “It looks/seems like.” In English, we could simply “Bob told me that…” or “Apparently he…” But imagine instead of actual clauses that, in a humdrum, literal manner, explains the source of the information, these qualifiers were simply built into the form of the verb.

Take for, example, a first-week, first-semester Uyghur statement like: Exmet bardi. Ahmad went.

The Uyghur sentence, like in English, is very simple, the subject, Ahmad, followed by the verb “to go” conjugated in the third-person past tense – went. However, the Uyghur statement here can say far much more than the English statement, because this standard, commonly used form is in the Direct Statement Mood, which means the person who is saying “Ahmad went” knows from first-hand experience that Ahmad went. Someone who is able to say “Exmet bardi” saw with and experienced with his own senses that Ahmad went. Our existence being a primarily experiential one, the Direct Statement Mood pretty much is the “standard” or most common form that you’ll see verbs in. The hamburgers at In-and-Out are delicious. That women is absolutely beautiful. AP Calculus is hard. If you experienced these statements firsthand, if your senses gave you this knowledge, then you can use the Direct Statement Mood.

However, if you imagine all the other ways you could get information about it, you can be pretty sure that Uyghur has an entirely separate mood category, and hence entirely different form, for it.

Imagine, then, that you gained information indirectly, simply because someone else told you. If Memet told you, Exmet bardi, and later in the day Irade asks you about Ahmad, you’d probably use the Indirect Statement Mood, since you have learned this on the basis of certain facts or the information of others.

You’d say: Exmet bériptu. Here, translation gets sticky, because what’s embedded in the form of the verb is expressed through descriptive clauses or adverbs in English. “Apparently, Ahmad went.” or “I was told that Ahmad went.”

It really gets worse from here.

You have the Hearsay Mood,  which means that the statement was heard from others. If it sounds too similar to the Indirect Statement Mood, you’re right, it is, but the Hearsay Mood tends to be for vaguer, broader “People say that” or “They say that,” or, more importantly, for statements that are made with doubt as to whether or not it’s true. For example:

Exmet bériptimish. You could translate this as “They (being people in general) say that Ahmad has gone,” or, depending on context, it could be “So apparently Ahmad has gone (but I don’t really believe that since he didn’t have the money/I just saw him recently/Ahmad is an agoraphobe).” In English, we frequently use the intonation of the sentence to convey our doubt about the statement, for example, we’d say with a singsong tone, “Aaaa-paaaaraaantly Ahmad has ‘gone.’” The Uyghurs, though, have their own form for it.

You also have the Subjective Assessment Mood. You use this form if you have an mishmash of facts and hearsay and you have a hunch that the statement is true.

Exmet bardighu deymen. Hm, in English, I’d render this as “I gueeeeesss that Ahmad has gone.”

Then there’s the Objective Assessment Mood! You use this form if you have a set of facts and you can make a reasonable, educated guess-style statement about something.

Exmet barghan oxshaydu. In English, “It looks like Ahmad has gone,” or “Ahmad should have gone (by now).” If, for example, everything indicated that he was planning on having left at that time, or if you go to Ahmad’s house and see that someone apparently left in a hurry.

These are what I would call the most basic moods, but as you can probably see by now, it gets completely ridiculous from here on out. There’s the Hope-Polite Request Mood: Exmet barsiken (Would Ahmad please go?), the Wish Mood: Exmet barsidi (I wish Ahmad would go), the Regret Mood: Exmet barsa boptiken (If only Ahmad had gone!), and the Entreaty Mood: Exmet barsunchu (Please, let Ahmad go), the Worry Mood: Exmet barmighiydi (I do hope Ahmad hasn’t gone [because I’m worried if he did]). And more. But I think I’ve made my point.

Incorporating the Mood Category intelligently and smoothly into my spoken Uyghur has been and continues to be a frustrating thorn in my side. As a native English speaker, I’ve frequently found myself speaking incredibly slowly, or choppily, as I slow down to figure out where the hell I learned the information I’m about to state. But while it’s irritating, over time, I also have come to love this aspect of Uyghur grammar, particularly as an unambiguous example of another language actually forcing you to change the way you think. There’s something stunningly elegant about a language that incorporates these considerations straight into its grammar, rather an incidental aside clause or a tweaked intonation as is frequently the case in English or Chinese. Speaking everyday Uyghur, to the sage professor at an Urumqi university or to the kebob-seller down the street turns out to be a minefield of [citation needed] as you carefully consider each statement and whether or not you’re really sure it’s true.

From this learning experience, I’ve frequently wondered what this admirable obsession with information sources means for Uyghur culture in general, particularly among a people who bear an intense skepticism and distrust of standard information sources in Xinjiang, like newspapers and CCTV, and among a people where storytelling, with frequent embellishments, is essentially a traditional social institution where people draw laughs, amazement, sorrows, and news. But that’s a topic for another post.

Source: Tömür, H. (2003). Modern Uyghur Grammar (A. Lee, Trans.). Istanbul: Yildiz.