Contrastive topic marking in Xibe

Abstract

Abstract Xibe (Sibe), a Tungusic language spoken by roughly 30,000 people in northwestern China, exhibits a specialized TOPIC + COMMENT construction involving the particle oqi . This paper investigates the origins and discourse-semantic functions of this construction. Drawing on a corpus of 3,531 sentences of oral narrative, we provide structural and functional evidence that oqi derives from the auxiliary o- plus the conditional suffix -qi . Synchronically, oqi functions as a specialized topic marker contrasting with the general topic marker da . Its distribution is conditioned by a cluster of discourse features, including contrast, concessive conditionality, affective stance, episodic transition, and H→L register transfer. Taken together, these properties indicate that oqi marks a pragmatically restricted type of topic. We argue that “contrastive topic” offers a useful working gloss, while noting that its range of uses reflects broader interactions among contrast, discourse organization, and speaker stance in Xibe.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Studies in Language, 2026 · DOI ↗