Gertraude Roth Li, Manchu: A Textbook for Reading Documents, University of Hawaii Press, 2000.
Notes
- p.88, Notes 2: erei da sekiyen mafa gebu Paihanpar. As noted by the arthor, this sentence has a topic-comment structure. Is Manchu a topic-prominent language?
- p.101, Vocabulary, the 5th line from the bottom: se bahambi. As noted at page 103, se in this context seems a plural suffix.
- p.130, last line: wang ni jalin faššaha. Li gives the translation "exerted himself on behalf of the emperor" (p.331). Referring to the emperor by wang sounds strange. I suspect this is a literal translation of some Classical Chinese idiom. 勤王?
- p.134: hoise sei banin kelfišeme kenehunjere mangga. Another topic-comment construction.
- p.135: mayan tatabumbi is clearly a literal translation of Chinese 掣肘.
- p.141, 3-4th lines: ser sere be seremšeme badaran be sibuki sere gūnin. Li gives the translation "a policy with protects small leaders and restrains powerful ones" (p.332). I think this phrase is a literal translation of Chinese 防微杜漸. An English translation would be "nip something in the bud."
- p.141, 7th line: dere de eterakū ombihe. Li gives the obscure translation "would not have overcome the situation" (p.332). I think dere means 面子 in this context. The following would be a better translation: "[Osman] could not hurt [Gaopu's] feelings."
- p.149, 5th line: olji be jafaha hūlha be waha gungge ilibuha ... Li translates this phrase as "excelled in taking prisoners and killing rebels" (p.334). jafaha and waha form a coordinate structure. I wonder why jafaha but not jafame or jafafi is used. Without contextual support, it would better be read: "excelled in killing rebels who had taken prisoners."
- p.150, 4th line: beile i jergi gūsai beise. Li translates this phrase as "beile prince of the rank of a beile" (p.334). Either one of them must be beise.
- p.152, last line: yadahūn banjici ojorakū ofi ... It seems that yadahūn alone forms a clause although no glue marker is attached.
- p.171, Note 61: Akim ini deo be ujen weile baharahū seme (also in Review 9 at page 175). Li gives the translation "because Akim feared that his younger brother might have committed a serious crime." I do not see why Li choses the conditional perfect. According to (Gorelova, 202:307-308), -rahū can be analyzed as -ra + akū. baharahū refers to an action that might take place in the future. A better translation might be: "because Akim feared that his younger brother might incur a felony conviction."
- p.176, Review 13, v): Hotien should be either Khotan or Hetian. I wonder why she uses Wade-Giles.
- p.194, 11th line: ambasa umai sehe akū aise. I do not see why the Kangxi Emperor used the peculiar expression sehe akū instead of the standard sehekū (also, why did Li ignore this?).
- p.203, lines 4-5: G'aldan mimbe kemuni Bosihi sei sasa elcin unggiki serede (When Galdan wanted to send me as envoy to go along with Bosihi). A possible SOCV construction. Why is elcin left unmarked?
- p.203, lines 5-6: G'aldan emu yargiyan ba akū bime. I wonder why de is absent. It should be placed right after G'aldan. A topic-comment structure?
- p.204, 6th line: yalure jeterengge (provisions and transportation). An interesting example of coordination + the nominalizer -ngge.
- pp.206-7: G'aldan i ya ici genere. jai G'aldan i gūnin arbun. tubai yaya baita be ... narhūšame wesimbure babi. Li's translation (p.338) is as follows: "But which direction he will turn depends on his intentions. ... I will report in more detail on the situation there." Li treated G'aldan i ya ici genere as a subject and G'aldan i gūnin arbun as a predicate. Can arbun be translated as "depends on"? I think gūnin arbun might be a phrase. Also, as these two phrases is connected with jai, I think that they are coordinated, and that the entire phrase is part of the object of wesimbure.
- p.208, line 1: (also the transliteration at p.210, and Note 9): giyamun deri genebuhe. To me, the Manchu text seems to represent benebumbi (the causative of benembi), not genembi.
- p.214, lines 1-2: niyalma largin, jugūn de feksire de tookajara de isinambime ... (the number of people would be large, making for delays during travel). It seems that niyalma largin is a subject-complement construction without a copula. largin is syntactically unrelated to jugūn, which immediately follows largin. Really confusing. We can see a tseg after largin but Li ignored it (p.217).
- p.226, Transliteration, (220) 3rd line Noyan gelung. Looks like Li interprets this phrase as a personal name (Noyan) plus a title (gelung). Both look like common nouns. Noyan means a lord in Mongolian, and gelüng (from Tibetan dge slong) is a title for Buddhist priests. I am not sure if noyan was used as a personal name in Mongolian.
Typos
(might be corrected in the second edition)
- p.37, 7th line: sargū → sarkū (typo in the original?).
- p.42, last example: jjihe → jihe.
- p.59, Vocabulary: banjimbi sain → banjire sain.
- p.62, Vocabulary: jecen toktobure ici ergi aisilara jiyanggiyun → jiyanggiyūn.
- p.83, Transliteration: kūmso → komso.
- p.87, Vocabulary, (75), 4th line: Tsewang Raptan → Tsewang Rabtan.
- p.161, (127), 3rd line: ubui i nonggime. Li often corrects typos without comment, but here the original spelling is preserved. This must be ubui nonggime or ubu i nonggime.
- p.164, (146), 2nd line: insert i after Ūdui.
- p.171, Note 61, 3rd line: rahu → rahū.
- p.175, Review 9, 6th example: sildirara → silhidara.
- p.211, Review 2, 4th example: welehei → weilehei.
- p.242, Note 8. 'Is the the bad person to prevail?' → ???
