Manchu-Tungusic words and suffixes meaning ‘person’

The word for human being in the Manchu-Tungusic (Tungusic) protolanguage may be reconstructed as *n'i͜a, *n'a, *n'ī (in Ewenki, Solon, Ewen, and Neghidal the words for person are bәjә, bәi ~ bǝjǝ, bәj, bǝjǝ, respectively). In the descendants of the protolanguage, some adjective forms were derived from these words. Later, the derivative adjective forms (*n'a-rī, *n'a-rī꞊ma, *n'a-kun) developed substantive uses: *n'a-rī ‘human’ (adj.) > ‘human being’, *n'a-rī꞊ma ‘human’ (adj.) > ‘human being’, *n'a-kun ‘human’ (adj.) > ‘human being’. Ulcha and Ewenki demonstrate reflexes of yet another derivative form with an unidentified suffix: *n’i͜ara. These protoforms gave rise to contemporary words like Ewen n'ari ‘man, male’, Orok (Uilta) nari ‘person’, Nanai nai ‘person’, Manchu n'alma ‘person’, Jurchen *n'arma ‘person’, Nanai naonǯokã̄ (< *n'a-kun꞊ǯu-kān) ‘boy’, Ewenki n'ērawī ‘person’. Forms without a historical derivational suffix may have been retained in Oroch n'æ (< *n’i͜a) ‘person’ and, possibly, in Anyui Udihe n’ē ‘person’ (used in folklore to address a stranger). In Manchu-Tungusic languages, except in Manchu and Jurchen, numerals from one to ten include lexical suffixes standing for ‘person’, e.g. Ulcha ila-n'i, Orok ilān'n'ē, Oroch ila-n'æ, Solon ila-ne (ila-n'e?) ‘three people’, Ewenki ilan-ī ‘three people (together)’ (the suffixes of these words are derived from *n'ī, *n'i͜a, *n'arī ‘person’). The “human suffixes” also could be added to some substantives and even to some verb stems: Ewen hō-n'i ‘hero, superman’, Oroch sāgda-n'i ‘old people’, Ewenki bu-n'ī ‘dead person’, Solon bu-ne (bu-n'e?) ‘1. corpse; 2. the underworld, deadland’, Nanai bu-n'i ‘the underworld, deadland’. In Orok, the “human suffix” -n'n'ē shows active use, e.g.: gēda-n'n'ē ‘one person’, sagǯi-n'n'ē ‘old person’, xasu-n'n'ē? ‘how many people?’, tari-n'n'ē ‘that person’, sokto-xo-n'n'ē ‘drunk person’. The last example is of particular interest because the “human suffix” is added to the participle. The following example demonstrates a relatively recent fusion of two Orok words: doro-n'n'ē-n'i ‘a person of Doro (North Sakhalin)ʼ (doro-PERSON-POSS.3SG; < *doro n'i͜a-n'i). The Orok suffix -n'n'ē goes back to the word *n'i͜a ‘person’, apparently borrowed from the Oroch language. In the ancestor of the Orok language, the word *n'i͜a ‘person’ was affixalized, i.e. the word became an affix which in this particular case was not grammaticalized. Thus the Orok morpheme -n'n'ē has the lexical meaning.