Reconstructing the Verbal Morphology of Written Jurchen: A Corpus-Based Analysis with Tungusic Comparative Insights

Written Jurchen, the earliest attested Tungusic language with a dedicated script, provides crucial insights into Tungusic linguistic history. While previous research has focused on phonology and nominal morphology, its verbal system remains underexplored. This study offers the first corpus-based comprehensive analysis of Jurchen verbal morphology, including finite forms, participles, converbs, and deverbal stems. Drawing on authentic texts and recent advances in Tungusic comparison, it presents new functional interpretations and identifies previously unrecognised morphological categories. The findings demonstrate that, unlike Manchu, Written Jurchen retained features more typical of the wider Tungusic family than previously acknowledged.