The Buryat influence on the Barguzin Evenki language

The Barguzin Evenki people, a small Tungusic group, live in the territory of Buryatia, Russia. In spite of the fact that they have lived among Buryats for quite a long period, they have preserved their language and culture. All of them are trilingual: they speak Evenki, Buryat and Russian. In August 2009, I had the opportunity to carry out fieldwork among the Barguzin Evenki people of the Kurumkan Region of Buryatia in Russia, where I experienced in person some of the specific grammatical features of the language and some of the peculiarities of the material culture. In this paper I would like to present a short overview of the Barguzin Evenki people and on some linguistic criteria which help to distinguish late Mongolic (or Buryat) borrowings from the early loanwords.