Common use of Previous research Clause in Contracts

Previous research. Sarikoli is an underdescribed and poorly documented language. Arlund de- scribes it as “the most isolated and understudied of the [Pamir] languages” as a result of its confinement to a remote border area of China, presenting great challenges to linguists in terms of geographical remoteness, requirement of Mandarin proficiency, and the red tape and surveillance of the Chinese gov- ernment (Arlund 2006:6). ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ speculates that ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ has kept many words and forms lost in other Pamir languages due to its geographical and political isolation from other Pamir languages (Paxalina 1966:4). Few linguists have produced descriptions of Sarikoli based on data from their own fieldwork, and they will be introduced in this section. Although ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ has also been mentioned in several general works on Pamir languages or the Shughni-Rushani subgroup (▇▇▇▇▇ 1933; ▇▇▇▇▇ 1936; Morgenstierne 1938 & 1974; ▇▇▇▇▇ 1989; ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 1989; ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ & Dodykhudoeva 2009a; ▇▇▇▇▇- land 2009), those works are based on materials published by those who did original research in the 1870s and 1950s: ▇▇▇▇ (1876) and ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ (1966). The first English mention of ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ appeared in 1875, when Britain sent an official mission to Eastern Turkestan (present-day Xinjiang) led by diplomat ▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ in 1873, during the closing decades of the Great Game, the struggle between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia for geopoliti- cal power in Central Asia. Two of the participants of this expedition, medical ▇▇. ▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇ and Colonel ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, collected substantial wordlists and twenty phrases of Sarikoli (to which they refer as ▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇ and Sirikolee, respectively). These data are in chapter 15 of Forsyth’s report on this mission, which also includes rich historical, geographical and ethnograph- ical information on western Xinjiang (Forsyth 1875). ▇▇▇▇▇▇ and Biddulph’s wordlists can be useful for historical-comparative work. The first English description of Sarikoli was written by ▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇. ▇▇▇▇, a British political agent who was on special duty at Kashgar (▇▇▇▇ 1876). In 1868, he was “the first Englishman who ever went to Yarkund” (Forsyth 1871), a county off the northeast border of Varshide, just a short distance away from the village of Teeng. In 1872, when he returned to England, he was awarded the patron’s gold medal by the Royal Geographical Society for his service in exploring Eastern Turkestan (▇▇▇ 1897). He also published several linguis- tic descriptions of the languages of Xinjiang and the Pamir Mountains, in- cluding: On the Ghalchah languages (Wakhi and Sarikoli) (1876), On the Shigni (Ghalchah) dialect (1877), A Sketch of the Turki Language as spoken in Eastern Turkestan (1878a), and On the Hill Canton of Salar: the most easterly settlement of the Turk race (1878b). In On the Ghalchah languages (Wakhi and Sarikoli) (1876), ▇▇▇▇ provides a brief sketch of ▇▇▇▇▇ and Sarikoli grammar, followed by several narrative texts in each language, accompanied by literal English translations. He also includes a lengthy lexicon of Sarikoli and Wakhi. This work is a resource for a diachronic study of Sarikoli, with texts and lexicon from the 1870s. It is useful for investigating how the language has changed and developed since then, and which elements have remained constant. ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ (1966) evaluates ▇▇▇▇’▇ work as beneficial, even though there are mistakes and inaccuracies because he was not a trained linguist. About eight decades later, in the 1950s, a Russian linguist named ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇