Forest Enets Research Articles

Conditional converb of the verb ‘say’ as a conditional marker in Forest Enets

Conditional converb of the verb ‘say’ as a conditional marker in Forest Enets

CONDITIONAL CONVERB IN FOREST ENETS: A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF ITS SYSTEM OF USES

This corpus-based study examines the functions of the conditional converb in Forest Enets and investigates the differences in its use between two generations of Enets speakers. In line with the previous descriptions, independent clauses with conditional converbs are used as self-addressed questions (yes/no, special, and alternative questions). The conditional converb of the verb ɛ ‘be’ when used with numerals is developing into a marker of approximation. Dependent clauses with conditional converbs include protases of conditional and concessive conditional constructions as well as complement clauses. This study discusses the diachronic relation between independent clauses with conditional converbs and the protasis of conditional constructions and concludes that either of the two directions of development is possible. Complement clauses with conditional converbs include, first, irrealis complements to negative propositional attitude predicates (dʲɔxara ‘not know’, dʲurta ‘forget’), which, showing signs of relatively recent grammaticalization, have hitherto received scant attention by scholars, and, second, sentential subjects in modal constructions with such predicates as sɔjza ‘good’, bɔɔ ‘bad’ etc. To compare the use of the Enets conditional converb across types of clauses and generations of speakers, this paper analyses the occurrence of the future tense marker on the converb, the order of clauses in multi-clause constructions, the range of verbs in the main and in the dependent clauses. Many of these parameters can be interpreted as the signs of the growing level of clause integration in the process of grammaticalization of polypredicative constructions.

Oblique and nominative nominal possessors in Forest Enets

Two types of possessor encoding are distinguished in Forest Enets, the nominative and the oblique. Elicited data show that the oblique possessor is a part of the noun phrase headed by the possessee, whereas the nominative possessor shows the properties both of a detached topicalized constituent and of an external possessor. The main focus of the study is on the use of these strategies in texts. I examine their distribution in terms of the syntactic function and semantic class of the possessee and the predicate type. The nominative possessor encoding is shown to be strongly associated with constructions that describe 1) various types of possessive relations (predicating possession, stating the possessor’s age and name) and 2) the state of the possessor’s body part. Oblique possessors typically serve as referential anchors and are less determined by constructional semantics, in particular they are more common when the possessee is agentive and animate.
 Kokkuvõte. Maria Ovsjannikova: Metsaeenetsi keele obliikvakäändelised ja nimetavakäändelised nominaalsed omajad. Metsaeenetsi keeles eristatakse kaht tüüpi omajakodeeringut: nimetavakäändeline ja obliikvakäändeline. Küsitlemise teel kogutud andmed näitavad, et obliikvakäändeline omaja on osa noomenifraasist, milles omatav esineb põhisõnana, samas kui nimetavakäändelisel omajal on nii eraldatud topikaliseeritud moodustaja kui ka välise omaja tunnused. Selle töö eesmärk on uurida nende omajastrateegiate kasutamist tekstis. Uurin nende distributsiooni omatava süntaktiliste funktsioonide ja semantilise klassi ning predikaadi tüübi mõttes. Nimetavakäändeline omajakodeering näib olevat tugevalt seotud konstruktsioonidega, mis kirjeldavad 1) erinevat tüüpi omajasuhteid (omamise väljendamine predikaadi kaudu, omaja vanuse ja nime väljendamine) ja 2) omaja kehaosade olukorda. Obliikvakäändelised omajad toimivad tüüpiliselt referentsiaalsete ankrutena ja ei ole konstruktsioonisemantika poolt nii määratletud, täpsemalt on nad sagedasemad siis, kui omatav on agentiivne ja elus.
 Аннотация. Мария Овсянникова: Косвенное и номинативное кодирование именного посессора в лесном диалекте энецкого языка. В лесном диалекте энецкого языка выделяются два способа кодирования посессора: косвенная форма и форма номинатива. Данные элицитации показывают, что посессор в косвенной форме является частью именной группы обладаемого, в то время как номинативный посессор обладает сходством как с вынесенным топиком, так и с внешним посессором. Основное внимание уделяется употреблению двух способов кодирования в текстах. Рассматривается их распределение в зависимости от синтаксической позиции и семантического класса обладаемого, а также от типа предиката. Номинативное кодирование связано прежде всего с конструкциями, которые описывают 1) различные посессивные отношения (такими как собственно предикативная посессивная конструкция и конструкции, называющие возраст и имя посессора), а также 2) состояние части тела посессора. Посессор в косвенной форме обычно служит «референциальным якорем» и менее избирателен к типу конструкции, в частности такое кодирование чаще встречается при агентивном одушевленном обладаемом.

The counterfactive mood in Forest Enets and its origin


 
 
 The description of the counterfactive mood (Siegl 2013: 298) reported that this mood has fallen out of use in the speech of the last generation of fully fluent speakers. Although it is remembered and some examples from elicitation are attested, it could no longer be found in transcribed narratives representing the language of the last fully fluent speakers recorded between 2006 and 2011. By contrast, the counterfactive mood is very frequent in narratives from the parental generation on which this study is based. Apart from a functional description and an analysis, the article discusses the history of this mood. The article ends with a collection of thoughts concerning the history of the Proto-Samoyedic tense system, as this mood is historically closely connected to the Proto-Samoyedic aorist marker *-ŋå.
 
 

Nonstandard Use of the “Reflexive” Affix -sja in Russian Speech of Bilingual Speakers of Northern Siberia and the Russian Far East

One of the features of the oral Russian speech of bilingual speakers of the indigenous languages of Russia is the omission/the overuse of the “reflexive” affix -sja (a “middle voice” marker with a wide range of uses including reflexive, reciprocal, anticausative, passive, and some others). We discuss the data on the nonstandard use of -sja in the Russian speech of bilingual speakers of two language groups that differ both from Russian and from each other in this grammatical domain: Samoyedic (Forest Enets, Nganasan, and Nenets) and Tungusic (Nanai and Ulch). The data come from the corpus of contact-influenced Russian speech, which is being created by our team. We show that the mismatches in standard and nonstandard usage cannot be explained by direct structural copying from the donor language (indigenous) to the recipient one (the local variety of Russian). Nor is there a consistent system which differs from standard Russian since there are many more usages that follow the rules of standard Russian. The influence of the indigenous languages explains some overuses and omissions; the others can be explained by other factors, e.g., difficulties in the acquisition of verb pairs with non-transparent semantic or syntactic relations.

Reflections on Linguistic Fieldwork Within Moribund Speech Communities

Whereas linguists conducting fieldwork tend to be a minority among linguists, linguists conducting fieldwork among the last speakers of an underresearched/underdocumented or even undocumented language are a minority within a minority. Although a number of fieldwork manuals have been published in recent decades, the perspective of fieldwork in extreme sociolinguistic situations such as among the last speakers of a language is usually underrepresented in the literature. It is precisely this perspective which will be presented by shedding some light on personal experiences and challenges from ongoing work on two moribund languages Forest Enets (Samoyedic, Uralic) and Ume Saami (Saami, Uralic). These impressions are contrasted with personal experiences from fieldwork and consultant work on other languages such as Dolgan and Tuvin (both Turkic), Taimyr Tundra Nenets (Samoyedic, Uralic) as well as Meithei (Sino‑Tibetan) and Tundra Yukaghir (isolate). A central claim of this article is to show that work with extremely endangered languages does not allow any meaningful equation; field sites are unique and working with speakers of moribund languages in different countries may mean very different things and imply highly diverging challenges—what works in field site X does not necessarily work in field site Y and vice versa.

The Sociolinguistic status quo on the Taimyr Peninsula1

The following article presents a basic overview of the current sociolinguistic status quo on the Taimyr Peninsula. The picture presented in this article is to some degree impressionistic, as during the author’s stay on the Taimyr Peninsula (2006, 2008, 2011) documentation of morphosyntax and reconstruction of language contacts have dominated fieldwork; data on the sociolinguistic status quo were not gathered separately. The data on which this survey is based derives from conversations with speakers of all Taimyrian indigenous languages and several interviews with selected members of the local native intelligentsia, enhanced with observations. Although focusing on the situation of the Samoyedic languages Tundra Nenets, Tundra Enets, Forest Enets and Nganasan, some comments on the current state of Taimyrian Evenki and Dolgan are included as current problems affect all local native languages equally.

More on possible Forest Enets – Ket contacts

In this paper linguistic traces of the Enets’ migration to the Taimyr Peninsula are addressed. Special attention is paid to Forest Enets–Ket contacts and a tentative etymology for the (Forest) Enets’ ethnonym for Kets and Selkups is offered. Of special importance is a likely Enets place name in Northern Evenkija, an area from which no Enets place names have been reported earlier. As the same area is inhabited by speakers of the northern dialect of Ket, this area should be seen as a possible contact area for the unusual case of pronoun borrowing in Forest Enets as discussed in Siegl (2008)

Nominal periphrasis

Periphrasis, the use of two independent word forms to serve the function of a single inflected word, is usually associated with verbal systems. However, it occurs also in nominal systems. Using the canonical approach to formulate the criteria for nominal periphrasis, I analyse instances of periphrasis in three Samoyedic languages (Tundra Nenets, Forest Enets and Nganasan) where it approaches the canonical ideal, and compare these to the case systems of Romanian, Armenian and Archi where the periphrasis is further away from the canonical centre. An important advantage of the canonical approach is that it provides an instrument to investigate periphrastic realisations in finer detail, and takes periphrasis as an integral part of the morphological and syntactic systems of an individual language.