Enzish language

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The Enzic language (in its own name Enets ) is one of the Samoyed languages . Together with the Finno-Ugric languages, these form the Uralic language family . Like Nentish and Nganasan, it belongs to the group of North Samoyed languages. There are two variants of Enzisch, which are sometimes regarded as separate languages: Wald-Enzisch (also Bai ) and Tundra-Enzisch (also Maddu ).

Enzisch

Spoken in

Taimyr Autonomous County / Russia
speaker 70
Linguistic
classification
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

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ISO 639 -2

-

geography

Enzisch is spoken by the Enzen people on the Taimyr Peninsula in Siberia along the eastern bank of the Yenisei River in Russia .

Demographics

The number of native speakers is now less than 70 with a slight overhang of the Bai dialect. In 1999 there were about 200 Enzen, of whom about 100 spoke Enzish. In the 18th century, Enzisch is said to have reached its peak with over 3000 speakers. All Enzen who are still alive today also speak Russian and / or Nenzisch, and some also speak Nganasan.

Since Russian is becoming more and more popular as a language and hardly any children learn Enzisch anymore, there is no hope of ensuring the language's survival. The Enzen never had their own written language, and Enzish was never taught in schools. To this day there is no complete grammar of Enzish.

Language structure

Of all the other Samoyed languages, Nentish and Nganasan are the closest to Enzish. Enzisch experienced the greatest influence from the Nenzian, more recently from Russian.

Enzisch has nouns , adjectives , numerals , pronouns , verbs , adverbs , postpositions, conjunctions, interjections and connective particles . It has no grammatical gender and has three numbers : singular , plural and dual . Cases are mainly indicated by suffixation , there are seven cases: nominative , genitive , accusative , lative , locative , ablative and prolative . Enzish modes are indicative , subjunctive , imperative , optative , quotative and interrogative .

Phonology

Enets has 8 vowel phonemes :

front central back
unrounded rounded unrounded rounded unrounded rounded
closed i ɨ u
medium e ə O
open ɑ ɒ

The number of consonant phonemes is 22:

bilabial labio-dental alveolar palatal velar laryngeal
stl sth stl sth stl sth stl sth stl sth stl sth
Plosives p b t d c ɟ k ɡ ʔ
Fricatives s z ç ʝ x
Nasals m n ɲ ŋ
lateral approximants l
Vibrants r
Approximants ʋ j

The table according to IPA contains these 22 phonemes, according to Künnap, however, Enzisch has 25 consonant phonemes. He used the UPA when creating his grammar . The three missing phonemes are two affricates and a third alveolar fricative, which is partially voiced.

morphology

Enzisch is an agglutinating language in which only suffixes exist.

Case meanings are expressed with suffixes on nouns, adjectives, pronouns and substantiated verbs. These are always combined with numerical markers :

Singular Plural
Nominative - -ʔ
Genitive -ʔ -ʔ
accusative - -ʔ
Lative -d / -t -xəz / -gəz / -kəz
locative -xVn / -gon / -kon -xən / -gən / -kən
ablative -xVz / -gəz / -kəz -xət / -gət / -kət
Prolative -on / -mon -ən / -on

Possession is indicated in Enzischen by genitive or possessive suffixes, different possessive suffixes are also used for different numbers and cases. Singular / dual and plural have their own possessive suffixes, while singular have possessive suffixes for nominative, genitive and accusative. In dual and plural there are possessive suffixes for nominative, accusative and genitive.

syntax

Enzisch is a typical SOV language , the finite verb form is always at the end of the sentence. The object is always in the vicinity of the word to which it belongs. Adverbial positions are contextual. If the adverb only modifies the verb, it is directly in front of it; if it modifies the entire sentence, it can be removed from the verb. Inversion can occur in Enzish, which means that the adverb follows the verb. Adverbs of time usually come at the beginning of a sentence. The object is usually closer to the verb than to the adverb. Attributes always come before their nouns to emphasize the difference to the predicate . Quantitative attributes usually come before qualitative ones.

Verbal negation is expressed by combining the main verb with a preceding partially auxiliary negative verb, comparatives using adjectives in the nominative and the word to be compared in the ablative.

Interrogatives can be indicated in Enzischen with special interrogative words as well as just by intonation.

literature

  • Ago Künnap: Enets. Lincom Europe, Munich 1999.
  • Tibor Mikola: Morphological Dictionary of Enzischen. Szeged 1995 (= Studia Uralo-Altaica 36).
  • Д. С. Болина: Русско-єнецкий разговорник. Просвещение, Санкт-Петербург 2003, ISBN 5-09-005269-7 .
  • И. П. Сорокина, Д. С. Болина: Энецкий-русско и русско-єнецкий словарь. Просвещение, Санкт-Петербург 2001, ISBN 5-09-002526-6 .
  • И. П. Сорокина, Д. С. Болина: Энецкий словарь с кратким грамматическим очерком: около 8,000 слов. Наука, Санкт-Петербург 2009, ISBN 978-5-98187-304-1 .
  • И. П. Сорокина: Энецкий язык . Наука, Санкт-Петербург 2010, ISBN 978-5-02-025581-4 .
  • Florian Siegl: Materials of Forest Enets, an indiginous language of northern Siberia. University Press, Tartu 2011, ISBN 978-9949-19-672-2 (= Dissertationes Philologicae Uralicae Universitatis Tartuensis , 9).

Web links