Yenisian languages

Distribution of the Yenisan languages in the 17th century (hatched red) and in the 20th century (red)

The Yenisan languages are a small family of languages in Siberia that are combined with other Siberian languages to form the group of the Paleo-Siberian languages . The Paleo-Siberian languages, however, do not form a genetic unit , but only a group of residual Old Siberian languages that were spoken there before the Urals, Turkish and Tungus ethnic groups.

The Jenisische language family

Today, Yenisese consists only of the Ketan language with 200 speakers in the central Yenisei valley in the Turukhansk district of the Krasnoyarsk region . The closely related Jewish language ( Yugh , Jug , Sym-Ketic ) has already died out completely: In 1991, 2 to 3 older "half-speakers" in an ethnic group of around 15 people were reported, and in the 1970s the last competent speaker of the Jewish language died. The other languages of the Yenisei family - Scottish, Arinian, Assanian and Pumpokolian - were spoken further south of today's Ketian and disappeared in the 19th century, their ethnic groups assimilated to the Turkic Khakass , the Tungus Evenks or the Russians . Because of its well-known genetic relatives , Ketan should not be considered an isolated language , even if it is the only representative of its family today.

Some linguists suggest that the Yenisan languages are related to the Chinese languages (the Sino- Tibetan languages ). Early linguists such as MA Castrén (1856), James Byrne (1892) and GJ Ramstedt (1907) claim that the Yenisan languages are of North Sinitic origin. This assumption is supported by the linguists Kai Donner (1930) and Karl Bouda (1957). More recent findings also support a direct relationship with the Sino-Tibetan languages. Linguistic analyzes and autosomal genetic data of the Yenisan peoples show a relationship with the Han Chinese and Burmese. The linguist and specialist in the Yenisan languages Edward Vajda also suspects a relationship with the Sino-Tibetan languages.

Classification of the Yenisan languages

Yenisei 6 languages, 5 of which are extinct;
- Ket-yug
  - Ket (Yenisei-Ostyak, Inbatsk) (200 speakers)
  - Yug (Yugh, Jug, Sym-Ket) † ( extinct around 1990 )
- Kott-Pumpokol
  - Pumpokol †
  - Kott †
- Arin-Assan
  - Assan †
  - Arin †

The ketic

The Ketian is the only surviving Yenisan language. The term Ket means "man", the Russian term for this language, which does not differ much, is Yenisei-Ostyak. However, the modern ketas use ostik as a self-designation. The first records of Ketan and Yugic have been around since the 18th century (PS Pallas). In 1858 the first grammatical and lexical study on Ketian, Jugic and Scottish was published from the estate of the Finn Matthias Alexander Castrén . Another grammar of the Ketic appeared in 1934 by A. Karger, a more recent version in 1968 by Kreinovich and in the same year in particular by Dul'zon.

In the 1930s a font based on the Latin alphabet was created for the Ketian alphabet and in 1988 based on the Cyrillic alphabet. There are efforts to introduce Ketan language lessons in kindergartens and schools. The social status of the language remains low and an imminent extinction is to be assumed, especially since today's speakers all belong to the older generation.

Linguists prefer the term Ketic (Ket, Ketskij jazyk), since the term Yenisei- Ostyak can confuse the Ket with the "real" Ostyak. Ostyak is the obsolete term for the language of the chanting that the Ugric languages heard.

Linguistic characteristics

Typologically, phonologically, morphologically and lexically, the Yenisese differs significantly from the other Paleo-Siberian languages, but shows similarities to the North Caucasian languages , the Na-Dené languages and the Burushaski , which has led some researchers to integrate it into the Dene-Caucasian Advocate Macro Family (see below). Typological characteristics (such as prefiguring verbal structures, etc.) are not sufficient to assume a language relationship.

Its characteristic features are the existence of a class system with the nominal classes animate (masculine and feminine) - inanimate , as well as a system of phonemic tones (see tonal language ) with four different tones . The nominal morphology is - as with all Paleosiberian languages - (predominantly) agglutinating and drinking , the verbal formation is polysynthetic . The finite verbal forms have at least eight slots for marking the person of subject and object, tense and the like. a. Categories. Often, morphological categories become pleonastic, i. H. at several points in the verbal chain, expressed. Intransitive subjects, direct objects and adverbial additions can be incorporated. An example from the Ketian is

tkitna , analyzing tk-it-na

t subject marker 1st person sg.

k-… -a verb stem "cut into pieces"

with object marker 3rd person fem. sg.

n Past tense marker

Meaning: "I cut them (f.sg.) into pieces"

(Analysis greatly simplified)

The Yenisan languages have a rich vocabulary to represent traditional areas of life, such as flora, fauna, hunting and weather. Loan words come from the neighboring Samoyed Selkupic (especially reindeer breeding terms), but also (less) from the Tungusic Evenkic. Since 1934, with the introduction of the Cyrillic script, a strong Russification of the Ketic began.

Yenisei word equations

The close relationship of the traditional Yenisan languages is shown by some word equations in the following table (based on Ruhlen-Starostin 1994, simplified phonetic representation):

meaning	Ket	Yug †	Kott †	Arin †
human	ke? t	ke? t	het	kit
People	the	the	čeäŋ	.
woman	qim	xim	.	qam
mother	at the	at the	ama	amä
father	op	op	op	ipa
Brothers	to	to	pos	pes
eye	of	of	tiš	tieŋ
blood	sul	sur	šur	sur
flesh	is	is	iči	is
dog	tip	čip	šip	.
autumn	χogde	xogdi	hori	kute
knife	Don	Don	volume	volume
flow	ses	ses	set	sat
four	sik	sik	šegä	saga
five	qak	xak	khegä	qaga

Other hypothetical relationships

Dene-Caucasian macro family

The Yenisian is viewed by some researchers as a candidate for membership in the hypothetical Dene-Caucasian macro-family , which includes the Sino-Tibetan , "North Caucasian" (i.e. Northwest and Northeast Caucasian, relatedness not certain), the North American Na-Dené languages , the Basque , the Burushaski and the Yenisian.

This thesis of a Dene-Caucasian macro family is currently only accepted by a small group of linguists, but is often vehemently rejected by numerous historical linguists and specialists in the aforementioned language families. The main difficulty in their verification is the great age of more than ten thousand years, which one would have to assume for the common proto-language, and the extremely sparse yet tangible similarities associated with it.

However, it is generally recognized (including by Janhunen and Vajda) that due to the known distribution in the last 2-3 centuries from Russian reports and even earlier from Chinese sources about the peoples of Inner Asia, the Yenisese languages were once geographically significantly more widely distributed and in the South bordered by areas of Turkish and Mongolian speakers. According to Vajda, however, there were only a few borrowings from the Yenisian into these two languages, but conversely, quite a few borrowings come from this period, but still less than in more recent times from Russian.

Heinrich Werner postulates a language family “Baikal-Siberian”, in which he combines the Yenisese, the Na-Dené languages and the only fragmentary language of the Dingling , which formed the former Chinese small state Wei and then allied with the Gök Turks (Werner 2004 ). (This state of Wei is not the one with the same name, which is counted among the so-called 16 Chinese kingdoms.)

The American linguist Edward Vajda has also been postulating the relationship between the Yenisan and the North American Na-Dené languages for some time - without accepting the more extensive “Dene-Caucasian” hypothesis (Vajda 2002 and 2004). Vajda (2002) groups the Yenisian even within the Na-Dené closer to Tlingit-Eyak-Athapaskish than to Haida or, in more recent works, tends to take the Haida out of this grouping entirely:

Na-Dené-Jenisseisch (after Vajda)
- Haida
- Dené-Yenisei
  - Tlingit-Eyak-Athapaskan
  - Yenisei

Werner and Vajda's thesis that the Yenisi languages are closely related to the Dené languages is supported by recent genetic studies of the speakers of these languages (Rubicz et al. 2002). Earlier phenotypic studies of North American Indians (dentition characteristics) showed clear differences between the Na-Dené speakers and their Eskimo and other Indian neighbors.

The linguist Alexander Vovin showed that the Rouran language was a non-Mongolian and non-Turkish language. He suspects that the Rouran were a Paleo-Siberian people who were displaced by the Mongols and Turkic peoples , so that parts of the Rouran fled to Central Europe as Avars. This view is supported by some historians and linguists, and is supported by some earlier theories. Vovin as well as Lajos Ligeti and Edwin G. Pulleyblank suspect that the Rouran spoke a Yenisese language.

Karassuk family

A more recent thesis by van Driem (2001) refers to a close typological - which would be genetically irrelevant - but also a material relationship in the verbal morphology (especially the personal prefixes) of Burushaski and Ket, a Yenisei language. From this he constructed a Karasuk family, which would consist of the Yenisei languages on the one hand and the Burushaski on the other. He also sees connections between this hypothetical linguistic unit and a prehistoric Central Asian culture, the Karassuk culture . As a result of opposite migration movements in the 2nd millennium BC Today's Yenisei speakers came to Siberia and the Burusho to the Karakoram.

literature

Grammatical overviews

Stefan Georg: A Descriptive Grammar of Ket (Yenisei Ostyak) . Volume I: Introduction, Phonology, Morphology. Global Oriental, Folkestone (Kent) 2007, ISBN 978-1-901903-58-4 , ( The languages of Asia p. 1).
Heinrich Werner: The Ketic Language. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-447-03908-6 .
Heinrich Werner: The Jugischen (Sym-Ketic). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-447-03999-X .
Heinrich Werner: Outline of the Scottish grammar. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-447-03971-X .
Edward J. Vajda: The Kets and Their Language. In: Mother Tongue 4, 1998, ISSN 1087-0326 , pp. 4-16.
Edward J. Vajda: Ket. Lincom Europa, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89586-221-5 , ( Languages of the world - Materials 204).

Others

John D. Bengtson: Some Yeniseian Isoglosses. In: Mother Tongue 4, 1998, ISSN 1087-0326 , pp. 27-32.
Rohina Rubicz, Kristin L. Melvin, Michael H. Crawford: Genetic Evidence for the phylogenetic Relationship between Na-Dene and Yenisseian Speakers. In: Human Biology 74, December 2002, 6, ISSN 0018-7143 , pp. 743-761.
Ernst Kausen: The language families of the world. Part 1: Europe and Asia . Buske, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 3-87548-655-2 .
Marek Stachowski: About some Altaic loanwords in the Yenisei languages. In: Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia 1, 1996, ISSN 1427-8219 , pp. 91-115.
Marek Stachowski: Altaist Notes on the “Comparative Dictionary of the Yenisei Languages”. In: Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia 2, 1997, ISSN 1427-8219 , pp. 227-239.
Marek Stachowski: Notes on a new comparative dictionary of the Yenisei languages. In: Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia 9, 2004, ISSN 1427-8219 , pp. 189-204.
Marek Stachowski: Arabic loanwords in the Yenisei languages of the 18th century and the question of language unions in Siberia. In: Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 123, 2006, ISSN 1897-1059 , pp. 155-158.
Marek Stachowski: Persian loan words in 18th century Yeniseic and the problem of linguistic areas in Siberia. In Anna Krasnowolska, Kinga Maciuszak, Barbara Mękarska (ed.): In the Orient where the Gracious Light ... . Satura orientalis in honorem Andrzej Pisowicz. Księgarnia Akademicka, Krakow 2006, ISBN 83-7188-955-0 , pp. 179-184.
Edward J. Vajda (Ed.): Languages and Prehistory of Central Siberia. John Benjamin Publishing Company, Amsterdam et al. 2004, ISBN 1-58811-620-4 , ( Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science Series 4: Current issues in linguistic theory 262), (Representation of the Yenisian and its speakers with neighboring languages from linguistic, historical and archaeological point of view).
Edward J. Vajda: The Origin of Phonemic Tone in Yeniseic. In: Chicago Linguistic Society - Parasession on Arctic languages 37, 2002, ISSN 0577-7240 , pp. 305-320.
Heinrich Werner: On the typology of the Yenisei languages . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1995, ISBN 3-447-03741-5 . ( Publications of the Societas Uralo-Altaica 45).
Heinrich Werner: Reconstructing Proto-Yeniseian. In: Mother Tongue 4, 1998, ISSN 1087-0326 , pp. 18-26.
Heinrich Werner: On the Yenisei-Indian primordial relationship. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-447-04896-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

^ East Asian Studies 210 Notes: The Ket. Retrieved September 6, 2018 .
↑ VAJDA, Edward J. (2008). "Yeniseic" a chapter in the book Language isolates and microfamilies of Asia , Routledge, to be co-authored with Bernard Comrie; 53 pages.
↑ SA Starostin: Gipoteza o genetičeskij svjazjax sinotibetskix jazykov s enisejskimi i severnokavkazskimi jazykami. Moscow 1984.
^ Vovin, Alexander 2004. 'Some Thoughts on the Origins of the Old Turkic 12-Year Animal Cycle.' Central Asiatic Journal 48/1: 118-32.
^ Vovin, Alexander. 2010. Once Again on the Ruan-ruan Language. Ötüken'den İstanbul'a Türkçenin 1290 Yılı (720–2010) Sempozyumu From Ötüken to Istanbul, 1290 Years of Turkish (720–2010). 3–5 Aralık 2010, İstanbul / 3–5 December 2010, İstanbul: 1–10.
^ Nicola Di Cosmo ( 2004 ). Cambridge. page 164
↑ THE PEOPLES OF THE STEPPE FRONTIER IN EARLY CHINESE SOURCES, Edwin G. Pulleyblank, page 49
↑ Szadeczky-Kardoss, Samuel (1990). "The Avars". In Sinor, Denis. The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia . Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. p. 221
↑ STEPPEN PEOPLE IN MEDIEVAL EASTERN EUROPE - HUNS, AWAREN, HUNGARY AND MONGOLS by Heinz Dopsch University Salzburg

[1] East Asian Studies 210 Notes: The Ket. Retrieved September 6, 2018 .

[2] VAJDA, Edward J. (2008). "Yeniseic" a chapter in the book Language isolates and microfamilies of Asia , Routledge, to be co-authored with Bernard Comrie; 53 pages.

[3] SA Starostin: Gipoteza o genetičeskij svjazjax sinotibetskix jazykov s enisejskimi i severnokavkazskimi jazykami. Moscow 1984.

[4] Vovin, Alexander 2004. 'Some Thoughts on the Origins of the Old Turkic 12-Year Animal Cycle.' Central Asiatic Journal 48/1: 118-32.

[5] Vovin, Alexander. 2010. Once Again on the Ruan-ruan Language. Ötüken'den İstanbul'a Türkçenin 1290 Yılı (720–2010) Sempozyumu From Ötüken to Istanbul, 1290 Years of Turkish (720–2010). 3–5 Aralık 2010, İstanbul / 3–5 December 2010, İstanbul: 1–10.

[6] Nicola Di Cosmo ( 2004 ). Cambridge. page 164

[7] THE PEOPLES OF THE STEPPE FRONTIER IN EARLY CHINESE SOURCES, Edwin G. Pulleyblank, page 49

[8] Szadeczky-Kardoss, Samuel (1990). "The Avars". In Sinor, Denis. The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia . Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. p. 221

[9] STEPPEN PEOPLE IN MEDIEVAL EASTERN EUROPE - HUNS, AWAREN, HUNGARY AND MONGOLS by Heinz Dopsch University Salzburg