Paleosiberian languages
The Paleo-Siberian languages - also called Paleo-Asian or Old Siberian languages - are a group of about ten languages with no more than 11,000 speakers combined, which are mainly spoken in Siberia today.
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They are the remnants of several long-established language families who were resident there even before the Turkish, Tungus and Ural-Samoyed ethnic groups immigrated to northern and eastern Siberia. The Paleosiberian languages do not form a genetic unit , but are divided genetically into five or six groups; two, Giljak and Ainu , are isolated languages as far as we know today . The term paleo-Siberian describes a pure residual category that summarizes the languages of a certain region that cannot be classified in the larger language families Ural , Turkish , Tungus or Indo-European . All are more or less threatened languages .
Reference to Paleosiberian subgroups and languages
The following articles provide information about each of the Paleosiberian groups or languages. The present article, on the other hand, compiles the information relating to the entire group of Paleosiberian languages.
Some authors also add the Ainu and the Eskimo-Aleut languages of Siberia to the Paleo-Siberian languages:
Classification and number of speakers
The Paleo-Siberian languages consist of five or six non-genetically related language units of Siberia, namely the Yenisian, the Yukagir, the Chukchi-Kamchadal or Luoravetlan, and the isolated languages Niwchisch (formerly called Gilyak) and the Ainu. A total of 16 languages have become known, 7 of which are now extinct. Ket and Jukagir cannot be considered in isolation, although they are each the only surviving language of their respective families. The speaker numbers are taken from verified sources from 2005. Kerek is probably already extinct.
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Yenisei 6 languages, including 5 † (600–1,000 speakers)
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Ket-yug
- Ket (Ketic, Yenisei-Ostyak, Inbatsk) (600–1,000 speakers)
- Jug (Jugisch, Yugh, Sym-Ketic) (approx. 1990 †)
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Kott-Pumpokol
- Pumpokol †
- Kott †
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Arin-Assan
- Assan †
- Arin †
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Ket-yug
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Jukagir 3 languages, 2 of them † (40–200 speakers)
- Jukagir (Odulian) (max. 200, ethnic 1,000 speakers) Dialects: North = Tundra, South = Kolyma
- Omok †
- Chuvian †
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Chukchi-Kamchadal 5 languages (14 thousand speakers)
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Chukchi-Koryak
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Chukot
- Tschuktschi (Tschukot) (10 thousand, ethnic 15 thousand speakers)
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Korjak aliutor
- Korjak (Nymylan) (3.5 thousand, ethnic 7 thousand speakers)
- Aliutor (200, ethnically 2,000 speakers)
- Kerek (almost † or already †)
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Chukot
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Kamchadal
- Itelmen (Kamchadal) (max. 100, ethnically 2.5 thousand speakers)
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Chukchi-Koryak
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Niwchisch ( Giljakisch )
- Niwchisch (Giljakisch) (700, ethnically 5,000 speakers) Dialects: Amur, North Sakhalin, East Sakhalin
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Ainu
- Ainu (15 speakers?) Dialects: Hokkaido, Sakhalin †, Kuril Islands † (ethnic 15 thousand speakers)
The Ainu is not counted among the Paleo-Siberian languages by all researchers, although it essentially fulfills the above definition.
Due to certain typological similarities to the other Siberian languages, some researchers also count the Eskimo-Aleut languages spoken in Northeast Siberia and the Aleutians (which belongs to the USA) to the paleo-Siberian languages.
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Eskimo Aleut
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Eskimo
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Inuit
- Inuit Siberian dialect Imaklik †
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Yupik
- Chaplino (Chaplinski) (1500 speakers)
- Naukan (Naukanski) (100 speakers)
- Sirenik (Sireniksi) † 1997
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Inuit
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Aleut
- Aleut (350 speakers)
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Eskimo
It is unusual to include the great Far Eastern languages Korean and Japanese, even if these languages should not belong to the Altaic languages.
History of the Paleo-Siberian Languages
The Paleosiberian languages are certainly the remnants of what were once larger language families spread over large parts of Siberia, which were initially pushed back and partially absorbed by the invading Ural, Turkic and Tungus tribes. As recently as the 17th century, Yenisan, Yukagir and Chukchi languages were demonstrably widespread in much larger and more western areas than today.
Over the past 400 years, groups of speakers of Paleo-Siberian languages have gradually adopted Yakut or other Turkic and Tungus languages . The Samoyed languages , which belong to the Uralic language family, have absorbed the languages of Yenisan tribes that are now extinct. The Russification of the country finally reduced them to their current remnants and forced them into remote areas of retreat. This process will end in the near future with the complete loss of these languages and the subsequent abandonment of the ethnic identity of their speakers - probably only Chukchi has a slightly longer survival perspective with 10,000 speakers.
Comments on the language typology
The grammatical and phonetic structures of the five or six paleosiberian groups are quite different, so that one can hardly speak of a linguistic union . They have in common an agglutinating morphology , extensive possibilities for complex word formations, different forms of vowel harmony (not the Eskimo languages) and consonant alternation, and a tendency towards consonant clusters (except in Jukagiric and Eskimo languages). Almost all Paleosiberian languages have had a written standard since 1920, initially based on the Latin script, and since 1930 on the Cyrillic script. These written forms are mainly used in primary education. The extensive orally transmitted folk literature has been collected and translated by Russian and Western researchers since the last century.
For all detailed linguistic information see the respective group or language names.
Relationships and Genetic Kinship
Typological similarities
Several attempts have been made to show kinship relationships between the Paleo-Siberian groups or between them and other language families. To date, none of these suggestions has been recognized by the majority of researchers. Mere similarities in the area of grammar (e.g. the widespread agglutination) or phonetics (e.g. vowel harmony, consonant grading) can result from long-term language contacts in common or neighboring habitats and are no evidence of genetic relationships. However, the structure of the Paleosiberian languages is too different to be considered as one linguistic union .
Loanwords
There are numerous loan words in almost all Paleo-Siberian languages that indicate historical contacts. Most of the older loanwords come from the Tungusic languages, but the Turkic languages (especially Yakut ) also served as sources. The ket is borrowed from the Samoyed Selkup , the Giljak terms of reindeer herding from Tungusic languages, other terms from the Ainu. The main source of all recent borrowings for the terms 'modern' technology and civilization is of course Russian . This loanword material is grammatically and phonetically integrated relatively quickly into most Paleo-Siberian languages.
Jukagir and Ural
A hypothesis that should be taken seriously is that of the relationship between Yukagir and the Uralic languages. Jukagirian is spoken by a maximum of 200 people in northeast Siberia and is closely related to the extinct languages Omok and Chuwanese. According to M. Ruhlen 1991, the works of Collinder 1965 and Harms 1977 prove beyond any doubt that Jukagiric is related to the Uralic languages. Collinder 1965 states: “The similarities between Yukagir and Ural are so numerous and distinctive that they are remnants of an original unity. The case system of Yukagir is almost identical to that of northern Samoyed. The imperative is formed with the same suffixes as in South Samoyed and the most conservative Finno-Ugric languages. Jukagirian has half a hundred words in common with Ural, without the loanwords . It should be noted that all Finno-Ugric languages in the case inflection deviate more from Samoyed than Yukagir. ”It would then be quite possible to speak of an“ Ural-Yukagir language family ”.
Paleosiberian languages as part of macro families
Much more comprehensive ideas are postulated by the representatives of the macro families ( Nostratic , Eurasian , Dene-Caucasian ). Eurasian as defined by Joseph Greenberg (2000) includes - in addition to Indo-European , Ural , Altaic , Korean , Japanese and Eskimo languages - almost all Paleo-Siberian languages, with the noticeable exception of Yenisian. Heinrich Koppelmann postulated an almost identical “Eurasian” language family as early as 1933.
The Yenisian, excluded from “Eurasian”, is a candidate for the hypothetical Dene-Caucasian macro-family, which should include the Sino-Tibetan , North Caucasian , North American Na-Dené languages , Basque and Yenisese.
Both theses have so far only been accepted or even considered likely by a small group of linguists. 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 scant yet tangible similarities associated with it. Thus, until compelling new arguments are available, one should continue to assume that the Paleo-Siberian groups are not genetically related to each other or to other languages or language families .
literature
- Ernst Kausen: Paleosiberian languages . In: The Language Families of the World . Part 1: Europe and Asia . Buske, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-87548-655-1 , p. 371-434 .
- Heinrich Werner: The “Yenisei Phenomenon” from a historical perspective. In: Galina T. Polenova, Olga E. Bondarets (Ed.): Collected Articles of the II nd International Linguistics Conference (Taganrog, Russia). Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge 2008, ISBN 978-1-84718-652-2 , pp. 2-14. ( online )