Typology of number systems in languages of Western and Central Siberia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33339/fuf.97288Keywords:
Siberian languages, morphosyntax, number marking, general number, singulatives, animacy hierarchyAbstract
This paper investigates the linguistic expression of number in seven languages from Western and Central Siberia. In a first step the number system of each language is described in detail, and afterwards the most relevant convergences and divergences of the languages are dealt with. Three particularly interesting phenomena are discussed in more detail: First, it is shown that the concept of general number, denoting noun forms underspecified for number, is able to account for a range of related phenomena (unmarked noun forms after numerals, nouns denoting paired objects). Second, singulatives in Selkup, Ket and partly Eastern Khanty are analyzed, whereby it is argued that their similar morphosyntactic and grammaticalization patterns allow for analyzing them as a contact phenomenon. Third, two splits on the animacy hierarchy between the first and second person in Dolgan as well as Chulym Turkic are presented. Finally, the results are evaluated against a broader areal-typological background, whereby it is shown that the category of number does not support any larger areal groupings within Western and Central Siberia, but that the analyzed languages rather adhere to patterns of number marking present all over Northern Eurasia.
References
Alexiadou, Artemis. 2019. Morphological and semantic markedness revisit-ed: The realization of plurality across languages. Zeitschrift für Sprachwis-senschaft 38(1). 123–154. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2019-0004
Alhoniemi, Alho. 2010. Marin kielioppi (Apuneuvoja suomalais-ugrilaisten kielten opintoja varten X). [2nd printing.] Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
Anderson, Gregory D.S. & Harrison, K. David. 2006. Ös tilı: Towards a com-prehensive documentation of Middle and Upper Chulym dialects. Turkic languages 10. 47–72.
Artemjev, Nikolaj M. 2013. Dolganskij jazyk. Častʹ 2. Morfologija. Sankt-Peterburg: Almaz-Graf.
Artemjev, Nikolaj M. & Nazmutdinova, Tatjana S. & Spiridonova, Žanna P. 2013. Dolganskij jazyk. Častʹ 3. Sintaksis. Sankt-Peterburg: Almaz-Graf.
Bekker, Erika G. 1995. Morfologija selʹkupskogo jazyka. Južnye dialekty. Tomsk: Tomskij Gosudarstvennyj Pedagogičeskij Institut.
Benzing, Johannes. 1955. Die tungusischen Sprachen: Versuch einer verglei-chenden Grammatik (Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaft-lichen Klasse 1955(11)). Wiesbaden: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz.
Bhat, Darbhe N.S. 2004. Pronouns (Oxford studies in typology and linguistic theory). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Birjukovič, R. M. 1979. Morfologija čulymsko-tjurkskogo jazyka. Častʹ 1. Kate-gorii imeni suščestvitelʹnogo. Moskva: Akademija Nauk SSSR.
Bulatova, Nadezhda & Grenoble, Lenore. 1999. Evenki (Languages of the world. Materials 141). Munich: LINCOM Europa.
Comrie, Bernard. 1989. Language universals and linguistic typology: syntax and morphology. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Corbett, Greville G. 2000. Number (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics). Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Csirmaz, Anikó & Dékány, Éva. 2014. Hungarian is a classifier language. In Simone, Raffaele & Masini, Francesca (eds.), Word classes: Nature, typolo-gy and representations (Current issues in linguistic theory 322), 141–160. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.332
Däbritz, Chris Lasse. 2017. Zur Markierung von Numerus an Nomina in den samojedischen Sprachen – Synchronie und mögliche Implikationen für die Rekonstruktionen des Protosamojedischen und des Protouralischen. Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen 41. 63–101.
Däbritz, Chris Lasse. 2019. First person imperative in Dolgan – clusivity or number distinction? Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen 43. 1–12.
Däbritz, Chris Lasse. 2020. Focus position in SOV ~ SVO-varying languages – evidence from Enets, Nganasan and Dolgan. Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri 12(2). 99–118. https://doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2020.11.2.04
Däbritz, Chris Lasse. 2021. Topik, Fokus und Informationsstatus: Modellierung am Material nordwestsibirischer Sprachen (Language, context and cogni-tion 17). Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110716337
Dalrymple, Mary & Nikolaeva, Irina Nikolaeva. Objects and information struc-ture (Cambridge studies in linguistics 131). Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press.
Daniel, Michael. 2013. Plurality in independent personal pronouns. In Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthro-pology. http://wals.info/chapter/35
Dowty, David. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language 67(3). 547–619.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013. Coding of nominal plurality. In Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://wals.info/chapter/33
Filchenko, Andrey. 2010. Aspects of the grammar of Eastern Khanty. Tomsk: Tomsk State Pedagogical University.
Georg, Stefan. 2007. A descriptive grammar of Ket (Yenisey-Ostyak) (Lan-guages of Asia series 1). Folkestone: Global Oriental.
Gildea, Spike & Zúñiga, Fernando. 2016. Referential hierarchies: A new look at some historical and typological patterns. Linguistics 54(3). 483–529. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2016-0007
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of language, 73–113. Cambridge [Mass.]: MIT Press.
Grimm, Scott. 2018. Grammatical number and the scale of individuation. Language 94(3). 527–574. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2018.0035
Gruntov, Ilya & Mazo, Olga. 2020. A comparative approach to nominal mor-phology in Transeurasian. Case and plurality. In Robbeets, Martine & Savelyev, Alexander (eds.), The Oxford guide to the Transeurasian lan-guages, 522–553. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198804628.001.0001
Hajdú, Péter. 1979. Language contacts in North-West Siberia. Finno-Ugrica Suecana 2. 19–31.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2006. Against markedness (and what to replace it with). Journal of Linguistics 42(1). 25–70. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226705003683
Haspelmath, Martin. 2013. Occurrence of nominal plurality. In Dryer, Mat-thew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.), The world atlas of language struc-tures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://wals.info/chapter/34
Haspelmath, Martin & Karjus, Andres. 2017. Explaining asymmetries in number marking: Singulatives, pluratives, and usage frequency. Linguis-tics 55(6). 1213–1235. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2017-0026
Helimski, Evgenij A. 2003. Areal groupings (Sprachbünde) within and across the borders of the Uralic language family: a survey. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 100. 156–167.
Helimski, Eugene. 2016. S-singulatives in Ket. Journal of Language Relation-ship 14(3). 157–163. https://doi.org/10.31826/jlr-2017-143-404 (Post mortem published by Valentin Gusev.)
Hillewaert, Sarah & de Schryver, Gilles-Maurice. 2004. Online Kiswahili (Swa-hili) – English dictionary. http://goswahili.org/, last access: 26.03.2020.
Honti, László. 1984. Chrestomathia ostiacica. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó.
Honti, László. 1997. Numerusprobleme (Ein Erkundungszug durch den Dschungel der uralischen Numeri). Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 54. 1–126.
Itkonen, T. I. 2011 [1958]. Koltan- ja kuolanlapin sanakirja (Lexica Societatis Fenno-Ugricae XV). Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
Itturioz-Leza, José Luis & Skopeteas, Stavros. 2004. Numerus. In Booij, Geert E. & Lehmann, Christian & Mugdan, Joachim & Skopeteas, Stavros (eds.), Morphologie: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 17, 2), 1053–1066. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Janhunen, Juha. 2014. The polygenetic origins of nominal morphology in the Transeurasian zone. In Robbeets, Martine & Bisang, Walter (eds.), Para-digm change: in the Transeurasian languages and beyond (Studies in lan-guage companion series 161), 311–336. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.161.21jan
Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The philosophy of grammar. London: Allen & Unwin.
Johanson, Lars. 1998. The structure of Turkic. In Johanson, Lars & Csató, Éva Á. (eds.), The Turkic languages, 30–66. London: Routledge.
Johanson, Lars & Robbeets, Martine. 2010. Introduction. In Johanson, Lars & Robbeets, Martine (eds.), Transeurasian verbal morphology in a compara-tive perspective: genealogy, contact, chance (Turcologica 78), 1–6. Wies-baden: Harrassowitz.
Keresztes, László. 1998. Mansi. In Abondolo, Daniel (ed.), The Uralic lan-guages, 387–427. London: Routledge.
Klumpp, Gerson & Mazzitelli, Lidia F. & Rozhanskiy, Fedor. 2018. Typology of Uralic languages: current views and new perspectives. Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri 9(1). 9–30. https://doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2018.9.1.01
Konstantinova, Olʹga A. 1964. Èvenkijskij jazyk. Fonetika, morfologija. Mosk-va: Nauka.
Korhonen, Mikko. 1981. Johdatus lapin kielen historiaan (Suomalaisen Kir-jallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia 370). Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kir-jallisuuden Seura.
Krifka, Manfred & Pelletier, Francis J. & Carlson, Gregory N. & ter Meulen, Alice & Chierchia, Gennaro & Link, Godehard. 1995. Introduction to ge-nericity. In Carlson, Gregory N. & Pelletier, Francis J. (eds.), The generic book, 1–124. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kulonen, Ulla-Maija. 2007. Itämansin kielioppi ja tekstejä (Apuneuvoja su-omalais-ugrilaisten kielten opintoja varten XV). Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
Kuznecova, Ariadna I. & Chelimskij, Evgenij A. & Gruškina, Elena V. 1980. Očerki po selʹkupskomu jazyku. Tazovskij dialekt. Moskva: Izdatelʹstvo Moskovskogo Universiteta.
Lehtisalo, Toivo. 1956. Juraksamojedisches Wörterbuch (Lexica Societatis Fenno-Ugricae XIII). Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
Lemskaya, Valeriya M. 2010b. Middle Chulym: The state of the art. Turkic Languages 14(1). 113–126.
Li, Yong-Song & Lee, Ho-Young & Choi, Hyong-Won & Kim, Geon Sook & Lee, Dong Eun & Ölmez, Mehmet. 2008. A study of the middle Chulym dialect of the Chulym language (Altaic Languages Series 3). Seoul: Seoul National University Press.
Munkácsi, Bernát & Kálmán, Béla. 1986. Wogulisches Wörterbuch. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Nedjalkov, Igor. 1997. Evenki. London: Routledge.
Nevskaya, Irina. 2005. Inclusive and exclusive in Turkic languages. In Fili-monova, Elena (ed.), Clusivity. Typology and case-studies of the inclusive-exclusive distinction (Typological studies in languages 63), 341–358. Am-sterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.63
Nevskaya, Irina & Amal, Lina. 2020. The nominal group, possessive agree-ment, and nominal sentences in the Transeurasian languages. In Robbeets, Martine & Savelyev, Alexander (eds.), The Oxford guide to the Transeurasian languages, 587–603. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198804628.001.0001
Nielsen, Konrad. 1932. Lappisk ordbok: grunnet på dialektene i Polmak, Ka-rasjok og Kautokeino. Vol. 1: A–F. Oslo: Aschehoug.
Nikolaeva, Irina. 2014. A grammar of Tundra Nenets (Mouton grammar lib-rary 65). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110320640
Plank, Frans. 2003. The selective elaboration of nominal or pronominal in-flection. In Plank, Frans (ed.), Noun phrase structure in the languages of Europe (Empirical approaches to language typology, EUROTYP 20-7), 253–287. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Porotova, Telʹmina I. 1990. Kategorija množestvennosti v enisejskich jazykach. Tomsk: Izdatelʹstvo Tomskogo Universiteta.
Pusztay, János. 1987. Analóg vonások az uráli és a paleoszibériai nyelvek névszói rendszerében (A Magyar Nyelvtudományi Társaság kiadványai 173). Budapest: Magyar Nyelvtudományi Társaság.
Ravila, Paavo. 1941. Über die Verwendung der Numeruszeichen in den uralischen Sprachen. Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 27. 1–136.
Rédei, Károly. 1988. Uralisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 1. Uralische und finnisch-ugrische Schicht. Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó.
Rießler, Michael. 2016. Adjective attribution (Studies in diversity linguistics 2). Berlin: Language Science Press. https://doi.org/10.17169/langsci.b19.294
Schönig, Claus. 1998. South Siberian Turkic. Johanson, Lars & Csató, Éva Á. (eds.), The Turkic languages, 403–416. London: Routledge.
Siegl, Florian. 2013. Materials on Forest Enets, an indigenous language of Northern Siberia (Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia 267). Helsin-ki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
Siewierska, Anna. 1998. Nominal and verbal person mark-ing. Linguistic Typology 2. 1–53.
Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In Dixon, R. M. W. (ed.), Grammatical categories in Australian languages (Linguistic Series 22), 112–171. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Steinitz, Wolfgang. 1966–1993. Dialektologisches und etymologisches Wörterbuch der ostjakischen Sprache. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
Vajda, Edward. 2004. Ket (Languages of the world. Materials 204). Munich: LINCOM Europa.
Vajda, Edward. 2009. Loanwords in Ket, a Yeniseian language of Siberia. In Haspelmath, Martin & Tadmor, Uri (eds.), Loanwords in the world’s lan-guages: a comparative handbook, 471–495. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Vasilevič, Glafira M. 1948. Očerki dialektov èvenkijskogo jazyka. Leningrad: Učpedgiz.
Vasilevič, Glafira M. 1958. Èvenkijsko-russkij slovarʹ. S priloženijami i grammatičeskim očerkom èvenkijskogo jazyka. Moskva: Gosudar-stvennoe izdatelʹstvo inostrannych i nacionalʹnych slova-rej.
VPN 2010 = Vserossijskaja perepisʹ naselenija 2010. Tom 4. Nacionalʹnyj sostav i vladenie jazykami. Častʹ 5. Vladenie jazykami naseleniem Rossijskoj Federacii [All-Russian census 2010. Vol. 4. National compo-sition and command of languages. Part 5. Command of languages by the population of the Russian Federation]. http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/perepis2010/croc/Documents/Vol4/pub-04-05.pdf
Wagner-Nagy, Beáta. 2019. A Grammar of Nganasan. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004382763
Wagner-Nagy, Beáta & Arkhipov, Alexandre. 2020. Comita-tive constructions in Nganasan and Selkup. In Bartens, Hans-Hermann & Larsson, Lars-Gunnar & Mattsson, Katja & Molnár, Judit & Savolainen, Tiina (eds.), Kīel joug om šīld. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Eberhard Winkler (Veröffentli-chungen der Societas Uralo-Altaica 94), 425–441. Wies-baden: Harrassowitz.
Werner, Heinrich. 1995. Zur Typologie der Jenissej-Sprachen (Veröf-fentlichungen der Societas Uralo-Altaica 45). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Werner, Heinrich. 1997a. Die ketische Sprache (Tunguso-Sibirica 3). Wiesba-den: Harrassowitz.
Werner, Heinrich. 1997b. Das Jugische (Sym-Ketische) (Veröffentlichungen der Societas Uralo-Altaica 50). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Ylikoski, Jussi. 2021. Ice eyes, blood eyes: Remarks on the Uralic singulative marker *ćilmä ‘eye’. Poster presented at the conference Språkets funktion 17, 26–27 May 2021, Åbo. http://cc.oulu.fi/~jylikosk/filer/singulative.pdf
