Yeniseian languages

Infobox Language family
name = Yeniseian
region = central Yenisei River, Siberia
familycolor = Na-Dené
fam1 = Dené-Yeniseian (proposed)
child1 = Northern (Ket-Yugh)
child2 = Southern (Arin-Kott)
iso2 = The Yeniseian language family (sometimes known as Yeniseic or Yenisei-Ostyak; ["Ostyak" is an areal rather than genetic term; in addition to the Yeniseian languages it also includes the Uralic languages Khanty and Selkup.] occasionally spelt with -ss-) is spoken in central Siberia.

Family division

0. "Proto-Yeniseian" (before 500 BC; split around 1 AD):1. "Northern branch" (split around 700 AD)::1.1. Ket (100-500 speakers):::1.1.1. Southern Ket:::1.1.2. Central Ket:::1.1.3. Northern Ket::1.2. Yugh "†" (2 or 3 non-fluent speakers in 1991):2. "Southern branch †"::2.1. Kott-Assan (split around 1200 AD):::2.1.1. Kott "†" (extinct by the mid-1800s):::2.1.2. Assan "†" (extinct by 1800)::2.2. Arin-Pumpokol (split around 550 AD):::2.2.1. Arin "†" (extinct by 1800):::2.2.2. Pumpokol "†" (extinct by 1750)

Only two languages of this family survived into the 20th century, Ket (also known as "Imbat Ket"), with around 1,000 speakers and Yugh (also known as "Sym Ket"), which is now possibly extinct. The other known members of this family, Arin, Assan, Pumpokol, and Kott, have been extinct for over a century. Other groups – "Buklin", "Baikot", "Yarin", "Yastin" – are identifiable as Yeniseic-speaking from tsarist fur-tax records compiled during the 17th century, but nothing remains of their languages except a few proper names. It appears from Chinese sources that a Yeniseian group might have been among the peoples that made up the tribal confederation known as the Xiongnu, [See Vovin 2000, Vovin 2002 and Pulleyblank 2002] who have traditionally been considered the ancestors of the Huns, but these suggestions are difficult to substantiate due to the paucity of data.See Vajda 2008a]

Family features

The Yeniseian languages share many contact-induced similarities with the South Siberian Turkic languages, Samoyedic languages, and Evenki. These include long-distance nasal harmony, deaffrication, and the use of postpositions or grammatical enclitics as clausal subordinators. [ See Anderson 2003] Yeniseic nominal enclitics closely approximate the case systems of geographically contiguous families.

The Yeniseian languages have been described as having up to four tones or no tones at all. The 'tones' are concomitant with glottalization, vowel length, and breathy voice, not unlike the situation reconstructed for Old Chinese before the development of true tones in Chinese. The Yeniseian languages have highly elaborate verbal morphology, to an extreme found elsewhere in Eurasia only in Burushaski and, to a lesser extent, in the languages of the Caucasus (all of these languages are ergative as well).

Morphology

Personal pronouns

"...to be finished."

Proposed relations to other language families

Until 2008, few linguists accepted that connections had been established between Yeniseian and any other language family, though distant connections has been proposed with most of the ergative languages of Eurasia.

Dene-Yenisean

In 2008, Edward Vajda of Western Washington University presented evidence, backed by rigorous methodology, for a genealogical relation between the Yeneisian languages of Siberia and the Na-Dene languages of North America. [See Vajda 2008b] . His paper has been favorably reviewed by several experts on Na-Dene and Yeniseic languages, including Michael Krauss, Jeff Leer, James Kari, and Heinrich Werner, as well as a number of other well-known linguists, including Bernard Comrie, Johanna Nichols, Victor Golla, Michael Fortescue, and Eric Hamp. [ [http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/dy2008.html Dene-Yeniseic Symposium] . Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks] However, it will take some time for the linguistic community to properly evaluate this proposal.

Karasuk

The "Karasuk" hypothesis, linking Yeniseian to Burushaski, has been proposed by several scholars, notably by A.P DulsonSee Dulson 1968] and V.N. Toporov.See Toporov 1971] George van Driem, the most prominent current advocate of the Karasuk hypothesis, postulates that the Burusho people were part of the migration out of Central Asia that resulted in the Indo-European conquest of India.See Van Driem 2001]

ino-Tibetan

As noted by TailleurSee Tailleur 1994] and Werner,See Werner 1994] some of the earliest proposals of genetic relations of Yeniseian, by M.A. Castrén (1856), James Byrne (1892), and G.J. Ramstedt (1907), suggested that Yeniseian was a northern relative of the Sino-Tibetan languages. These ideas were followed much later by Kai DonnerSee Donner 1930] and Karl Bouda.See Bouda 1963 and Bouda 1957]

Dené-Caucasian

Bouda, in various publications in the 1930s through the 1950s, described a linguistic network that (besides Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan) also included Caucasian, and Burushaski, some forms of which have gone by the name of Sino-Caucasian. The works of R. BleichsteinerSee Bleichsteiner 1930] and O.G. Tailleur,See Tailleur 1958 and Tailleur 1994] the late Sergei A. StarostinSee Starostin 1982, Starostin 1984, Starostin 1991, Starostin & Ruhlen 1994] and Sergei L. NikolayevSee Nikola(y)ev 1991] have sought to confirm these connections. Others who have developed the hypothesis, often expanded to Dené-Caucasian, include J.D. Bengtson,See Bengtson 1994, Bengtson 1998, Bengtson 2008] V. Blažek,See Blažek & Bengtson 1995] J.H. Greenberg (with M. Ruhlen), See Ruhlen 1997, Ruhlen 1998a, Ruhlen 1998b] George Starostin continues his father's work in Yeniseian, Sino-Caucasian and other fields.See Reshetnikov & Starostin 1995a, Reshetnikov & Starostin 1995b, Dybo & Starostin]

External links

* [http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/dy2008.html Results from the February 2008 Dene-Yeniseic Symposium]
* [http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/docs/vajda-2008.pdf A Siberian Link With Na-Dene Languages] by Edward Vajda, a proponent of the Yeniseian-Na-Dene connection.
* [http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ea210/ket.htm Lecture notes on the Ket people] by Edward Vajda.
* [http://ehl.santafe.edu/maps34.htm Map of the Yeniseian family] from the Santa Fe Institute.
* [http://www.merrittruhlen.com/files/1998c.pdf Comparison of Yeniseian and Na-Dene] by Merritt Ruhlen.
* [http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?flags=eygtnnl Yenisseian Etymology] by S. A. Starostin.
* [http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/scc.pdf Sino-Caucasian [comparative phonology] ] by S. A. Starostin. 2005.
* [http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/glossary.pdf Sino-Caucasian [comparative glossary] ] by S. A. Starostin. 2005.
* [http://www.philology.ru/linguistics4/verner-97.htm Article on Yeniseian languages] ru icon
* [http://minlang.srcc.msu.ru/index-2.htm Multimedia Database of Ket Language, Moscow State (Lomonosov) University]

Footnotes

References

*ANDERSON, G. (2003) 'Yeniseic languages in Siberian areal perspective', Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 56.1/2: 12–39. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
*ANONYMOUS. 1925. The Similarity of Chinese and Indian Languages. Science Supplement 62 (1607): xii. [Usually incorrectly cited as "Sapir (1925)": see Kaye (1992), Bengtson (1994).]
*BENGTSON, John D. 1994. Edward Sapir and the 'Sino-Dené' Hypothesis. Anthropological Science 102.3: 207-230.
*BENGTSON, John D. 1998. Caucasian and Sino-Tibetan: A Hypothesis of S. A. Starostin. General Linguistics, Vol. 36, no. 1/2, 1998 (1996). Pegasus Press, University of North Carolina, Asheville, North Carolina.
*BENGTSON, John D. 1998. "Some Yenisseian Isoglosses." Mother tongue IV, 1998.
*BENGTSON, J.D. 2008. [http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/dene_gr.pdf Materials for a Comparative Grammar of the Dene-Caucasian (Sino-Caucasian) Languages.] In Aspects of Comparative Linguistics, v. 3., pp. 45-118. Moscow: RSUH Publishers.
*BLAŽEK, Václav, and John D. BENGTSON. 1995. "Lexica Dene-Caucasica." Central Asiatic Journal 39.1: 11-50, 39.2: 161-164.
*BLEICHSTEINER, Robert. 1930. "Die werschikisch-burischkische Sprache im Pamirgebiet und ihre Stellung zu den Japhetitensprachen des Kaukasus [The Werchikwar-Burushaski language in the Pamir region and its position relative to the Japhetic languages of the Caucasus] ." Wiener Beiträge zur Kunde des Morgenlandes 1: 289-331.
*BOUDA, Karl. 1936. Jenisseisch-tibetische Wortgleichungen [Yeniseian-Tibetan word equivalents] . Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 90: 149-159.
*BOUDA, Karl. 1957. Die Sprache der Jenissejer. Genealogische und morphologische Untersuchungen [The language of the Yeniseians. Genealogical and morphological investigations] . Anthropos 52.1-2: 65-134.
*DONNER, Kai. 1930. Über die Jenissei-Ostiaken und ihre Sprache [About the Yenisei ostyaks and their language] . Journal de la Société Finno-ougrienne 44.
*VAN DRIEM, George. 2001. The Languages of the Himalayas. Brill, Leiden 2001
*(DULSON, A.P.) Дульзон, А.П. 1968. Кетский язык [The Ket language] . Томск: Издательство Томского Университета [Tomsk: Tomsk University Press] .
*DYBO, Anna V., STAROSTIN G. S. 2008. [http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/compmeth.pdf In Defense of the Comparative Method, or the End of the Vovin Controversy.] // Originally in: Aspects of Comparative Linguistics, v. 3. Moscow: RSUH Publishers, 2008, pp. 109-258.
*GEORG, Stefan. 2007. "A Descriptive Grammar of Ket (Yenisei Ostyak), Volume I: Introduction, Phonology, Morphology", Folkestone/Kent 2007.
*GREENBERG, J.H., and M. Ruhlen. 1992. [http://www.merrittruhlen.com/files/Greenberg-Ruhlen.pdf Linguistic Origins of Native Americans.] Scientific American 267.5 (November): 94–99.
*GREENBERG, J.H., and M. Ruhlen. 1997. L'origine linguistique des Amérindiens [The linguistic origin of the Amerindians] . Pour la Science (Dossier, October), 84–89.
*KAYE, A.S. 1992. Distant genetic relationship and Edward Sapir. Semiotica 91.3/4: 273-300.
*NIKOLA(Y)EV, Sergei L. 1991. Sino-Caucasian Languages in America. In Shevoroshkin (1991): 42-66.
*PULLEYBLANK, Edwing G. 2002. Central Asia and Non-Chinese Peoples of Ancient China (Collected Studies, 731).
*RESHETNIKOV, Kirill Yuriy; STAROSTIN, George S. 1995. [http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/ket.pdf The Structure of the Ket Verbal Form.] // Originally in: The Ket Volume (Studia Ketica), v. 4. Moscow: Languages of Russian Culture, 1995, pp. 7-121.
*RESHETNIKOV, Yuriy Kirill; STAROSTIN, George S. 1995. [http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/kott.pdf Morphology of the Kott Verb and Reconstruction of the Proto-Yeniseian Verbal System.] // Originally in: The Ket Volume (Studia Ketica), v. 4. Moscow: Languages of Russian Culture, 1995, pp. 122-175.
*RUHLEN, M. 1997. Une nouvelle famille de langues: le déné-caucasien [A new language family: Dene-Caucasian] . Pour la Science (Dossier, October) 68–73.
*RUHLEN, Merritt. 1998a. Dene-Caucasian: A New Linguistic Family. In The Origins and Past of Modern Humans – Towards Reconciliation, ed. by Keiichi Omoto and Phillip V. Tobias, Singapore, World Scientific, 231–46.
*RUHLEN, Merritt. 1998b. [http://www.merrittruhlen.com/files/1998c.pdf The Origin of the Na-Dene.] Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95: 13994–96.
*RUBICZ, R., MELVIN, K.L., CRAWFORD, M.H. 2002. Genetic Evidence for the phylogenetic relationship between Na-Dene and Yeniseian speakers. "Human Biology", Dec 1 2002 74 (6) 743-761
*SAPIR, Edward. 1920. Comparative Sino-Tibetan and Na-Dené Dictionary. Ms. Ledger. American Philosophical Society Na 20a.3. (Microfilm)
*SHAFER, Robert. 1952. Athapaskan and Sino-Tibetan. International Journal of American Linguistics 18: 12-19.
*SHAFER, Robert. 1957. Note on Athapaskan and Sino-Tibetan. International Journal of American Linguistics 23: 116-117.
*(STAROSTIN, Sergei A.) Старостин, Сергей А. 1982. [http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/Starostin_Yeniseian.pdf Праенисейская реконструкция и внешние связи енисейских языков] [A Proto-Yeniseian reconstruction and the external relations of the Yeniseian languages] . In: Кетский сборник, ed. Е.А. Алексеенко (E.A. Alekseenko). Leningrad: Nauka, 44-237.
*(STAROSTIN, Sergei A.) Старостин, Сергей А. 1984. Гипотеза о генетических связях сино-тибетских языков с енисейскими и северокавказскими языками [A hypothesis on genetic relations of the Sino-Tibetan languages to the Yeniseian and the North Caucasian languages] . In: Лингвистическая реконструкция и древнейшая история Востока [Linguistic reconstruction and the prehistory of the East] , 4: Древнейшая языковая ситуация в восточной Азии [The prehistoric language situation in eastern Asia] , ed. И. Ф. Вардуль (I.F. Varduľ) et al. Москва: Институт востоковедения [Moscow: Institute for Orientalistics] , 19-38. [see Starostin 1991]
*STAROSTIN, Sergei A. 1991. On the Hypothesis of a Genetic Connection Between the Sino-Tibetan Languages and the Yeniseian and North Caucasian Languages. In Shevoroshkin (1991): 12-41. [Translation of Starostin 1984]
*STAROSTIN, Sergei A., and Merritt RUHLEN. 1994. Proto-Yeniseian Reconstructions, with Extra-Yeniseian Comparisons. In M. Ruhlen, On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy. Stanford: Stanford University Press. pp. 70-92. [Partial translation of Starostin 1982, with additional comparisons by Ruhlen.]
*TAILLEUR, O.G. 1994. Traits paléo-eurasiens de la morphologie iénisséienne. Études finno-ougriennes 26: 35-56.
*TAILLEUR, O.G. 1958. Un îlot basco-caucasien en Sibérie: les langues iénisséiennes [A little Basque-Caucasian island in Siberia: the Yeniseian languages] . Orbis 7.2: 415-427.
*TOPOROV, V.N. 1971. Burushaski and Yeniseian Languages: Some Parallels. Travaux linguistiques de Prague 4: 107-125.
*VAJDA, Edward J. 1998. The Kets and Their Language. Mother Tongue IV.
*VAJDA, Edward J. 2000. Ket Prosodic Phonology. Munich: Lincom Europa Languages of the World vol. 15.
*VAJDA, Edward J. 2002. The Origin of Phonemic Tone in Yeniseic. In CLS 37, 2002. (Parasession on Arctic languages: 305-320).
*VAJDA, Edward J. 2004. Ket. Lincom Europa, München.
*VAJDA, Edward J. 2004. Languages and Prehistory of Central Siberia. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 262. John Benjamin Publishing Company. (Presentation of the Yeniseian family and its speakers, together with neighboring languages and their speakers, in linguistic, historical and archeological view)
*VAJDA, Edward J. (2007). Yeniseic substrates and typological accommodation in central Siberia.
*VAJDA, Edward J. (2008a) "Yeniseic" (a chapter in the book "Language isolates and microfamilies of Asia", Routledge, to be co-authored with Bernard Comrie; 53 pages).
*VAJDA, Edward J. (2008b). " [http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/docs/vajda-2008.pdf A Siberian Link with Na-Dene Languages] " (PDF). Dene-Yeniseic Symposium, Fairbanks.
*VOVIN, Alexander. (2000) 'Did the Xiong-nu speak a Yeniseian language?' Central Asiatic Journal 44.1: 87–104.
*VOVIN, Alexander. (2002) 'Did the Xiongnu speak a Yeniseian language? Part 2: Vocabulary', in Altaica Budapestinensia MMII, Proceedings of the 45th Permanent International Altaistic Conference, Budapest, June 23-28, pp. 389-394.
*WERNER, Heinrich. 1998. "Reconstructing Proto-Yenisseian." Mother Tongue IV.
*WERNER, Heinrich. 2004. Zur jenissejisch-indianischen Urverwandtschaft [On the Yeniseian- [American] Indian primordial relationship] . Wiesbaden: Harassowitz.