Materials on Forest Enets, an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia
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Materials on Forest Enets, an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia SUOMALAIS-UGRILAISEN SEURAN TOIMITUKSIA MÉMOIRES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ FINNO-OUGRIENNE ❋ 267 ❋ Florian Siegl Materials on Forest Enets, an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia SOCIÉTÉ FINNO-OUGRIENNE HELSINKI 2013 Florian Siegl: Materials on Forest Enets, an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 267 Copyright © 2013 Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura — Société Finno-Ougrienne — Finno-Ugrian Society & Florian Siegl Layout Anna Kurvinen, Niko Partanen Language supervision Alexandra Kellner This study has been supported by Volkswagen Foundation. ISBN 978-952-5667-45-5 (print) MÉMOIRES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ FINNO-OUGRIENNE ISBN 978-952-5667-46-2 (online) SUOMALAIS-UGRILAISEN SEURAN TOIMITUKSIA ISSN 0355-0230 Editor-in-chief Riho Grünthal (Helsinki) Vammalan Kirjapaino Oy Editorial board Sastamala 2013 Marianne Bakró-Nagy (Szeged), Márta Csepregi (Budapest), Ulla-Maija Forsberg (Helsinki), Kaisa Häkkinen (Turku), Tilaukset — Orders Gerson Klumpp (Tartu), Johanna Laakso (Wien), Tiedekirja Lars-Gunnar Larsson (Uppsala), Kirkkokatu 14 Matti Miestamo (Stockholm), FI-00170 Helsinki Sirkka Saarinen (Turku), www.tiedekirja.fi Elena Skribnik (München), Trond Trosterud (Tromsø), [email protected] Berhard Wälchli (Stockholm), FAX +358 9 635 017 Jussi Ylikoski (Kautokeino) He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to […]” (The Fellowship of the Ring, New York: Ballantine Books, 1982, 102). 6 Florian Siegl: Materials on Forest Enets Acknowledgments As every monograph, also this one has its own history, and of course, various sup- porters. The current monograph is a corrected and enhanced version of my PhD thesis submitted to and defended at the University in Tartu in June 2011 (Siegl 2011a). The print run which was needed to fulfill local publication requirements was deliberately kept small as the description was not finalized. Further, during the compilation of the dissertation text I anticipated that several topics might allow for a different and perhaps a better interpretation, and in most instances these suspicions turned out to be justified during fieldwork in the summer of 2011. This monograph incorporates both corrections and new data and replaces its predecessor Siegl (2011a). Along the road to the final version of the dissertation and its transformation into this monograph, I have been supported by many individuals and institutions which deserve to be mentioned. As this monograph grew larger and larger, my personal acknowledg- ments have to be restricted to those whose immediate support, effort, and just criticism have made this piece of writing possible. First and foremost, the Forest Enetses1 in both Potapovo and Dudinka2 are without a doubt the most important, as without their efforts nothing could have been collected, analyzed, or written. As Forest Enets has no way to say thank you, a hearty спасибо goes out to my major consultants Zoja Bolina, Leonid Bolin, Nadežda Bolina, Vitalij Bolin, Anatolij Palč́ in, Viktor Palč́ in, Darja Bolina, Nina Bolina, Ivan Silkin, and Ekaterina Glebova for finding both time and will to share their language and teach it to me. Unfortunately, my thanks will not reach Elizaveta Bolina; her untimely and sudden death in March 2008 deprived the tundra around Potapovo of a Forest Enets who tried to live the old way of life until her last breath. Nor will my thanks reach Nina Borissova, whose kuči was the first Forest Enets fairytale I heard. Surely as important as the Forest Enets community has been Oksana Dobžanskaja (formerly City Center of National Affairs in Dudinka, now Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Studies at the Taimyr branch of Leningrad State University), who helped me obtain the necessary invitations and permits and whose current em- ployer, but also her former employer, the City Center of National Affairs and its former co-workers, as well as her family, made my stays in Dudinka a pleasing experience. I would also like to thank the Taimyr Center of National Affairs in Dudinka for granting me working space, and especially the section of ethnography, for providing help and support in so many ways that it would be impossible to list all of them. Individually, again Zoja Bolina has to be mentioned here. Further, паасиба to Anna Barbolina for 1. The following conventions apply throughout this monograph. The non-English plural Enetses is used when referring to the Enets people. Forest Enets in the singular refers either to one ethnic Forest Enets or to the language. The same applies to other Siberian peoples mentioned throughout the text. 2. Romanization of Russian is based on scientific transliteration. Names of Russian authors which have been used in a different spelling in international publications are preserved. Reasonably well-known geographic names, for example the river Yenisei, are used in their English form and not in transliteration. Acknowledgments 7 her lobbying behind the scenes, for her hospitality on the weekends, for teaching me her mother tongue Dolgan and for opening the way to the Dolgan community. Special thanks are due to the supervisors of the underlying thesis, Tiit-Rein Viitso (Tartu) and Ulrike Mosel (Kiel). Ein herzliches Dankeschön to Ulrike for accepting the task of becoming my second supervisor and subsequently first supervisor, for always asking the right questions at the right moment, for providing informative feedback and especially for the intensive working weekends in Kiel. Aitäh sulle Tiit for granting me both the necessary freedom and support to compile a monograph dissertation and for your insight behind the scenes of Soviet linguistics, which has helped me to understand “those things” behind the papers. My gratitude extends to the reviewers, Juha Janhunen (Helsinki) and Gerson Klumpp (then Munich, now Tartu) who did a marvelous job re- viewing and commenting a 500 page manuscript in a very short period. Ett särskilt tack till Juha, also the opponent in Tartu, for making his handwritten notes on the manuscript available to me. The defense discussion on an early summer day in Tartu was certainly the shortest two hours of my academic life so far and we could have easily continued for several more hours if we would have been given the time by the committee. Ein herzliches Dankeschön to the second reviewer, Gerson Klumpp, with whom I could continue to discuss pan-Samoyedic matters after his arrival to Tartu. Additional thanks go to Ago Künnap for clarifying discussions on Southern Samoyedic languages outside the weary paths of revolutions and for providing unexpected help out of the depths of his bookshelves on more than just one occasion – aitäh Ago! Tänud to Tõnu Seilenthal for finding additional financial support which gave me the necessary extra time to final- ize the thesis after the end of the DOBES-funded phase and for providing institutional support for the fieldtrip in 2011. Aitäh Kaur for the time spent on the project and for all the discussions then and now. Kaur Mägi’s hidden help is visible on almost every page as we must have discussed and compared almost every Forest Enets morpheme and clause type with Forest Nenets over the years. Further, two more individuals have to be mentioned as they have observed the growth and whose expertise contributed to the pre- liminary 2011 version of this monograph. Eberhard Winkler (Göttingen) who served as the German partner of the DOBES project showed vivid interest in the progress and our meetings have been a constant source of positive energy for which I am most grateful. On the other side of the globe, Farrell Ackerman has been a similar source of motiva- tion. I warmly remember our discussions at the 2007 LSA Summer Institute in Stanford and my stay in San Diego in early 2008 and most certainly our discussions on syntax, science, and politics both on campus and at home, or while traveling between both des- tinations. Chapters 2, 3, 11, and 12, in particular, are a direct outcome of this stay, as the first versions were presented at UCSD. Whereas revision of the text started in early 2012 in Tartu, this process continued and was finalized after my moving to Helsinki. Kiitoksia paljon to Janne Saarikivi who gave me the time to continue the revision during my participation in the MINOREUS project in the spring of 2012. The text was finalized in the summer of 2012 in the first month of my post-doc position at the Department of Finno-Ugrian Languages. 8 Florian Siegl: Materials on Forest Enets Finally, I would like to thank two institutions for their substantial support. First, I am grateful to Volkswagenstiftung for financing the DOBES Tartu-Göttingen “Docu- mentation of Enets and Forest Nenets” project, without whose support the whole enter- prise would not have been possible. Second, I am equally grateful to the Finno-Ugrian Society in Helsinki for inviting me to participate in the Manuscripta Castreniana project and for providing financial support for a pilot study on Castrén’s unpublished Tundra Enets grammar. Although a detailed study is in preparation, the initial comparison with Castrén’s data on Tundra Enets increased my understanding of the differences between both Enets varieties and assured me of the existence of two independent Enets lan- guages. Further I want to thank them for the financial support for consequent fieldwork in Dudinka in the summer of 2011 and for accepting this monograph in the MSFOu se- ries. Individually, I want to thank Paula Kokkonen, Anna Kurvinen, Niko Partanen and Alexandra Kellner for their work which transferred the manuscript into this monograph.