The syntax of Khanty* Márta Csepregi – Katalin Gugán 0. Introduction Khanty is an indigenous language spoken in Western Siberia, its speakers inhabiting mostly the banks of the River Ob and its tributaries from the middle course of the river up to its wash. According to the census of 2010, 30934 citizens of Russia claimed that they were of Khanty origin, but only 9584 declared that they can speak the language as well. As the speakers are scattered at a vast territory, there are such significant differences between the dialects that it is also questionable whether one can speak of “the” Khanty language as such, or there are in fact several Khanty languages. Traditionally, three dialect groups are distinguished, the Southern (Irtyš, Demyanka, Konda) the Eastern (Vakh, Vasyugan, Surgut, Salym) and the Northern group (Obdorsk, Šuryškar, Kazym, Šerkal), and each of these can be further divided into variants. Southern Khanty is already extinct, Eastern Khanty is severely endangered, and Northern Khanty is threatened according to the classification applied by endangeredlanguages.com. As it is unfeasible to give a comprehensive syntactic description of all Khanty dialects, the present paper will focus on the Surgut dialect, with occasional references to other variants. The linguistic data presented here are either elicited (in that case, the abbreviation stands for the name of the informant), or cited from published text collections (these cases will be marked with references). The first Khanty grammar, based on the Irtish and Surgut dialects, was published at the middle of the 19th century. By the turn of the 19th century investigations covered the whole linguistic area where Khanty was spoken, and the grammars that were written then are important sources up to these days (Patkanow and Fuchs 1911, Paasonen and Vértes 1963, Karjalainen and Vértes 1964). The following variants of Khanty have been described individually: the Sherkaly and Synja dialects (Steinitz 1950), the Vakh dialect (Terëškin 1961, Gulya 1966), the Shurishkary dialect (Rédei 1965), the Surgut dialect (Csepregi 1998, 2016), the Kazym dialect (Nëmysova 1988, Kaksin 2007), the Obdorsk dialect (Nikolaeva 1995, 1999), and the Vakh-Vasyugan dialect (Filchenko 2010). On the other hand, the *The authors would like to acknowledge the following grants of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office: FNN 107793, Multilingual practices in Finno-Ugric communities (Márta Csepregi), ERC_HU_15 118079, Languages under the Influence. Uralic syntax changing in an asymmetrical contact situation (Katalin Gugán). Khanty grammar of László Honti (Honti 1984) covers all variants in a single volume, following a historically oriented approach. Khanty data and linguistic descriptions have become accessible on the Internet as well, thanks to the recently constructed rich databases (Havas et al. 2015, Skribnik 2014–2017). Section 1. Word order and sentence types 1.1. Basic word order in a sentence 1.1.1 Finite verb and its arguments A simple context-free translation of a sentence including a transitive predicate with two overt arguments shows clearly that Khanty is an SOV language. (1) iki qåt wär-ł. man house make-PRS.3SG ‘The man builds a house’ (LNK) The grammatical category of subject appears in the nominative case, and agrees in person and number with the predicate. Information structure is a determining factor in sentence structure. Khanty shows a strong preference for the configuration in which the information structural role primary topic (that constituent of the sentence that is predicated about) appears as the grammatical subject of the sentence (Nikolaeva 1999), and the operation of passivization is partly motivated by the preference of the isomorphism of the grammatical subject and primary topic (for further details, see 1.1.8). Topical subjects can be dropped. The grammatical category of object is only marked with the accusative in case it is a pronoun (2); in case it is a noun, it is not distinguished from the subject morphologically (1). (2) məŋ łüw-at kənč-ł-əw. we (s)he-ACC look.for-PRS-1PL ‘We are looking for him.’ Transitive verbs can appear either in the subjective or in the objective conjugation; verbs in the objective conjugation display agreement with the object in number. If the object is a noun, the choice between subjective / objective conjugation is assumed to depend partly on thematic role of the given argument, and partly on its information structural role. A patient or theme argument of a verb triggers the objective conjugation if it is among the presupposed arguments of the sentence, i.e. if it is the secondary topic of the sentence (Nikolaeva 1999, 2001, Dalrymple— Nikolaeva 2011). For instance, in (3a) the patient object ‘pike’ represents new information, therefore, the verb only agrees with the first person singular subject. However, its already discourse-old in (3b) and (3c), therefore the verbs appear in the objective conjugation, and the object can be dropped. (3) a. ma sårt wäł-0-ǝm. […] I pike kill-PRS-1SG b. nüŋ ał łiw-e you PROH eat-IMP.SG<2SG c. ma nŏq kił-t-am-ka I up wake-PRS.PTCP-1SG-COND nik1 tärt-ł-em. up fry-PRS-SG<1SG ‘I killed a pike! [Answer] Don’t eat it! When I wake up, I’ll fry it.’ (Csepregi 1998: 68) Non-agreeing objects are assumed to be within the focal domain of the sentence (either as parts of it, or themselves being the focus). In this case, they appear in the preverbal position, which is assumed to be the focus position, and only a limited set of elements may stand between the focused element and the finite verb. As opposed to this, topical objects appear earlier in the sentence, and adverbials may appear between the topical object and the verb (Nikolaeva 1999). 1.1.2. Non-finite verb and the object 1 This preverbal particle is almost impossible to translate into English, as it carries so many different meanings (although they are conceptually related for the Khanty speakers). In the given example, it means ’on(to) the stove’, but it can also mean ’into the forest ’ or ’down to the river’. Object marking and object placement do not differ in finite and non-finite clauses, that is, pronominal objects of non-finite sentences are accusative-marked, whereas nominal objects appear in the nominative (4a, 4b). (4) a. məŋ łüw-at kənč-čaɣə jăŋq-Ø-əw. we (s)he-ACC look.for-INF go-PST0.1PL ‘We left to look for him/her.’ (forrás?) b. iki qåt wär-taɣǝ ǝntǝ łăŋq-ǝł-Ø man house make-INF NEG want-PRS-3SG ‘The man does not want to make a house.’ (A.S.P.) 1.1.3 Word order in imperatives Imperative and prohibitive sentences exhibit the same SOV word order pattern as assertive sentences. Verbs in the imperative sentence appear in the second person imperative with different forms available for the singular (5), dual and plural, distinguishing subjective and objective conjugation, the latter agreeing with the object in the three numbers (6). Special imperative forms used for addressing family members that cannot be spoken to directly for taboo reasons ceased to be used during the 20th century. (5) nüŋ ńarǝk quł wǝr-a! you row fish do-IMP.2SG ‘Do some row fish!’ (Csepregi 1998: 66) (6) ǝnǝł kür piŋ-ǝm ał sǝɣr-e! big foot finger-POSS.1SG PROH cut-IMP.2SG<OBJ.SG ‘Don’t cut off my toe!’ (Csepregi 1998: 96) There might be some word order variation in sentences containing preverbal particles. According to one of our informants, the preverbal particle may precede of follow the verb, and the latter type of word order indicates a stronger type of instruction, potentially a command. A similar pattern is observable in the northern dialects (Eszter Ruttkay-Miklián, p.c.), but it is important to note that not all speakers of Surgut Khanty find the type represented by (7b, 8b) grammatical. (7) a. kem ł’iwt-a out come.out-IMP.2SG ‘Come out!’ (L.N.K.) b. ł’iwt-a kem come.out-IMP.2SG out ‘Do come out!’ (L.N.K.) (8) a. sup nŏq łiw-a soup up eat-IMP.2SG ‘Eat up the soup!’ (A.S.P.) b. *sup łiw-a nŏq soup eat-IMP.2SG up (‘Do eat up the soup!’, A.S.P.) 1.1.4 Pronominal objects Concerning word order, pronominal objects seem to pattern similarly to nominal objects both in finite (9) and non-finite (10) sentences. It has to be noted, though, that they differ from nominal objects with respect to objective agreement. Irrespective of person-number combination, overt pronominal objects in Surgut Khanty (as opposed to the northern dialects, c.f. Honti 1986: 100, Nikolaeva 1999: 65) do not trigger the objective agreement (9, 11). (9) məŋ łüw-at kənč-ł-əw. we (s)he-acc look.for-prs-1pl ‘We are looking for him.’ (10) məŋ łüw-at kənč-čə kič-əw әntem. we (s)he-acc find-prs.ptcp wish-poss.1pl neg.ex ‘We don’t want to find him/her.’ If a first or second person pronominal object is dropped, the verb still appears in the subjective conjugation (11). However, dropped third-person pronominal objects trigger the objective conjugation (12). (11) nüŋ mant änm-0-ǝn. ma nüŋat nŏq ałǝm-ł-ǝm. you me raise-pst-2sg I you(acc) up lift-prs-1sg nomǝn ałitł-ł-ǝm čymǝł. above carry-prs-1sg little ‘You have raised me. I will fly up with you. I will carry you for a while.’ (Csepregi 2011: 12) (12) łüw ymǝł-0-0 łüw owti-ł-a panǝ tuw-0-tǝɣ he sit-PST-3SG he top-3SG-LAT and carry-PST-3SG>3SG ‘He (=the man) sat on his (=the eagle’s) back and he (the eagle) carried him (=the man)’ (Csepregi ibid.) 1.1.5 Sentences without a copula Non-verbal predicates show different patterns with respect to the possibility of zero copula, and tense, number and person are also factors determining the presence or absence of the copula.