Typological overview of the Uralic languages Chingduang Yurayong 28.01.2019 Uralic languages Uralic languages General typological profile of Uralic languages • Intolerant towards complex initial consonant clusters: • Fi ranta (< Germanic *strandō-) • Head-final word order: • ADJ-NOUN • OBJ-VERB • Postposition • Agglutination: • Fi talo-ssa-ni-kin [house-INES-1SG-PTCL] ‘also in my house’ • No grammatical gender: • Fi vanha mies ‘old man’ = vanha nainen ‘old woman’ • etc. Matthias Alexander Castrén (1813-1852) . 1838-1849 – Four expeditions to Lapland, Karelia and Siberia . Dissertation 1850 De affixs personalibus linguarum Altaicarum (comparison of personal endings in Uralic, Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages) . 14 March 1851 Imperial Alexander University’s (today University of Helsinki) first ever professor of Finnish language and literature . Founder of the Ural-Altaic hypothesis M. A. Castrén’s expeditions 1838-1849 “Ural-Altaic languages” Ural-Altaic hypothesis • Uralic languages resemble Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic and Japonic languages a lot by their structure > genealogical relation? • Primary attention of early day’s Finnish historical linguistics between the late 19th c. and the early 20th century • Problem: we cannot establish a firm argument for Ural-Altaic relation on the basis of regular sound correspondences in lexicon, which is the primary method in historical linguistics, because the similarities only concern the area of grammar • Modern view: Uralic languages and the rest resemble each other only in their language structure but not substance > contact explanation! “Trans-Eurasian” language family? • Martine Robbeets (Max Planck, Jena) • Conventional “Ural- Altaic” language family became “Trans-Eurasian” • Uralic languages are excluded • Problem: the language to represent the whole Uralic family in her studies is Eastern Khanty … (see later why) Phonology http://eurasianphonology.info/reports?family=Uralic Stops • Three places of articulation • Labial p • Dental t • Velar k • Voice distinction p t k – b d g is absent from Saami and Finnic languages outside Russia (except Livonian), Mari, Eastern Khanty, Mansi, most Samoyedic (except Nganasan and Enets) (https://wals.info/feature/4A) • Voice distinction that maintains two series of stops is common to most “Altaic” languages Sibilants • Three sibilant series s z – ś ź – š ž • ś ź common to the majority of Uralic languages (but not Finnish!) • š ž common to the majority of Uralic languages but not Finnic, Khanty, Mansi and Samoyedic • Turkic have two distinct sibilant series s z – š ž, while the palatal series ś ź Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic and Japonic is allophone to the plain series s z in a palatal sound environment Nasals • Four places of articulation • Labial m • Dental n • Palatal ɲ • Velar ŋ • Velar ŋ rare in the word-initial position, but observed in Samoyedic of the Tundra zone (https://wals.info/feature/9A) • Initial ŋ is also rare among “Altaic” languages (still observed in some Tungusic languages: Even, Udege, Uilta, etc.), but common to Chukotko-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut Laterals • Lateral l common to the majority of Uralic languages • Voiceless lateral l̥ or latero-fricative ł observed in Kildin and Ter Saami, Moksha, Komi, Northern Khanty and Forest Nenets • Voiceless lateral/latero-fricative is common to Yeniseic, Yukaghir, Chukotko- Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut as well as Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic spoken in Siberia Vowel inventories • Uralic languages are generally rich in vowels (> 6 vowels) • Labial vowels in the non-initial syllable only observed in Saami and Finnic languages • Length distinction is mainly lost in Mordvin, Permic and Mari Erzya (Mordvin) Hill Mari (Mari) Taz Selkup (Samoyedic) Hungarian Vowel harmony Khanty • Palatal type of harmony (front vs. back) • Representative “Ural-Altaic” feature that can possibly be reconstructed to all proto-languages, despite evolving into tongue root harmony (tense vs. lax / unpharyngealised vs. pharyngealised) in most modern Mongolic, Tungusic and Koreanic as well as some Turkic like Kazakh (Barrere & Janhunen 2019) • Collapse in several Finnic languages (e.g., Estonian, Veps) • Fi se – sitä, Est see – seda, Ve se – sida • Fi emä, Est ema, Ve ema(ga) Barrere, Ian G. & Janhunen, Juha. 2019. Mongolian Vowel Harmony in a Eurasian Context. International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics 1(1). 46–77. https://brill.com/view/journals/jeal/1/1/article-p46_4.xml?language=en Phonotactics • Prototypically vowel-ending structures (C)V and (C)V(C)CV • Consonant-ending monosyllabic structure emerging later, especially in Permic, Mari and Hungarian • (Complex) initial consonant clusters are rare, cf. Germanic loanwords in Finnic Stress • Word-initial stress in westernmost Uralic languages (Saami, Finnic) as well as Khanty and Nenets • Mobile stress in the rest of Uralic languages (https://wals.info/feature/14A) Morphosyntax Number • Tripartite Singular-Dual-Plural system still present in the languages of Tundra zone (Saami, Khanty, Mansi, Samoyedic) • Dual is lacking from the steppe languages “Altaic”, but common to other Paleo-Siberian languages of the Taiga and Tundra zone Hungarian Case marking • Grammatical cases for core arguments (subject, direct object, indirect object, adverbial) like in Indo- European, for instance • Rich in locational cases, resulted from grammaticalisation of relational nouns (e.g. ‘top’) • Northern Khanty is an extreme case of case loss, N Khanty xɔt ‘house’ ewĭ ‘girl’ kǫśa ‘farmer’ NOMINATIVE xɔt ewĭ kǫśa only 3 Proto-Uralic cases LATIVE-DATIVE xɔta ewĭja kŏśaja remaining LOCATIVE xɔtnĭ, xɔtən ewĭnĭ, ewĭjən kǫśani, kǫśajən Possessive marking in Meadow Mari Remarks: • Order of case and possessive morphemes • In most languages, predominantly case-possessive • In Khanty and Mansi, predominantly possessive-case • In Permic and Mari, the order is variable Verb paradigm and • Object conjugation (i.e. incorporation) is feature observed widely across the Uralic languages, but not in Finnic, Saami, Permic and Mari! object conjugation • Unknown to “Altaic” but very common to other Paleo-Siberian languages Northern Khanty Southern Hokkaido Ainu Noun phrase • No agreement between modifier and head noun, i.e. adjective does not take the same case and number as head noun, which is a common phenomenon across the Northern Eurasia e.g. Erzya t’e vele ‘this village’ – t’e velese ‘in this village’ (** t’ese velese) • However, • Finnic adjective always declines after its head noun in case and number • Saami adjective has two forms: predicative – attributive, e.g., in Northern Saami vielgat – vilges ‘white’ čáhppat – čáhppes ‘black’ ruoksat – rukses ‘red’ • cf. Indo-European languages have this modifier-modified agreement! Adpositional phrase • Predominantly postpositions like “Altaic”, but prepositions later emerged under the contact with Indo-European languages (Germanic, Baltic, Slavic) Northern Saami & Finnish Verb phrase • Proto-Uralic is regarded to have possessed SOV word order, i.e. verb- final syntax, which is common in “Altaic” and Paleo-Siberian languages. • This verb-final tendency is still dominant in Eastern Uralic languages: Permic, Mari, Khanty, Mansi and Samoyedic, despite it has been recently weakening in many languages due to heavy Russian influence (same applies to Evenki and many other Tungusic languages, for instance) Copula • The original use of verb ‘to be’ seems to be the expression of location ‘to be somewhere’ • The equative use ‘to be someone/something’ seems to be a secondary semantic extension • Some Uralic languages do not use a verb ‘to be’ for expressing equation, but use only a predicative that can receive person ending • Moksha mon žurnalistan – ton žurnalistat – son žurnalist – sin’ žurnalistiht’ • Mari myj žurnalist ulam – tyj ulat – tudo žurnalist – nuno žurnalist ulyt cf. • Kazakh men žurnalistpĭn – sen žurnalistsĭŋ – ol žurnalist – olar žurnalister Comparative • Two types of comparative constructions Estonian Ants on pike-m kui Mart analytic ≈ European type Marti-st pike-m synthetic ≈ Asian type ‘Ants is taller than Mart.’ • The use of degree marker on adjective is mainly observed in Saami and Finnic languages, whereas the other Uralic languages use an absolute degree of adjective • A synthetic model with adjective in absolute degree is common across Northern Eurasia all the way to Northern Sinitic languages! Predicative possession . The predicative BE-possession is predominant across the Uralic family and the entire Northern Eurasia Alternation in Khanty and Mansi Predicative possession . The predicative HAVE-possession secondarily emerged in Khanty and Mansi languages Altaic context Altaic - Yurayong, Chingduang. 2019. Predicative possession in A = Locational possessive with the adessive possessor: Finnic and Permic Predicative possession Predicative B1 = Have-possesssive: SAE Sprachbund and North Africa Novgorod Birch Bark documents in the Ural-Altaic context. in the Ural the in B2 = Have-possessive: Ob-Ugric languages Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 97. 183–233. C = With-possessive: Northeast Eurasia https://journal.fi/susa/article/view/74592 D = Topic possessive: Far East Transitivity • Uralic languages are nominative-accusative languages • Nominative as a subject case is unmarked, while accusative as an object case is marked with a suffix *-m • Uralic languages are generally thought to be causativising languages • Causative is usually derived from plain (in)transitive verb form with a suffix *-t- Relative clause • Prototypically