Materials on Forest Enets, an indigenous language of Northern Siberia
Date
2011-05-16
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Abstract
Käesolev grammatiline ülevaade kirjeldab viimaste metsaeenetsite keelt. Metsaeenetsi keel kuulub samojeedi keelte hulka, täpsemalt põhjasamojeedi allrühma. Samojeedi haru on üks kahest uurali keelkonna peaharust. Teine haru ehk soome-ugri haru on laiemalt tuntud. Kuigi Eestis rõhutatakse, et samojeedi keeled on eesti keele sugulaskeeled, on reaalsus see, et samojeedi keelte rääkijate jaoks on teiste Venemaa vähemuskeelte, eriti aga Siberi ja Vene Kaug-Ida keelte rääkijad hingelt lähedasemad kui eesti tavadiskursusest tuntud ugri-mugri sugulased. Ka käesolev töö ei kavatsenud metsaeenetsi keelt kuidagi mingisse imaginaarsesse soome-ugri/uurali raamistikku pressida, vaid käsitleb viimaste metsaeenetsite keelt metsaeenetsi keelena.
Käesoleva grammatika jaoks kasutatud ainestik pärineb autori välitöödelt, mis viidi läbi Taimõri poolsaarel ajavahemikus 2006-2008 9 kuu jooksul. Teatud osa moodustab ka ainestik, mis saadi Zoja Bolina külaskäigu ajal Tartus 2008. a. detsembri keskel. Kogutud materjale, millele antud töö põhineb, hakatakse lähitulevikus DOBESi arhiivi (www.mpi.nl/dobes) üles laadima ning need on seal vaadatavad ja kasutatavad.
Kuigi esimesed katsed kirjeldada metsaeenetsi keelt pärinevad juba 19. sajandist M. A. Castrénilt, jäid eeenetsid (nii metsaeenetsid kui ka tundraeenetsid) pikalt oma suurema naabri, tundraneenetsi keele varju. Mitmed uurijad, nii keeleteadlased kui ka etnoloogid, jätkasid 20. sajandi jooksul tööd nii metsa- kui ka tundraeenetsite seas, kuid siiski jäid mõlemad eenetsi keeled kuni 20. sajandi lõpuni sisuliselt tundmatuks.
Sotsiaalsete, poliitiliste ja majanduslike muutuste tõttu sattusid metsaeenetsid 20. sajandi jooksul väljasuremise äärele. Materjalid antud grammatilise ülevaate jaoks pärinevad nendelt metsaeenetsitelt, kes on tänapäeval selle keele viimased rääkijad. Minu andmete põhjal on antud hetkel elus veel veidi alla 40 keelerääkija ja -mäletaja. Noorimad soravad rääkijad on üle 50 aasta vanad, vanimad rääkijad on alla 70.
Minu välitööde ajal kui ka järgneval analüüsiperioodil hakkas kand. fil. Irina Sorokina, kes on teinud välitöid mõlemate eenetsite seas (1969, 1974, 1977, 1985), lõpuks oma materjale avaldama. Peamised tööd on teksti¬kogumik (Sorokina & Bolina 2004), täiendatud sõnaraamat (Sorokina & Bolina 2009) ning hiljuti ja käesoleva töö seisukohast liiga hilja ilmunud metsaeenetsi grammatika (Sorokina 2010). Kuigi enamik avaldatud materjalidest on Irina Sorokina kogutud, sisaldavad need ülesloetletud materjalid ka Irina Sorokina kaastöölise Dar’ja Bolina kogutud materjale. Siinkohal saagu mainitud, et käesolev monograafia põhineb 99% ulatuses autori poolt kogutud andmetele.
Nagu juba öeldud, 2010. a. lõpus avaldas Irina Sorokina lõplikult oma suuremahulise metsaeenetsi grammatika, millele järgneb kohe käesolev monograafia. Sellega muutub vähem kui ühe aastaga metsaeenetsi keel tundmatust keelest ilmselgelt pikemaks ajaks kõige paremini kirjeldatud samojeedi keeleks. Olemas on nüüd kaks suuremahulist grammatilist kirjeldust; mõlemad põhinevad täielikult välitööde käigus autorite poolt kogutud materjalidele, mõlemad grammatikad kirjeldavad kahe erineva metsaeenetsi põlvkonna keelt ning mõlemad kirjeldused peegeldavad erinevaid lähenemisviise keeleteaduses. Sellist olukorda pole siiani samojedoloogias kunagi valitsenud. Samas erinevad mõlemad grammatikad üksteisest märkimisväärselt. Irina Sorokina esitus järgib tavalist vene traditsiooni – kirjeldada grammatikat morfosüntaktiliselt, seega puudub nt koherentne süntaktiline ülevaade. Samuti pole näitelaused glosseeritud ega ole võimalik kindlaks teha, kas näitelause pärineb grammatilisest küsitlusest või narratiivist. Lisaks pole võimalik konkreetsete näidete puhul keelejuhi isikut tuvastada. See on kahetsusväärne, kuna mõned Irina Sorokina kesksetest keelejuhtidest olid kakskeelsed (metsaeenetsi-tundraneenetsi), kes produtseerisid vorme, mis ei sobinud eenetsi struktuuriga eriti kokku. Esitusviis käesolevas monograafias põhineb teistel alustel. Esiteks, minu kesksed keelejuhid kasvasid üles ükskeelsetes metsaeenetsi peredes, seega on interferents tundraneenetsi keelega välistatav. Kõik näitelaused on glosseeritud ning lühendite järgi on tuvastatav, kas tegemist on näitelausega, mis pärineb küsitlusest või näitest suulisest ja lindistatud narratiivist. Seega peaks olema tagatud, et antud monograafia võimalik lugejaskond ei piirdu samojeedi keelte uurijatega.
Kuigi metsaeenetsi keele grammatikas leidub mitmeid nähtuseid, mis võivad olla teatud morfoloogia- ja süntaksiteooria jaoks problemaatilised (nt asesõnade struktuur, limitatiivi infiksilaadne käitumine, tempus nii verbimorfoloogias kui ka predikatiivses konjugatsioonis, benefaktiiv), kirjeldati grammatikat ohustatud keelte dokumentatsiooni vaatevinklist. Seega pole grammatiline kirjeldus mitte üleliigselt teoretiseeritud, vaid esitleb metsaeenetsi grammatikat võimalikult teoorianeutraalselt. Selle taga peitub ka arusaam, et käesolev ingliskeelne monograafia võib jääda pikemaks ajaks ainsaks ulatuslikuks kirjelduseks, mis peab olema loetav nii 20 kui ka 40 aasta pärast.
Käesoleva monograafia temaatika tõttu pole siin võimalik sisu kohta ammendavat ülevaadet pakkuda, kuna kokkuvõttest kasvaks kiiresti välja omaette eestikeelne metsaeenetsi keele lühigrammatika. Järgnevalt tutvustatakse põgusalt töö ülesehitust. Monograafia on jaotatud kolmeks sisuliseks osaks. Esimeses osas kirjeldatakse metsaeenetsite ajaloo ja etno¬graafia põhijooni, millele lisanduvad väike ülevaade sotsiolingvistilisest olukorrast ning uuringulooline ülevaade. Mahukas teises osas presenteeritakse metsaeenetsi grammatika põhijooni. Peatükk 1 pakub väikese tüpoloogilise ülevaate metsaeenetsi grammatikast. Peatükkides 2 ja 3 kirjeldatakse metsaeenetsi fonoloogiat, morfofonoloogiat ja morfoloogiat. Sellele järgneb peatükk 4 sõnaliikidest. Peatükk 5 esitleb nominaalsete kategooriate morfosüntaksit, nende kategooriate süntaksit kirjeldatakse peatükis 6, kus vaadeldakse täiendavalt nimisõnafraasi süntaksit. Seitsmes peatükk verbikompleksist on kõige ulatuslikum, kuid kahtlemata mitte veel lõplik, sest verbimorfoloogia mitmekesisuse tõttu on siin tulevikus veel palju lisatööd ees. Kaheksas peatükk käsitleb infiniitseid kategooriad nagu partitsiibid, konverbid ja nominalisatsioonid; sellega lõpeb morfosüntaktiline osa. Peatükk 9 sisaldab ülevaadet lausetüüpidest, grammatilistest relatsioonidest ning vaatleb lühidalt informatsioonistruktuuri baasomadusi. Peatükid 10, 11 ja 12 käsitlevad teatud süntaktilisi nähtusi lähemalt, benefaktiiv (peatükk 10), passiiv (peatükk 11) ja komplekslaused (12), mis kõik on suuremal määral terra incognita. Monograafia kolmandas osas on esitatud kolm täielikult glosseeritud teksti kesksetelt keelejuhtidelt. Tekstidele järgneb veel neli lisa. Nendes rekonstrueeritakse tähtsamad sammud, kuidas metsaeenetsi keelt hakati kirja panema ja kuidas metsaeenetsid ise oma emakeeles kirjutavad. Eelviimases lisas leidub natuke biograafilisi andmeid keelejuhtide kohta ning viimases lisas on toodud esile teatud vene keele sõnavara, mida on kasutatud käesolevas monograafias teatud kontseptide ja esemete kirjeldustes.
This thesis presents a grammatical description of Forest Enets, an indigenous language of Northern Siberia spoken on the Lower Yenisei within the boundaries of the Taimyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Municipality District, a subdivision of Krasnojarskij kraj. The language is functionally extinct. Around 10 fluent speakers are left; the overall number of potential speakers is less than 40 individuals. All speakers are found in the generation of 50 years and older. The number of ethnic Forest Enets is currently unknown. Recent local statistics, which also include Tundra Enets indicate that there are around 160 individuals. Concerning its genetic classification, Forest Enets belongs to the Northern Samoyedic branch of Samoyedic. Samoyedic is the second major branch of the Uralic language family; the other branch consists of the generally more well known Finno-Ugric languages. This PhD thesis presents a description of the most central aspects of Forest Enets grammar. The data derives from documentation fieldwork carried out as part of a DOBES project funded by the Volkswagen Foun¬dation (Documentation of Enets and Forest Nenets, DOBES Tartu-Göttingen, funding period 2005-2009). A total of 9 months of fieldwork and consultant work, both on the Taimyr Peninsula as well as in Tartu, underlie this description. Archiving of data at the DOBES archive at the MPI Nijmegen has begun, and most of the sound files are already accessible there. Although Forest Enets is by no means an undocumented language, the language was clearly underdocumented until recently. Whereas the first sound written records derive from M. A. Castrén’s expeditions to Siberia in the 1840s and the first materials on Forest Enets were published in the 1850s, major fieldwork on Forest Enets did not start until the second half of the 20th century. Despite frequent fieldwork by researchers from Leningrad, Moscow and Tomsk, almost no primary data on Forest Enets had been published until the 21st century. In first decade of the 20th century, Irina Sorokina, the only specialist on both Enets languages in the Russian Federation, finally made most of her materials available. Her latest work, a grammar of Forest Enets, appeared in late 2010 and is now being followed up by another grammar of Forest Enets, less than one year later. This makes Forest Enets, almost overnight, one of the best described Samoyedic languages, at least from the perspective of grammaticography. Still, these grammatical descriptions differ fundamentally from each other; the main similarity is the simple fact that both grammars are based on the field data gathered by their respective authors. Consequently, Irina Sorokina’s grammar describes the language of the parental and grandparental generation which she documented during her four fieldtrips (1969, 1974, 1977, 1985). The current thesis is based on the language of the generation of the last speakers of Forest Enets. Another difference can be found in both the organization and the representation of data. Irina Sorokina’s grammar follows the traditional morphosyntactic approach, thereby excluding a separate discussion of syntax. Examples are not glossed nor is it possible to identify speakers or the origin of the data (e.g. whether a particular example derives from elicitation or transcribed speech). One would prefer to have at least some information on the latter because Irina Sorokina has worked with bilingual Forest Enets-Tundra Nenets speakers, and unusual forms could be better explained if the speakers were identified. In contrast, the present description marks examples for origin (whether elicitation or transcribed speech) and for consultant; furthermore, every consultant can be identified and all examples are glossed, at least wherever clearly segmentable morpheme boundaries occur. In this respect, the present thesis is not primarily targeted at specialists of Samoyedic and Siberian languages, but should also be readable by linguists who are interested in language in general. This grammatical description is based on the general spirit of language documentation and tries to approach Forest Enets from a broad functional perspective. Although several properties of Forest Enets grammar are potentially challenging for several theories in morphology and syntax (e.g. the structure of pronouns, the infix-like behavior of several morphemes such as the limitative, the position of tense markers within verb morphology, tensed nominal categories in predicative position, or the benefactive declension, just to name a few), the grammatical description is not overladen with theory. As this thesis will most probably be the only major reference work on this language in English for a longer period of time, the grammarian is also responsible for guaranteeing readability in 20-40 years from now. The thesis is divided into three parts. Part one coincides with chapter 0 in which history, ethnology, the sociolinguistic status quo and the history of research are presented. Part two contains a grammatical description of contemporary Forest Enets. Chapter 1 presents a condensed typological profile. Chapters 2 and 3 are dedicated to phonology, morphonology and morphology. Chapter 4 discusses the major parts of speech. Chapter 5 describes the morphosyntax of nouns and other nominal categories; the syntax of the noun phrase is discussed in Chapter 6. The longest chapter in this thesis is Chapter 7, which focuses on verb morphology and morphosyntax. Chapter 7 ends with a discussion of predicate negation and a short note on valency increasing and decreasing operations. Chapter 8 discusses the morphology and morphosyntax of non-finite verb forms such as participles, converbs and nominalizations. A syntax-oriented description begins with Chapter 9; this focuses first on the clause inventory, then moves on to grammatical relations, word order and information structure. Chapter 10 is dedicated to the description of the passive in Forest Enets. Chapter 11 focuses on one of the most intriguing categories of Forest Enets: the so-called benfactive declension and its syntax. In Chapter 12, complex clauses are discussed. The third part of the monograph contains three fully glossed texts as told by my main consultants. Furthermore, it contains four appendices which reconstruct the most important stages to literacy and written samples of Fo¬rest Enets (Appendix I, II). Appendix III gives a short biographic overview of the main consultants; finally, Appendix IV contains a list of Russian lexemes which are used in Anglicized forms referring to traditional Forest Enets culture.
This thesis presents a grammatical description of Forest Enets, an indigenous language of Northern Siberia spoken on the Lower Yenisei within the boundaries of the Taimyr (Dolgan-Nenets) Municipality District, a subdivision of Krasnojarskij kraj. The language is functionally extinct. Around 10 fluent speakers are left; the overall number of potential speakers is less than 40 individuals. All speakers are found in the generation of 50 years and older. The number of ethnic Forest Enets is currently unknown. Recent local statistics, which also include Tundra Enets indicate that there are around 160 individuals. Concerning its genetic classification, Forest Enets belongs to the Northern Samoyedic branch of Samoyedic. Samoyedic is the second major branch of the Uralic language family; the other branch consists of the generally more well known Finno-Ugric languages. This PhD thesis presents a description of the most central aspects of Forest Enets grammar. The data derives from documentation fieldwork carried out as part of a DOBES project funded by the Volkswagen Foun¬dation (Documentation of Enets and Forest Nenets, DOBES Tartu-Göttingen, funding period 2005-2009). A total of 9 months of fieldwork and consultant work, both on the Taimyr Peninsula as well as in Tartu, underlie this description. Archiving of data at the DOBES archive at the MPI Nijmegen has begun, and most of the sound files are already accessible there. Although Forest Enets is by no means an undocumented language, the language was clearly underdocumented until recently. Whereas the first sound written records derive from M. A. Castrén’s expeditions to Siberia in the 1840s and the first materials on Forest Enets were published in the 1850s, major fieldwork on Forest Enets did not start until the second half of the 20th century. Despite frequent fieldwork by researchers from Leningrad, Moscow and Tomsk, almost no primary data on Forest Enets had been published until the 21st century. In first decade of the 20th century, Irina Sorokina, the only specialist on both Enets languages in the Russian Federation, finally made most of her materials available. Her latest work, a grammar of Forest Enets, appeared in late 2010 and is now being followed up by another grammar of Forest Enets, less than one year later. This makes Forest Enets, almost overnight, one of the best described Samoyedic languages, at least from the perspective of grammaticography. Still, these grammatical descriptions differ fundamentally from each other; the main similarity is the simple fact that both grammars are based on the field data gathered by their respective authors. Consequently, Irina Sorokina’s grammar describes the language of the parental and grandparental generation which she documented during her four fieldtrips (1969, 1974, 1977, 1985). The current thesis is based on the language of the generation of the last speakers of Forest Enets. Another difference can be found in both the organization and the representation of data. Irina Sorokina’s grammar follows the traditional morphosyntactic approach, thereby excluding a separate discussion of syntax. Examples are not glossed nor is it possible to identify speakers or the origin of the data (e.g. whether a particular example derives from elicitation or transcribed speech). One would prefer to have at least some information on the latter because Irina Sorokina has worked with bilingual Forest Enets-Tundra Nenets speakers, and unusual forms could be better explained if the speakers were identified. In contrast, the present description marks examples for origin (whether elicitation or transcribed speech) and for consultant; furthermore, every consultant can be identified and all examples are glossed, at least wherever clearly segmentable morpheme boundaries occur. In this respect, the present thesis is not primarily targeted at specialists of Samoyedic and Siberian languages, but should also be readable by linguists who are interested in language in general. This grammatical description is based on the general spirit of language documentation and tries to approach Forest Enets from a broad functional perspective. Although several properties of Forest Enets grammar are potentially challenging for several theories in morphology and syntax (e.g. the structure of pronouns, the infix-like behavior of several morphemes such as the limitative, the position of tense markers within verb morphology, tensed nominal categories in predicative position, or the benefactive declension, just to name a few), the grammatical description is not overladen with theory. As this thesis will most probably be the only major reference work on this language in English for a longer period of time, the grammarian is also responsible for guaranteeing readability in 20-40 years from now. The thesis is divided into three parts. Part one coincides with chapter 0 in which history, ethnology, the sociolinguistic status quo and the history of research are presented. Part two contains a grammatical description of contemporary Forest Enets. Chapter 1 presents a condensed typological profile. Chapters 2 and 3 are dedicated to phonology, morphonology and morphology. Chapter 4 discusses the major parts of speech. Chapter 5 describes the morphosyntax of nouns and other nominal categories; the syntax of the noun phrase is discussed in Chapter 6. The longest chapter in this thesis is Chapter 7, which focuses on verb morphology and morphosyntax. Chapter 7 ends with a discussion of predicate negation and a short note on valency increasing and decreasing operations. Chapter 8 discusses the morphology and morphosyntax of non-finite verb forms such as participles, converbs and nominalizations. A syntax-oriented description begins with Chapter 9; this focuses first on the clause inventory, then moves on to grammatical relations, word order and information structure. Chapter 10 is dedicated to the description of the passive in Forest Enets. Chapter 11 focuses on one of the most intriguing categories of Forest Enets: the so-called benfactive declension and its syntax. In Chapter 12, complex clauses are discussed. The third part of the monograph contains three fully glossed texts as told by my main consultants. Furthermore, it contains four appendices which reconstruct the most important stages to literacy and written samples of Fo¬rest Enets (Appendix I, II). Appendix III gives a short biographic overview of the main consultants; finally, Appendix IV contains a list of Russian lexemes which are used in Anglicized forms referring to traditional Forest Enets culture.
Description
Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon sisaldab rektori korraldusega üksnes väitekirja inglis- ja eestikeelset kokkuvõtet ja viidet sellele, kus väitekiri avaldatakse.
Keywords
dissertatsioonid, uurali keeled, samojeedi keeled, eenetsi keel, grammatika, ohustatud keeled, keelelised vähemused, Venemaa, Siber, Enets language, Uralic languages, linguistic minorities, endangered languages, grammar, Russia, [Northern] Siberia