Areal features in the Uralic languages of Siberia
Idaliia Fedotova (University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu)
03.06.2024, 14:15–15:45
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 (Hauptgebäude), F 007
In this talk, I will discuss the shared linguistic features in the Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic languages and will observe the general issues of areality in Western Siberia. Comprised by the easternmost groups of the Uralic, this territory from the Urals to River Yenisei is a contact zone of three more language families: Yeniseian (Ket), Tungusic (Evenki) and Turkic (Chulym). Several groupings have been proposed, from “Ostyak” sprachbund in the Upper Yenisei region, to Ob-Yenisei area comprising Tundra Nenets in the Arctic.
While the relationship between eastern Uralic branches has been rigorously discussed in diachronic linguistics (whether similarities are genetic or areal), my focus is on the Uralic languages in the Siberian linguistic landscape. From a broader view, the typological profile of the Uralic language family is “eastern” and belongs to the Inner Asian Type. The core languages of this type include eastern Uralic, Tungusic, Turkic and Mongolic, and less strictly other as well. In the talk, I will discuss in more detail the layers that interplay in the languages of Western Siberia, from syntax to colexification patterns.