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MULTILINGUAL PRACTICES IN THE LOWER YENISEI AREA: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF THE PAST // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2019. Issue 1 (23). P. 9-28

The paper analyzes indigenous multilingualism in the north-eastern part of the lower Yenisei area from the 1930s to the 1970s (Tajmyr peninsula, Siberia, Russia). The data used for this study are sociolinguistic interviews performed by the author in 2017 with children and grandchildren of those representatives of indigenous peoples of Tajmyr who were adults in the given period. Ethnolinguistic history of the area is described for the last 200 years in order to provide a general background for understanding patterns of multilingual practices, in particular all ethnic migrations are analyzed from the point of view of their reasons and their sociolinguistic consequences. Contacts between Northern Samoyedic peoples – the Tundra Enets, the Tundra Nenets, and the Nganasans – are portrayed in details, with particular attention to language repertoires, to contexts of usage of each language, and to all attested changes to them with time. Besides, linguistic ideologies typical for the area are commented on, including their interconnection to other sociolinguistic factors involved. As a result, common local sociolinguistic patterns are posited: those that are recurrently attested in several Tajmyrian locations. First, in all cases all adults could speak the language of the ethnic majority of the area, and most adults could understand all other indigenous languages of the area; furthermore, active command of other languages could be conditioned by details of an individual’s biography. Second, the main language used within a nuclear family was usually the language of the ethnic majority of the area, regardless the ethnic identity of the parents; the native language of (one of) the parents, if different from the language of the ethnic majority, was usually used for codified interactions with other adults: e.g. when receiving guests or paying visits. The methodology of this study is discussed in details with the idea of its reproducibility in other areas of Siberia.

Keywords: sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, history of Siberia, multilingualism, language contacts, Tajmyr, Tundra Enets, Tundra Nenets, Nganasans, methodology of fieldwork

FUTURE REFERENCE FORMS IN ENETS // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2019. Issue 1 (23). P. 83-96

The paper deals with the system of future reference forms in both Enets dialects: Future and Debitive attested both in Forest Enets and Tundra Enets, Hypothetical attested only in Forest Enest and Analytical Debitive attested only in Tundra Enets. The paper provides brief information on morphological structure of these forms, numerical data on their frequency in texts and a comparison of the contexts where these forms are used. Debitive expresses modal meanings of deontic and epistemic obligation and epistemic possibility. Forest Enets Hypothetical is used for weak intentional future and for weak epistemic possibility. Tundra Enets Analytical Debitive is limited by contexts of weak epistemic possibility. The most frequent Future form is used for sure predictive future and sure intentional future, but also is attested in modal contexts mentioned above. This can be summarized as a privative opposition between the Future form that has an unrestricted general future meaning and modal forms that are used for more particular modal meanings. This feature of the Enets verbal system contrasts it with a known cross-linguistic distinction of future certainty vs. future possibility and therefore Enets data are of interest for linguistic typology.

Keywords: Enets, Samoyedic, future, modality, verbal forms competition