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System of Approximative Markers in Sakha // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2024. Issue 4 (46). P. 31-46

The article considers data from Sakha that marks an approximate quantity in numerical constructions. The article describes a system of such markers. First, I analyze the available data from published sources and represent the inventory of markers in Sakha. In particular, I have described the marker igin (игин), for which there is no data both in the grammatical descriptions known to me and in the dictionaries. I have refined the data on the other approximate quantity markers in comparison with the literature. I also described the surface morphosyntax of such constructions (linear position in a quantified expression, in particular, the ability to occur between the elements of a complex quantifier). The investigation revealed two different strategies of word order in numerical constructions. Second, I analyzed the contexts with other classes of numerals and some syntactic categories beyond quantified expressions with cardinal numerals. As this part of my investigation has shown, imprecise quantity markers in Sakha are incompatible with ordinal numerals (except for igin). The morphosyntactic properties of an approximative quantity marker хас (xas) have also been described. These properties distinguish it from other operators that mark an approximate quantity. Third, I examined the cross-category properties of the markers in question. It was shown that the markers kurduk (курдук), saɣa (саҕа), and keriŋe (кэриҥэ) can function as equatives (marking the standard of comparison). In this usage, saɣa and keriŋe are also restricted to quantitative contexts, while the distribution of kurduk is much broader. It has been shown that kurduk acquires an epistemic modal function in combination with non-finite verbal forms. The corresponding data were analyzed in terms of scales and pragmatic halos resulting from the framework presented in [Lasersohn 1999]. Finally, it was shown that different types of scales are available for the approximate markers analyzed in this paper.

Keywords: Sakha, quantified expressions, comparative constructions, numerals, approximation, equatives, scales