ASYMMETRIC NEGATION IN EASTERN KHANTY AND SOUTHERN SELKUP
The paper reviews the grammar of negation in two endangered indigenous Uralic languages of Western Siberia: Eastern Khanty and Southern Selkup. These languages have remote genetic affiliation falling respectively within the Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic branches of the Uralic language family. At the same time, they are characterized by the situation of extended cultural and linguistic contact, co-inhabiting the area of middle Ob river flows, particularly in the Parabel and Kargasok districts of Tomsk region. Both languages2 are also characterized by comparable sociolinguistic status of extreme endangerment, numbering less than 10 speakers. The main focus of the discussion is the morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of negation. The key objective is to place the data and analysis of negation in the two systems into the general typological context, into local areal Siberian and into genetic Uralic perspective. From the typological standpoint Eastern Khanty and Southern Selkup syntactic negation strategies demonstrate consistent overall symmetry in accordance with the dominant SOV wordorder tendencies. There are, however, special cases of asymmetric strategies associated with non-standard negation, existential negation and negation with indefinite/negative proforms.
Keywords: отрицание, селькупский, хантыйский, Сибирь, асимметрия
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Issue: 2, 2013
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: LINGUISTICS
Pages: 29 — 49
Downloads: 1256