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ON THE ARGUMENT STRUCTURE OF THE ‘GIVE’ VERBS IN NGANASAN AND IN SELKUP // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2013. Issue 1 (1). P. 27-37

The verb ‘to give’ belongs to the group of the so-called ditransitive verbs. The verb's behaviour can firstly be investigated based on the argument structure, that is how the recipient and the theme, i.e. the object, are coded by the language. Secondly, this phenomenon can also be studied regarding the form of the verb. This work will focus on this point of view, but the form of the two arguments will also be discussed. There are two verbs with the meaning ’to give’ in the Samoyedic languages. Despite the distinction in meaning there is a strong tendency in the distribution of the two verbs determined by the person of the receiver, which is well reflected in the reconstruction of the verbs. A distribution similar to the one in Nganasan can be detected in the Enets, the Nenets and the Selkup languages.

Keywords: Nganasan, Selkup, ditransitive construction

POSSESSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN NGANASAN // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2014. Issue 1 (3). P. 76-82

A possessive noun phrase in Nganasan is composed of a possessor and a possessed. In adnominal possession constructions, the possessor always precedes the possessed. The relationship between the modifier (the possessor) and the head (the possessed noun) is encoded by possessive suffixes on the head and/or a Genitive case suffix appearing on the possessor. The structure is head final, i. e. the possessor precedes the possessed. The possessor is a noun or a pronoun. It is characteristic for possession expressed through a predicative construction that the sentence obligatorily includes a verbal predicate. This group can be further divided into sub-groups. In Nganasan appear the so-called transitive constructions (have-possessive), and a construction that is essentially based on an existential construction.

Keywords: Nganasan, possessive

LINGUISTICALLY ANNOTATED SPOKEN NGANASAN CORPUS // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2015. Issue 2 (8). P. 25-34

The paper discusses the key issues of the annotation method employed in the project “Lingustically annotated spoken Nganasan corpus”. The data are processed and stored in the EXMARaLDA format. The annotation of the database involves grammatical and part-of-speech tagging (made in Toolbox or Flex), translation into Russian and English. However, the present paper addresses the questions of syntactic roles, and information structure. For this purpose we use the format designed by other researchers and adapted by us to the Nganasan language. In the paper we describe the system of annotation (tags, terms and their clarification) illustrated by a large amount of Nganasan examples.

Keywords: Nganasan, annotation, corpus, endangered language, language documentation

“I GO DOWNSTREAM, AND YOU GO TOWARD THE SNOWSTORM”: EXPRESSIONS OF CARDINAL DIRECTIONS IN NGANASAN AND DOLGAN // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2022. Issue 4 (38). P. 73-83

This corpus-based study is dedicated to the topic of spatial orientation in two genetically unrelated but geographically neighboring languages, Ngnasan and Dolgan. Nganasan belongs to the Northern-Samoyedic branch of the Uralic language family, while Dolgan is a Turkic language. The Dolgans reached the peninsula later than the Nganasan and inhabited rather the eastern part. The goal is to typologically examine the linguistic realization of the directions of the so-called compass orientation. This is a very well-known fact that many indigenous languages, including many languages spoken in Siberia, do not know compass orientation. According to Brown (1983), speakers of many indigenous languages use three or only two cardinal points, however, in many languages, the speakers do not necessarily use the names of the compass direction but apply other concepts for expressing spatial directions. Brown (1983) identifies several sources of lexemes expressing the cardinal points, such as celestial bodies, which is the most often used source. It also occurs in the Samoyedic languages, e.g. in Selkup, but as we will see, not in the closely related Nganasan. Atmospheric features such as wind, seasons, blizzards, or environment- specific features such as a mountain, forest, or tundra can be metaphorically extended, thereby acting as the conceptual source of cardinal directions. The study follows Brown's typologization and tries to classify the results into their typological categories. We will find similarities and differences between the two languages regarding the conceptual sources. Both languages rely on the so-called landmarks for orientation in the surrounding areas, such as tundra, forest, river, or mountain, but beyond that, Nganasan uses other, non-common categories as well. These reflect a connection to their way of life; thus, it can be interpreted as a culture-specific source, which in turn has its origin in the environment. In contrast, the Nganasans do not use rivers as orientation points at all, although they live partly on the same rivers. Also typical only for the Nganasan is the use of atmospheric features a conceptual source. It does not play a role in any way in the Dolgan.

Keywords: Nganasan, Dolgan, cognitive linguistics, spatial orientation