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Structural and Semantic Analysis of Common and Generalized Food Names in the Selkup Language // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2023. Issue 4 (42). P. 45-54

The article presents a comprehensive study of the vocabulary of common and generalized food names in the Selkup language, which has not yet been the subject of a linguistic description. The study made it possible to identify and systematize common or generalized food names, clarify the period of their formation, carry out a morphosyntactic analysis of the lexemes, examine their word formation activity, determine the capacity for semantic derivation, determine the internal form of complex and compound lexical units, to identify common and generalized food names and their derivatives, to analyze sentence expressions with the component denoting a common and generalized food name, to carry out a contextual analysis of common and generalized food names on the material of household texts. The author used research methods such as descriptive analysis, comparative historical analysis, component analysis, and quantitative analysis. Selkup language dictionaries served as sources for the Selkup language. The work of leading linguists on the etymology, phonetics, and grammar of the Selkup language enabled us to carry out a comprehensive analysis. As a result of the research carried out, it was found that the common and generalized names of food in the Selkup language go back to the verb stem *ǝm- ‘to eat’ from the common Samoyed period of formation. Twenty-six dialect variants of common and generalized food names were identified in the modern Selkup language. They have different morphosyntactic structures: simple non-derivatives (10), simple derivatives (14), and compound names (2). The lexemes studied have a polysemy based on metonymic transference. Nouns (9) and compound names (13) are also formed from the stem *ǝm- ‘eat,’ which denotes objects and phenomena directly or indirectly related to food. Most nouns are represented by simple derived lexemes (7), but one complex word and one word formed by transformation have been identified. Compound names can be bipartite (11) or tripartite (2), consisting of an adjective or adverb and a noun.

Keywords: food names, Selkup language, structural and semantic analysis, vocabulary of traditional foods, indigenous language

Unpublished Selkup Stories, as Recorded by A. Dulzon in 1962 // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2025. Issue 2 (48). P. 155-163

The article presents five of the fourteen archival Selkup stories recorded by A. Dulzon in 1962 during an expedition to the village of Novosondrovo, Kolpashevsky district, Tomsk oblast: ‘The soul of man flies to God,’ ‘Sparks fly from the chimney,’ ‘Something is burning in the hut,’ ‘I don’t know where it is burning,’ ‘Nobody has pity on me.’ The field materials are kept in the archive of the Department of Siberian Indigenous Languages at Tomsk State Pedagogical University. A. Dulzon’s informant was Maria Pavlovna Pedogina, a speaker of the Middle Ob dialect of the Selkup language. The stories reflect various aspects of the life of the Selkup ethnic group, as well as mythological notions and ideas about spiritual and material culture. The texts verbalize the oldest fragments of the Selkups’ linguistic worldview, such as the personification of fire and the worship of the earth. The story ‘The Human Soul Flies to God’ represents the Selkups’ beliefs and ideas about the body and the soul. The Selkup culture has a dual interpretation of the origin of life: 1) the origin of life from heaven (spiritual life – the soul), 2) the origin of life from the earth (material life – the body). Heaven is the abode of the deity who gives life by sending out the soul embryo with the rays of the sun, and this soul returns there after the end of earthly life. The stories ‘Sparks fly from the chimney’, ‘Something is burning in the hut,’ and ‘I don’t know where it’s burning’ objectify the personification of fire, describe prohibitions associated with fire, and verbalize the idea of controlled and uncontrolled burning. Fire needs nourishment to stay alive, and the process of burning itself can be seen as a constant fire-fest. The story ‘Nobody has pity on me’ reflects the image of the earth. The earth is personified and endowed with the capacity for compassion and empathy, and it is compared to a mother. The texts have not yet been published and analyzed; linguistic and cultural commentaries accompany them. The main purpose of this article is to publish archived Selkup materials that are of great value to the scholarly community.

Keywords: A. Dulzon, unpublished texts, stories, Middle Ob dialect, Selkup language, linguocultural commentary