Analytical Constructions with Auxiliary Verbs in the Vakh and Vasyugan Dialects of Khanty

Kovylin Sergei Vasilievich

DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2025-4-29-38

Information About Author:

Sergei V. Kovylin, Candidate of Philological Sciences, assistant professor of the Department of Indigenous Languages of Siberia. Tomsk State Pedagogical University. Kievskaya St., 60, Tomsk, Russia, 634061. Research fellow of the Department of Foreign Languages of the School of Social Sciences. National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University. Leninа Ave., 30, Tomsk, Russia, 634050. E-mail: kovylin.ser@yandex.ru; ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0108-9214; SPIN-code: 7895-7970; Scopus Author ID: 57193849387; WoS Researcher ID: G-5839-2018.

This paper examines the distribution study of constructions with auxiliary verbs in the Vakh and Vasyugan dialects of the Khanty language. The formation of these units in the dialects occurs through a grammaticalization process, involving their phonetic, morphosyntactic, and functional adaptation. In Vakh, auxiliary verbs such as wəl- ‘be’, wəs- ‘be’, and ku ̇̆ rt- (ku ̇̆ r-) ‘cannot’ are used; in Vasyugan, wəl- ‘be’, jӛ- ‘become’, игли- / ыглы- ‘auxiliary verb’, wér- ‘do’, and ku ̇̆ rt- ‘cannot’ are found. These auxiliaries appear with the following types of basic elements: in both Vakh and Vasyugan, with the negative existential predicate ӛntim and with verbs in the infinitive form; in Vasyugan, also with borrowed lexemes or word forms. Their compatibility is limited to six positions, with the Vasyugan dialect exhibiting a wider variety of analytical constructions. The auxiliaries wəl- ‘be’, wəs- ‘be’, jӛ- ‘become’, wer- ‘do’, and ku ̇̆ rt- (in Vakh also ku ̇̆ r-) ‘cannot’ have not undergone significant phonetic erosion, do not take stress in a syntagma, do not show a tendency to become clitics, but are marked by a relative pause before the main semantically significant elements of the analytical construction. Игли- / ыглы- ‘auxiliary verb’, in the Vasyugan idiom of the materials of Makary (Nevsky), is also always separated by a space (pause) in writing. The auxiliary verbs wəl- ‘be’ and wəs- ‘be’ are fixed with the negative existential predicate ӛntim and serve only grammatical functions. Wer- ‘make’ is used with any borrowed lexeme or word form; игли- / ыглы- ‘auxiliary verb’ and ku ̇̆ rt- (ku ̇̆ r-) ‘cannot’ begin to appear in combinations with infinitive forms; игли- / ыглы- ‘auxiliary verb’ shows signs of a reduced inflectional paradigm; ku ̇̆ rt- (ku ̇̆ r-) ‘cannot’ is not usually used as the main verb. In prototypical cases, auxiliary elements follow the main semantically significant lexeme, and the analytical construction itself is located at the end of the sentence.

Keywords: analytical constructions, auxiliary verbs, Khanty dialects

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Issue: 4, 2025

Series of issue: Issue 4

Rubric: LINGUISTICS

Pages: 29 — 38

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