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The Yeniseian language family
Language family

A language family is a group of languages related Genetic from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with Alpha taxonomy, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics....
 (sometimes known as Yeniseic or Yenisei-Ostyak; occasionally spelt with -ss-) is spoken in central Siberia
Siberia

Siberia , is the name given to the vast region constituting almost all of North Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the Soviet Union from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the 16th century....
.

b>Proto-Yeniseian (before 500 BC; split around 1 AD)
1. Northern Yeniseian (split around 700 AD)
1.1. Ket
Ket language

The Ket language, formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, a Siberian language long thought to be an language isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian languages, is spoken along the middle Yenisei Basin by the Ket people....
 (100-500 speakers) 1.2. Yugh
Yugh language

Yugh is a Yeniseian languages language, closely related to Ket language, formerly spoken by the Yugh people, one of the southern groups along the Yenisei River in central Siberia....
 † (2 or 3 non-fluent speakers in 1991)
2.






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The Yeniseian language family
Language family

A language family is a group of languages related Genetic from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with Alpha taxonomy, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics....
 (sometimes known as Yeniseic or Yenisei-Ostyak; occasionally spelt with -ss-) is spoken in central Siberia
Siberia

Siberia , is the name given to the vast region constituting almost all of North Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the Soviet Union from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the 16th century....
.

Family division

0. Proto-Yeniseian (before 500 BC; split around 1 AD)
1. Northern Yeniseian (split around 700 AD)
1.1. Ket
Ket language

The Ket language, formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, a Siberian language long thought to be an language isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian languages, is spoken along the middle Yenisei Basin by the Ket people....
 (100-500 speakers) 1.2. Yugh
Yugh language

Yugh is a Yeniseian languages language, closely related to Ket language, formerly spoken by the Yugh people, one of the southern groups along the Yenisei River in central Siberia....
 † (2 or 3 non-fluent speakers in 1991)
2. Southern Yeniseian †
2.1. Kott-Assan (split around 1200 AD) 2.1.1. Kott
Kott language

The Kott language is an extinct Yeniseian languages that was formerly spoken in central Siberia by the banks of Mana River, a tributary of the Yenisei river....
 † (extinct by the mid-1800s) 2.1.2. Assan
Assan language

Assan was a Yeniseian languages which became extinct in the 19th century. It was closely related to the Kott language. It is believed to have been a remnant of the Hunnic Yeniseian language....
 † (extinct by 1800) 2.2. Arin-Pumpokol (split around 550 AD) 2.2.1. Arin
Arin language

Arin was a Yeniseian languages language spoken in Russia along the Yenisei River between Yeniseysk and Krasnoyarsk. It is classified as a Southern Yeniseian language, along with Kott language and Assan language....
 † (extinct by 1800) 2.2.2. Pumpokol
Pumpokol language

Pumpokol is one of the Yeniseian languages. It has been extinct since the 18th century....
 † (extinct by 1750)

Only two languages of this family survived into the 20th century, Ket
Ket language

The Ket language, formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, a Siberian language long thought to be an language isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian languages, is spoken along the middle Yenisei Basin by the Ket people....
 (also known as Imbat Ket), with around 1,000 speakers and Yugh (also known as Sym Ket), which is now possibly extinct. The other known members of this family, Arin, Assan, Pumpokol, and Kott, have been extinct for over a century. Other groups – Buklin, Baikot, Yarin, Yastin – are identifiable as Yeniseic-speaking from tsarist fur-tax records compiled during the 17th century, but nothing remains of their languages except a few proper names. It appears from Chinese sources that a Yeniseian group might have been among the peoples that made up the tribal confederation known as the Xiongnu
Xiongnu

The Xiongnu were a confederation of nomadic tribes from Central Asia with a ruling class of unknown origin and other subjugated tribes. They lived on the steppes north of China, and appear in Chinese sources from the 3rd century BC as controlling an empire stretching beyond the borders of modern day Mongolia....
, who have traditionally been considered the ancestors of the Huns
Huns

The Huns were a confederation of Central Asian Eurasian nomads or semi-nomads, who had established an empire in Eurasia. The Huns may have stimulated the Migration Period, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Roman Empire....
, but these suggestions are difficult to substantiate due to the paucity of data.

Family features

The Yeniseian languages share many contact-induced similarities with the South Siberia
Siberia

Siberia , is the name given to the vast region constituting almost all of North Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the Soviet Union from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the 16th century....
n Turkic languages
Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic languages....
, Samoyedic languages
Samoyedic languages

File:Uralic-Yukaghir.pngThe Samoyedic languages are spoken on both sides of the Ural mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by perhaps 30,000 speakers altogether....
, and Evenki. These include long-distance nasal harmony
Consonant harmony

Consonant harmony is a type of "long-distance" phonology assimilation akin to the similar assimilatory process involving vowels, i.e. vowel harmony....
, deaffrication
Lenition

Lenition is a kind of consonant mutation that appears in many languages. Along with assimilation , it is one of the primary sources of historical linguistics of languages....
, and the use of postpositions or grammatical enclitic
Clitic

In linguistics, a clitic is a grammatically independent and phonology dependent word. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level....
s as clausal
Dependent clause

A dependent clause cannot stand alone as a sentence . In itself, a dependent clause does not express a complete thought; therefore, it is usually attached to an independent clause....
 subordinators
Complementizer

A complementizer, as used in linguistics , is a syntactic category roughly equivalent to the term Grammatical conjunction in traditional grammar....
. Yeniseic nominal enclitics closely approximate the case
Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject , of direct object, or of possession ....
 systems of geographically contiguous families.

The Yeniseian languages have been described as having up to four tones or no tones at all. The 'tones' are concomitant with glottalization
Glottalization

Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and voiced consonants is most often realized as creaky voice ....
, vowel length
Vowel length

In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one such as in Australian English....
, and breathy voice
Breathy voice

Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a larger volume of air escapes between them....
, not unlike the situation reconstructed for Old Chinese
Old Chinese

Old Chinese , or Archaic Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken from the Shang Dynasty , well into the Former Han Dynasty ....
 before the development of true tones in Chinese. The Yeniseian languages have highly elaborate verbal morphology, to an extreme found elsewhere in Eurasia only in Burushaski
Burushaski language

Burushaski is a language isolate . It is spoken by some 87,000 Burusho people in the Hunza Valley, Nagar Valley, Yasin Valley, and parts of the Gilgit Valley valleys in the Northern Areas in Pakistan....
 and, to a lesser extent, in the Languages of the Caucasus
Languages of the Caucasus

The languages of the Caucasus are a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea....
 (all of these languages are ergative
Ergative

The term ergative is used in grammar in three different meanings:* Ergative case,* Ergative-absolutive language* Ergative verb...
 as well).

Morphology


Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns in Yeniseian languages
1S 2S 3MS 3FS 1P 2P 3AP
Ket a?(t) u? bu? bu? ?¯?t ~ ?´tn ?´k? bu??
Yugh at u bu bu ?´tn k?´k? béì?
Kott dialects ai au uju ~ hatu uja ~ hata ajo? auo? ~ ao? unia? ~ hatien
Assan aj au bari ? aju? avun hatin
Arin ai au au ? ai? a? ita?
Pumpokol ad u adu ? ad?? aja? ?


Vocabulary


Numerals
The following table exemplifies the basic Yeniseian numerals as well as the various attempts at reconstructing the proto-forms:

   Gloss    Yeniseian languages and dialects Available reconstructions
Northern branch Southern branch
Ket dialects Yugh Kott-Assan Arin-Pumpokol
SK Kott Assan Arin Pumpokol Starostin
1 qu?s ?us hu?t?a hut?a qusej xuta *xu-sa
2 ?¯?n ?¯n i?na ina kina hin?a? *x?na
3 d??? d??? to??a ta?a t?o?a ~ t?u??a dónga *do??a
4 si?k sik t?ega ~ ?e?ga ?ega t?aga ziang *si-
5 qa?k ?ak kega ~ ?e?ga kega qala hejla? *qä-
6 a? ~ à à? ?elut?a gejlut?a ?ga agg?a? *?a?V
7 ??? ??? ?elina gejlina ?n?a on?a? *?o?n-
10 q?¯? ??¯ ha?ga ~ haga xaha qau ~ hioga haja? *??Ga
20 ??k ??k i?nt?uk? inkukn kinthju? hédiang *?e?k ~ xe?k
100 ki? ki? uja?x jus jus útamssa *ki? ~ gi? / *?alVs-(tamsV)


A few etymologies
The following table exemplifies a few basic vocabulary items as well as the various attempts at reconstructing the proto-forms:

Gloss Yeniseian languages and dialects Available reconstructions
Northern branch Southern branch
Ket dialects Yugh Kott-Assan Arin-Pumpokol
SK NK CK Kott Assan Arin Pumpokol Vajda Starostin Werner
LARCH s??s s??s š??š s??s šet cet cit tag *c??ç *se?s *s??t / *t??t
RIVER se?s se?s še?š ses šet šet sat tat *ce?c *ses *set / *tet
STONE t??s t??s t??š c??s šiš šiš kes kit *c???s *c??s *t'??s
FINGER t??q t??q t??q t??? t?o? ?  intoto  tok *t???q *t??q *th??q
RESIN di?k di?k di?k d?ik cik ? ? ? *ci?k *?ik (~-g, -?) *d'ik
WOLF q?¯?t  q?¯?ti   q?¯?t?  ??¯?t (boru < Turkic) qut xotu *q?i?t?i *q?te (˜?-) *q?th?
WINTER k?¯?t k?¯?ti k?¯?te k?¯?t ke?t?i ? lot lete *k?e?t?i *g?te *k?te
LIGHT  k??n  k??n k??n k??n kin ? lum ? *k???n *g??n- ?
PERSON k??d k??d k??d k??t? hit het kit kit *k??t *ke?t ?
TWO ?¯?n ?¯?n ?¯?n ?¯n in in kin hin *k?i?n *x?na *(k)?n
WATER u?l u?l u?l ur ul ul kul ul *k?ul *qo?l (~?-, -r)  ?
BIRCH ùs ù?se ù?s? ù??s uca uuca kus uta *k?u??a *xusa *ku??t'?
  SNOWSLED  súùl súùl šúùl s?´ùl  cogar  c?gar šal ts?l *tseh??l      *so?ol *sog?l (~c/t'-?) 


Proposed relations to other language families

Until 2008, few linguists accepted that connections had been established between Yeniseian and any other language family, though distant connections has been proposed with most of the ergative languages of Eurasia.

Dene-Yenisean

In 2008, Edward Vajda
Edward Vajda

Edward Vajda is a historical linguist at Western Washington University. He has become known for his work on the proposed Den?-Yeniseian languages, seeking to establish that the Ket language of Siberia has a common linguistic ancestor with the Na-Den? languages of North America....
 of Western Washington University
Western Washington University

Western Washington University is one of six public university, university of higher education in the U.S. state of Washington. It is located in Bellingham, Washington and offers bachelor degree and master degree degrees....
 presented evidence, backed by rigorous methodology, for a genealogical relation between the Yeneisian languages of Siberia and the Na-Dene languages of North America.. His paper has been favorably reviewed by several experts on Na-Dene and Yeniseic languages, including Michael Krauss
Michael Krauss

Michael E. Krauss is a linguist who has worked extensively on the Na-Den? languages language family, especially on proto-Athabaskan, pre-proto-Athabaskan, the Eyak language, which became extinct in January 2008, and also numerous other Athabaskan and Eskimo-Aleut languages....
, Jeff Leer, James Kari
James Kari

James Kari is a linguist and Professor Emeritus specializing in Athabascan languages of Alaska.In the past twenty-five years he has done extensive linguistic work in many Athabascan languages including Ahtna language, Dena'ina language, Koyukon language, Deg Hit'an, Holikachuk, Tanana, and Upper Tanana....
, and Heinrich Werner, as well as a number of other well-known linguists, including Bernard Comrie
Bernard Comrie

Bernard Comrie is a British-born linguist. He is a professor at and director of the Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara....
, Johanna Nichols
Johanna Nichols

Linguistics Johanna Nichols is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include the Slavic languages, the linguistic prehistory of northern Eurasia, language typology, ancient linguistic prehistory, and languages of the Caucasus, chiefly Chechen languag...
, Victor Golla, Michael Fortescue
Michael Fortescue

Michael D. Fortescue is a British-born linguistics specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi language and Nitinaht language....
, and Eric Hamp
Eric P. Hamp

Eric Pratt Hamp is an United States linguist. Born November 16 1920, he received his PhD from Harvard University in 1950s and since then he taught at the University of Chicago where he is Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, Departments of Linguistics, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Psychology and the Committe...
. However, it will take some time for the linguistic community to properly evaluate this proposal.

Karasuk

The Karasuk hypothesis, linking Yeniseian to Burushaski
Burushaski language

Burushaski is a language isolate . It is spoken by some 87,000 Burusho people in the Hunza Valley, Nagar Valley, Yasin Valley, and parts of the Gilgit Valley valleys in the Northern Areas in Pakistan....
, has been proposed by several scholars, notably by A.P Dulson and V.N. Toporov. George van Driem, the most prominent current advocate of the Karasuk hypothesis, postulates that the Burusho
Burusho

The Burusho or Brusho people live in the Hunza Valley, Nagar Valley, and Yasin Valley valleys of northern Pakistan. There are also over 300 Burusho living in Srinagar, India....
 people were part of the migration out of Central Asia that resulted in the Indo-European conquest of India.

Sino-Tibetan

As noted by Tailleur and Werner, some of the earliest proposals of genetic relations of Yeniseian, by M.A. Castrén
Matthias Castrén

Matthias Alexander Castr?n was a Finland ethnologist and philologist.Castren was born at Tervola, in the parish of Kemi in Finland, on the 20th of November ....
 (1856), James Byrne (1892), and G.J. Ramstedt (1907), suggested that Yeniseian was a northern relative of the Sino-Tibetan languages. These ideas were followed much later by Kai Donner and Karl Bouda.

Dené-Caucasian

Bouda, in various publications in the 1930s through the 1950s, described a linguistic network that (besides Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan) also included Caucasian
North Caucasian languages

North Caucasian languages is a blanket term for two language Language family spoken chiefly in the north Caucasus and Turkey: the Northwest Caucasian languages family and the Northeast Caucasian languages family ; the latter includes the former North-central Caucasian languages family....
, and Burushaski, some forms of which have gone by the name of Sino-Caucasian. The works of R. Bleichsteiner and O.G. Tailleur, the late Sergei A. Starostin and Sergei L. Nikolayev have sought to confirm these connections. Others who have developed the hypothesis, often expanded to Dené-Caucasian, include J.D. Bengtson, V. Blažek, J.H. Greenberg (with M. Ruhlen), and M. Ruhlen. George Starostin continues his father's work in Yeniseian, Sino-Caucasian and other fields.

External links

  • by Edward Vajda, a proponent of the Yeniseian-Na-Dene connection.
  • by Edward Vajda.
  • from the Santa Fe Institute
    Santa Fe Institute

    The Santa Fe Institute is a non-profit research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico and dedicated to the study of complex systems....
    .
  • by Merritt Ruhlen.
  • by S. A. Starostin.
  • ] by S. A. Starostin. 2005.
  • ] by S. A. Starostin. 2005.


Footnotes