With this descriptive grammar of Nganasan Beáta Wagner-Nagy presents a comprehensive description of the highly endangered Samoyedic language, spoken only by a small number of individuals on Siberia’s Taimyr Peninsula. Based on corpus data from the Nganasan Spoken Language Corpus as well as field work the grammar follows a traditional structure. Contents range from a description of phonetic features and phonological processes over word classes, morphological features to syntactic and semantic properties. The grammar highlights morphophonological alternations as well as the pragmatic organization of Nganasan. A discussion of the core vocabulary completes the account in addition to two sample texts.
The grammar reflects significant typological aspects thus serving as a reasonable basis for further comparison in Uralic studies.
A Grammar of Nganasan
Description
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Abbreviations and Symbols
Tables, Figures and Maps
1 Introduction
1 The People
2 The Language
3 Language Data
2 Phonetics and Phonology
1 Consonants
2 Vowels
3 Possible Combinations of Consonants and Vowels
4 Syllable Structure
5 Syllabification
6 Prosodic Characteristics
7 Morphophonological Rules
3 Word Classes
1 Nouns
2 Adjectives
3 Verbs
4 Pronominal Items
5 Adverbs
6 Postposition
7 Numerals and Quantifiers
8 Conjunctions und Particles
9 Interjections and Onomatopoetic Words
4 Nominal Inflection
1 Stems and Their Formation
2 Number and Its Usage
3 Case and Its Functions
4 Possessive Inflection
5 Destinative
5 Verbal Inflection
1 Conjugation Types and Agreement
2 Aspect
3 Tense
4 Mood
5 Stems
6 Aspect
7 Conjugations Types
8 Tense
9 Mood and Modality
10 Non-finite Verb Forms
6 Evidentiality
1 Inferred Evidentiality
2 Reported Evidentiality
3 Sensory Evidentiality
7 Verbal Valence and Valence-Changing Operations
1 Verbal Valence
2 Valence-Changing Operations
8 The Structure of the Noun Phrase
1 Attributive Modifiers
2 Determined Noun Phrase (DP)
3 Quantified Noun Phrase
4 Noun Phrase as Modifier
5 Constituent Order in NPs
6 Coordination within NP and Comitative Constructions
7 Definiteness within the NP
9 Types of Predicate
1 Verbal Predication
2 Non-verbal Predicate
3 Existential and Locative Clauses
4 Possessive Clauses
10 Simple Sentences
1 Clause Participant and Grammatical Relations in Sentences
2 Basic Sentence Types
3 Constituent Order
4 Comparative Constructions
11 Ditransitive Constructions
1 Coding of Recipient and Addressee
2 Coding the Beneficiary
3 Coding the Theme
12 Negation
1 Sentence Negation
2 Constituent Negation
3 Other Negative Constructions
13 Clause Combining
1 Coordination
2 Complementation
3 Adverbial Clauses
4 Relative Clauses
14 Discourse Organization
1 Word Order and Information Structuring
2 Reference Tracking
3 Direct and Indirect Speech
15 Lexicon
1 Noun Class Semantics and Sub-classification
2 Adjective Class Semantics and Sub-classification
3 Verb Class Semantics and Sub-classification
4 Loanwords
16 Word Formation
1 Compounding
2 Conversion
3 Broadening and Narrowing of Meaning
4 Word Creation
5 Stem Vowel Alternation
6 Derivation
7 Clitic-Like Morphemes
17 Text Samples
1 My Life
2 Nenets Man and the Giant
References
Index
Author Description
Beáta Wagner-Nagy, Ph.D. (2000) University of Szeged (Hungary), is Professor of Finno-Ugric/Uralic studies at the University of Hamburg. She has published several articles and books on Samoyedic languages as well as linguistic typology.