Ob-Ugric, V
Last session we looked at a table summarising the main features of Sygva Vogul verbs, including the order of various inflectional suffixes.
In Sygva, the order of these suffixes is not as fixed as in Hungarian, where mood and tense markers always precede personal suffixes. While Hungarian has an entirely different paradigm of personal suffixes to indicate that the verb has a definite direct object, in Sygva we find a set of inflectional morphemes, inserted between the mood/tense/passive voice markers and the personal suffixes, to indicate the definite direct object.
The order of passive voice and mood/tense markers also varies. Sygva Vogul is more elaborate in marking number: it has a separate set of verb endings for singular, double, and for three or more subjects and objects. This is even more interesting if we take into account the fact that the Vogul noun system lacks an accusative case marker. As a result, definite direct objects are indicated only by means of a set of inflectional morphemes. As is often the case with languages lacking an accusative case marker, Vogul has a passive voice marker which can precede or follow the tense/mood markers.
In the second part of the session we discussed methods of internal reconstruction and systematic correspondences, the ‘sound laws’ of the Ugric languages. Peter drew our attention to the misunderstanding that gives rise to the popular belief about Hungarian according to which ‘Hungarian doesn’t like consonant clusters’. This statement might come as surprise if we consider that the Hungarian noun system abounds in derived or root words such as boncnok, stráfkocsi, krumplistészta, etc. The Hungarian verb system is more archaic than the noun system, which is why the above belief holds only in the case of verbs, which preserved more archaic elements of the Ugric phonotactic system. Nouns must be able to take any kind of ending, among them suffixes starting with a consonant without a linking vowel, unlike verbs, which do not allow a suffix added to the stem without vowel insertion if the verb ends in a consonant cluster and the first sound of the suffix is a consonant as well (e.g. parasztnak (NOUN: sz + t +n), akasztanak (VERB: sz + t + a + n).
We discussed changes affecting the sounds β and γ, which are the two extreme ends of the vocal tract, hence, they are more likely to disappear or to be replaced by a vowel if the extra syllable is needed.
After that we turned to the Zyrian and Tatar loanwords in Vogul and Ostyak dialects, and looked at charts showing the distribution of loans of various origin among the various dialects.
We also looked at etymological relations between the Hungarian, Ostyak and Vogul lexicon and explored arguments for and against the existence of a Ugric language branch within the Uralic languages.
The next couple of sessions will be spent looking at a bear poem, and a translation by Gyula Illyés.
February 18th, 2007 at 10:50 am
“parasztnak” is not a verb, but a noun in the dative
February 18th, 2007 at 10:50 am
sorry scratch that, I misread