Proto-Samoyed

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Proto-Samoyed or Proto-Samoyedic is the reconstructed ancestral language of the Samoyed languages, i.e. Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, Selkup, as well as extinct Kamas and Mator. Samoyedic is one of the principal branches of the Uralic language family, and its ancestor is Proto-Uralic.

[edit] Phonology

A fairly complex system of vowel phonemes is reconstructed for Proto-Samoyed:

Front Back
Unrounded Rounded Unrounded Rounded
Close i ü ï u
Mid e ö ë o
Open ä a å
Reduced ə

Even though the number of vowel phonemes was high, there were no long vowels or diphthongs. A peculiar feature of the reconstructed vowel system is the occurrence of vowel sequences, which consisted of any full vowel followed by the reduced vowel /ə/: for example, *tuə 'feather', *kåəså 'man'. These sequences were not diphthongs, because the vowels belonged to separate syllables. Evidence of the vowel sequences has been preserved in only part of the Samoyed languages, primarily in Nganasan and Enets.

Proto-Samoyed had vowel harmony like many other Uralic languages. Harmony determined whether a front vocalic or a back vocalic allomorph of a suffix was used. However, the restrictions imposed by vowel harmony were not absolute because also disharmonic word-stems can be reconstructed. Such stems break vowel harmony by combining front and back vowels: e.g. Proto-Samoyed *kålä 'fish'.

In contrast to the vowel system, the consonant system is rather simple with only 13 phonemes:

labial dental palatal velar
stop p t k
affricate c
sibilant s
nasal m n ń ŋ
lateral l
trill r
semivowel w j

The exact sound value of the affricate is not entirely clear; it may originally have been retroflex rather than dental or alveolar.

Initial consonant clusters were not allowed, so words could begin with a maximum of one consonant. Also the consonants /r/ and /ŋ/ were not allowed in word initium. Final consonant clusters were allowed only if the first consonant in the cluster was j, as in *wajŋ 'breath'. Inside words clusters of two consonants were common. Clusters of three consonants were possible only if the first consonant of the cluster was j, as in *wajkkə 'neck'.

The first syllable of words was always stressed, and hence there was no contrastive stress. There were no contrastive tones.

[edit] Grammar

Proto-Samoyed was a fairly typical agglutinative language with only little morphophonological alteration.

Three numbers were distinguished: singular, dual and plural. Possession was indicated with possessive suffixes.

Nouns distinguished seven cases:

Verbs were conjugated for mood, tense, number and person. There were also separate subjective and objective conjugations.

[edit] References

Janhunen, Juha 1998. Samoyedic. In: Daniel Abondolo (ed.), The Uralic Languages, pp. 457-479. London / New York: Routledge.