A Grammar of Kolyma Yukaghir (review)

Kolyma (Southern) Yukaghir (KY), one of the two surviving languages of the Yukaghir language family, is a highly endangered language spoken by some fifty people (out of about 1,000 ethnic Kolyma Yukaghirs) in the village of Nelemnoye in the Upper Kolyma district, Sakha (Yakutia) Republic (Russian Federation), as well by perhaps the same number of people in scattered places in Sakha. Although the two Yukaghir languages are conventionally classified as ‘genetically isolated’, there is (vague) evidence that suggests a closer linkage with the Uralic language family.

Maslova’s presentation of KY maintains the high standard of the Mouton ‘grammar library’ series. It is based on M’s extensive fieldwork and pays special attention to textual data. Interviews and elicitation have helped her to verify the authenticity of the textual data and to augment the database. Still, she is very cautious in using this kind of data.

M’s grammar represents the first account of KY that follows the standard of a typologically oriented grammar designed as a reference grammar. It includes fourteen sections, four appendices (Yukaghir-English vocabulary, ‘non-productive verb derivation’, and two texts), and ends in notes, a list of references, and a subject index.

In the introductory section (1–17), M gives a brief overview of KY grammar and discusses the technical aspects related to the production of the reference grammar. Ch. 2 turns to sociolinguistic aspects and argues in favor of interpreting the two varieties of Yukaghir (Tundra and Kolyma) as distinct languages, rather than dialects. Ch. 3 presents the phonology of KY (29–59). M uses a largely phonemic transcription (replacing certain IPA symbols with language-specific ones) to illustrate the phonological inventory, allophonic variants, phonotactics, and phonological as well as morphophonemic alternations. Finally, M discusses Yukaghir stress patterns (stress usually falls on heavy syllables or, if not given, on the final syllable).

Ch. 4 turns to ‘grammar’ in the narrow sense of the term. Interestingly though, it does not treat ‘morphology’ and ‘syntax’ separately. All individual sections of the grammar are form-to-function based, starting with a description of the formal apparatus before discussing the functional scope of a given form or paradigm. The basic organization of the grammar section is set in the first sections by ‘parts of speech’ and subsequently by phrasal typology. Yukaghir conforms to the ‘Altaic’ type of grammatical organization (which includes heavy (accusativity-based) dependency marking, suffix-agglutination, and nominalization strategies in subordination). However, Yukaghir differs from standard ‘Altaic’ patterns in a number of ways (including an ergative-based strategy to mark constituent focus on verbs and an elaborated switch-reference system). Ch. 4 also deals with parts of speech and inflectional paradigms (61–72), distinguishing verbs, nouns, and five closed classes (including pro-forms, postpositions, and others). Nominal morphology is described in Ch. 5 (73–138) (the basic pattern is X-number-possessive-case). All nine case forms, as well as patterns of number formation and the category ‘possessive’, are illustrated with highly illuminating examples. Verb morphology is introduced in Ch. 6 (139–231), where M distinguishes four subparadigms: finite forms (marked for both prefixes (including an affirmative, an irrealis marker, and the negator) and their suffixes (for TAM categories, number, and agreement)), attributive forms, nominal forms, and switch-reference forms (converbs). Ch. 7 (233–79) concentrates on the morphology of closed classes, including pronouns, numerals, and postpositions.

Chs. 8 through 14 address the structural and syntactic properties of KY. The noun phrase is presented in Ch. 8 (281–323), whereas the syntax of the clause is described in Ch. 9 (325–68). Using the well-established S-, A-, O-typology, M argues in favor of both a semantically motivated O-split and a pragmatically motivated (focus-based) S-split. Clause chaining is illustrated in Ch. 10 (369–400), and subordination is extensively described in Ch. 11 (401–35). Ch. 12 (437–72) turns to the focus system of Yukaghir, which plays a crucial role in the pragmatic organization...