Tundra Yukaghir (review)

The complement to her larger work on Kolyma Yukaghir, this volume by Maslova is the first comprehensive description of Tundra Yukaghir grammatical structure in English.

Yukaghir is a small language family consisting of two languages/dialects, conventionally called Kolyma (odul) and Tundra (wadul). Some believe it to be genetically isolated (sometimes grouped together in the heterogeneous geographical category ‘Paleosiberian’), while others consider Yukaghir to be a distant sister to the Uralic language family.

The Tundra Yukaghir language is spoken in two villages, Andryushkino and Kolymskoe, in the Lower Kolyma district of northeast Siberia. Both now are critically endangered, spoken by fewer than 120 people (total for both languages). Speakers are rapidly being assimilated to either Russian (in Kolymskoe) or to Yakut/Sakha (in Andryushkino).

The book consists of four chapters. Ch. 1 (1–10) is the ‘Introduction’. It provides basic demographic information on the Tundra (and Kolyma) Yukaghir, the salient typological features of the language, and a very cursory description of phonology and morphophonology.

Ch. 2, ‘Verb’ (11–33), covers the complex verb structure of the language. This involves such topics as aktionsart, valence-changing devices, referent properties, and the areally common category of desiderative. This chapter includes the noteworthy system of subject and object focus marking in the verb (19–20) and a brief discussion of negative forms in Tundra Yukaghir (22–24).

Ch. 3, ‘Noun phrase’ (35–63), covers a range of topics including pronominals, quantifiers, and the elaborate and unique system of case marking found in Tundra Yukaghir. Theoretical linguists and typologists will find of particular interest M’s discussion of the unusual system of marked ‘neutral’ and ‘focus’ case inflection (51–55).

Finally the last chapter, ‘Syntax’ (65–79), covers such topics as interrogative and imperative types, subordinate clause formation through nominalization, and the system of clause chaining and switch reference as well.

These chapters are followed by an excellent long text in Tundra Yukaghir (81–89), with interlinear glosses and followed by a free English translation. The book ends with a brief list of references and a very useful subject index.

M offers a nice description of the case system of Tundra Yukaghir, which, as in many indigenous languages of Siberia, is complex and elaborate. However, it is the areally and typologically unusual neutral and focus case forms that merit particular attention. Her presentation of the switch reference system of Tundra Yukaghir, an underdescribed but not uncommon feature of complex sentence structure (in narrative genres) in Native Siberian languages, is particularly welcome.

M’s treatment of Tundra Yukaghir phonology is too scant. There is no mention of stress placement and no justification (e.g. with minimal pairs or something similar) of the palatalized/nonpalatalized opposition in the consonants (a complex, variable, and diffuse feature of north-central Siberian languages). In the chapter on syntax, her treatment of casemarked subordination strategies is too brief as well. However, Tundra Yukaghir is overall an excellent resource and an invaluable contribution to the growing body of English-language research on the vanishing indigenous languages of Siberia.