Languages and prehistory of central Siberia (review)

Volga German by birth and dialectologist by training, Andreas Dulson (1900–1973) first established his reputation as an expert on the German dialects spoken in Russia. Exiled to Siberia in 1941, he developed an interest in the origins and ancient migrations of the area’s autochthonous inhabitants. In Tomsk he founded a vibrant school of Siberian studies that flourishes to this day. In deciphering aboriginal prehistory, Dulson considered a wide variety of data from historical documents, archeological digs, ethnography, substrate toponyms, and especially the local languages. This multidisciplinary approach to ethnogenesis is now widely followed.

Dulson’s varied accomplishments find perfect resonance in this volume, edited by the well-known Siberianist Edward Vajda and dedicated to the centenary of the scholar’s birth. The breadth of Dulson’s interests is nicely complemented by sections on Yeniseic (Ket), Selkup, and South Siberian Turkic (mainly Khakas and Chulym), and finally by a section on archeological perspectives on the linguistic origins of these peoples. Most articles were written originally in Russian by Dulson’s students and translated by the editor.

In the years before his death in 1973, Dulson studied archeology, history, toponymy, and especially Ket language structure. The editor’s foreword briefly discusses the scholar’s life and career (vii–viii), about which more can be found in Erica Becker’s Prof.-Dr. Andreas Dulson (1900–1973): Sein Leben und Werk in Erinnerungen seiner Schüler (Hamburg: Ural-Altaic Society, 1999). A full annotated bibliography of his publications appeared in Vajda’s Yeniseian peoples and languages (Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001).

Dulson’s study of substrate river names led him to document the surviving dialects of Ket. He was the first scholar to grasp the key importance of Yeniseic languages in the overall picture of Siberian prehistory. Among the better-known families of Eurasia today, Ket is an isolated ethno-linguistic island. Unlocking the origins of the Yeniseic-speaking peoples holds special significance for Inner Asian prehistory and perhaps for world history more generally.

The sixteen contributing articles address synchronic and diachronic problems in Yeniseic, Samoyedic, and Turkic, including number systems, plural formation, noun incorporation, allomorphy, morphological reanalysis, loanwords, and spiritual terminology. Three discuss revelations from archeology about the linguistic identity of prehistoric Siberian peoples. It is unfortunate that no article deals specifically with toponyms, though several do reference Dulson’s findings on the Ket etymologies of river names.

The editor’s interest in Dulson’s life and work is not coincidental, since he himself has been studying many of the same problems intensively for several years (see Vajda’s Ket, Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2004). Among the contributors, one should also mention Gregory Anderson, whose masterful introduction (1–119) provides the first modern overview in English of genetic and areal linguistic interrelations in this part of the world. Also noteworthy are two articles by Gregory Anderson and David Harrison on Chulym Turkic, which Dulson first identified as a separate linguistic entity in the 1950s but which had hitherto been studied rather little.

This volume holds particular value for anyone interested in the aboriginal languages of central Siberia. For the history of linguistics as a discipline, it is significant for bringing international attention to the legacy of Andreas Dulson.