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Dec. 29th, 2017 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonflower77To a considerable extent, Nivkh spoken language is defined by this consonant alternation, which continuously gives rise to new lexical forms. One could argue that various words that denote objects, concepts, properties, states or actions have no fixed default form whatsoever (no dictionary form), or at least that their contextual varieties deviate very noticeably from the original form.
J. A. Kreinovich was the first scholar to decipher this mysterious peculiarity of the language. He determined that the consonant shifts were not determined by the speaker’s intuition or whims or caused by physiological stress (such as friction or irritation of the vocal chords), in other words, that they were not intended to facilitate pronunciation, but were governed by a set of specific rules. This made it possible to correctly identify the stems and roots merged with a noun or verb in the given utterance, as well as the suffixes, postpositions and particles, to accurately isolate the separate morphemes or phonemes used to draw semantic distinctions, as opposed to those that do not constitute individual lexical units and appear only when the final sound of a word converges with the initial sound of the subsequent word, or when a word takes a suffix.
As a scholar who specialized in examining the languages and culture of the peoples who had no writing systems of their own and relied exclusively on oral tradition (including but not limited to the Nivkh), Kreinovich concluded that language first appeared in order to describe actions, which were the first to be conceived by human consciousness. History began when man started to alter the environment and adapt it to his needs, which implied having to act. The actions, in turn, were directed at a specific object in one’s immediate surroundings. This gave rise to the word order we can see in contemporary Nivkh: the name of the target object, which comes first, blends with the name of the action directed at it without the use of suffixes.
The subject (noun) and predicate (verb) are the axis around which the other parts of speech are positioned. The subject is preceded by attributive modifiers, whereas the predicate is preceded by direct and indirect complements, which, in turn, are preceded by their own attributive modifiers.
Example from Kreinovich’s paper on Nivkh phonetics and phonology.
Consider the most basic sentence consisting of nothing but the subject and the predicate in their original, constant form:
qan řudʲ “a dog chases, pursues”
The subject is qan “a dog”; the predicate is řudʲ “chases, pursues”
Let us add a direct complement – the word qan “a dog”:
qan qantʰudʲ “a dog pursues a (another) dog”
The subject (qan “a dog”) has remained unchanged, while the complement (qan “a dog”) has merged with the predicate (řudʲ “chases, pursues”) into the compound form *qantʰudʲ (“pursues a dog”), where the initial voiceless consonant ř was transformed into the aspirated voiceless consonant tʰ.
Let us add the following attributive modifiers: či “you (sg.)”, ni “I”, čandʲ “white”:
čxan nʲsangantʰudʲ [č-xan nʲ-san-gan-tʰudʲ] “your dog is pursuing my white dog”
In the subject-related part of the sentence, the shortened personal pronoun či “you (sg.)” (č-), which performs a possessive function, turned the word qan into *xan. In the subject-related part of the sentence, the attributive modifiers were merged with the words they describe, and then, along with the direct complement, with the predicate. The shortened personal pronoun ni “I” (nʲ-) which performs a possessive function, combined with the qualitative verb čand “to be white”, resulted in the form *nʲsan “my white”; this attributive compound form merges with the complement (qan “a dog”), creating the form *nʲsangan “my white dog”, whereas the latter merges with the predicate (řudʲ “chases, pursues”), which yields *nʲsangantʰudʲ “my white dog pursues”. Taken separately, none of the lexical forms *č, *nʲ,*xan, *gan, *san, *tʰudʲ can be regarded as “words” despite seeming to be such; these are not lexical units per se and do not convey any individual meaning.
Nouns may be merged with the following attributive modifiers: noun roots, various pronouns, and the roots of active, stative, attributive or quantitative verbs.
Examples:
- tyknʲ ″claw, talon″, kek ″fox″, kotr ″bear″: kekryknʲ ″a fox’s claw″, kotrtyknʲ ″a bear’s claw″;
- täk ″cradle″, ni ″I″, if ″he″, nʲyn ″we″, adʲ ″that one″: nʲzak ″my cradle″, čsak ″your cradle″, idäk ″his cradle″, nʲyndäk ″our cradle″, adäk ″the cradle of that one″.
Several different attributive modifiers may be merged with a single word they are meant to modify (separated by dashes for the sake of greater clarity): vike, pilkar-tot-vara-kry-nʲаkrtox-vinan, xy-kry-yxuin mаtʲki-čnaj-vara-dyv-nʲаkr xumgjan “while walking, having come-to-the-large-armlike-one-rock at-the edge-of this-rock one-imagelike-small-house was situated”.
Verbs functioning as a direct complement may merge with nouns, pronouns or other verbs:
- rugdʲ ″chooses″, puf ″a saw″, pos ″material, substance″: pufdugdʲ ″chooses a saw″, postugdʲ ″chooses the material″,
- řadʲ ″fries, roasts″, tüs ″meat, flesh″: tüstadʲ ″roasts meat″,
- inʲdʲ ″eats″, ni ″I″, urladʲ ″good″, inʲnydʲ ″food, meal″: ni urla-inänydʲ nidʲ ″I ate good food″.
The process whereby the stem morphemes or words are linked together does yield any stable new compound lexical units, but, rather, produces accidental, transient combinations, which are used to express the concepts most relevant at the present moment, in the here-and-now. These combinations do not exist on their own and are used exclusively to convey a particular meaning relevant at the moment of speaking. Kreinovich referred to them as incorporation-based lexical complexes. The most engaging syntactic feature of these combinations is the fact that they are formed by merging different parts of the sentence into a single whole: the attributive modifier merges with the subject it modifies, the object of an action with the transitive verb. Some of the individual words undergo phonological modification in the process, others lose their morphological markers.
This curious syntactic formation is an independent linguistic unit – a lexical complex occupying an intermediate position between a word and a phrase.
Kreinovich specifies the source of the phonological alterations as follows. The word for “arrow” is kʰu (ku); however, in the phrase “my arrow” (nʲ-xu) the same word is modified into *xu, whereas in “his arrow” (i-kʰu) it is once again reverted to kʰu. The informant was unable to explain why this was so and merely noted with some irritation that this was simply how this were, and one was meant to say this way and not any other.
Phonemic inventory
There has been considerable disagreement among researchers when it came to interpreting the various issues pertaining to Nivkh grammar, mainly phonetics. For example, N. Zeland believed that Nivkh had the same range of sounds as Russian. Wilhelm Grube found 15 vowels and 48 consonants, N. Akira found 12 vowels and 23 consonants, L. Y. Sternberg discovered over 20 vowels and 63 consonants. Finally, E.A. Kreinovich was able to define the precise number of phonemes of the Nivkh language: 6 vowels and 33 consonants.
Vowels
i u
е о
а y
In L.A. Sternberg’s opinion, the vowels in Nivkh are characterized by a lax, labile, unstable or indefinite articulation. They are pronounced with a slight hoarse resonance, with easy transitions between vowels. In the texts published by the scholar, they are inserted among the consonants in abundance. He apparently regarded the individual and spoken varieties as separate phonemes. In contrast, E. A. Krejnovich rejected the possibility of semi-vowels or ¼ connective vowels being present between the consonants; as a result, his descriptions allow us to see the basic framework of the language, its backbone, as it were. For example, according to Sternberg, itynt ″to speak″, niγyvyn ″man, human being″, hunevunt ″is situated, located somewhere″, whereas according to Kreinovich, the same words are pronounced as itnt, niγvn, hunvnt.
The vowel i corresponds to the open German i.
The vowel е behaves as a geminate ie or ei.
The vowel а is a low front vowel.
The vowel u is fairly closed, uttered with the lower lip slowly moving forward.
The vowel о is less open than the German о.
The vowel y is a mid vowel, essentially a delabialized o; uttered without rounding, with the lower lip moving forward. The articulation would correspond to a vowel positioned inbetween the Hungarian ö and ü. Highly flexible, easily transformed into i, e, a. The y in the Amur dialect is the equivalent of the East Sakhalin a.
The articulation of the vowels is identical in the East Sakhalin and Amur dialects, but different in the North Sakhalin one: in the latter there is a tangible pharyngealization in the word-initial position, the vowels are articulated with a prominent preceding hoarseness, with the tongue pulled far backward. The articulation of the consonants that follow also starts in the larynx.
For the time being, the role of the vowels in drawing semantic distinctions between words remains insignificant. There is a correlation between the emotional coloring and pitch: a vowel pronounced as high-pitched will express surprise or joy, whereas the same vowel in a low pitch will convey vexation, discontent or sadness. In the Amur dialect, a compensatory lengthening occurred due to the omission of the fricatives g and G, giving rise to the distinction between short and long vowels.
Consonants
Consonants play a paramount role in the Nivkh language. Apart from being building blocks for the phonemic inventory, they serve as the main carriers of lexical meaning.
Plosives:
tenuis p b t d tʲ dʲ k g k g
aspirated пх tʰ čʰ kʰ kʰ
Fricatives f v ř r х γ х γ h
s z
Nasals m n nʲ ŋ
Glides l j
The unvoiced rhotic sound ř deserves particular attention. It is articulated by touching the lower part of the tongue tip to the upper incisors and comes in diverse versions: the sound may resemble «r», «š», «šš», «ž», «s», «rž», «žž» and could also be treated as an affricate.
The palatalized aspirated sound t (tʲʰ) is similar to čʰ.
The closest equivalent of the sound ŋ is the English ng.
The sounds s and z are pronounced with a slight lisp.
In the word-final position, the sound m turned into b once the nasals were omitted.
In most cases, the sound b occurs in synthetic phrases and is the result of alternation between v and p. It is found in the intervocalic position in six proper names, in the initial position in another proper name and in the final position in two other nouns. When preceded by a nasal in the word-final position, the sound morphs into b.
The sound d is the result of alternation between r and t. Occurs in the word-initial position in one nominal and in the intervocalic position in ten others. Found in the word-final position only in the East Sakhalin dialect in the indicative mood, where it appears owing to the nasal omission, but if the n is not dropped, the t can still be heard. When the verb takes the marker -ra, the element -n- is preserved, but the t still becomes d.
The sound dʲ results from alternation between z and t and does not occur in the word-initial position. In the Amur dialect, where the nasal element -n- is omitted, the vast majority of the indicative forms end in dʲ.
All of the foregoing goes to prove that the voiced plosives appeared later than the other sounds. They occur when tenuis plosives alternate with voiced fricatives and are preceded by a nasal, and first appeared in the word-final and intervocalic positions due to the omission of m, n, ŋ. For instance, in the mid-20th century the word for silk, čʰarmp, turned into čʰаrb. The voiced plosives have not yet turned into full phonemes and are still in the process of becoming such. They do not serve to make any semantic distinctions and do not participate in word formation. In the Amur and East Sakhalin dialects they serve as mere phonemic varieties and are used in word combinations, whereas in the North Sakhalin dialect they are absent (have not yet appeared).
It could be said that the voiced plosives in Nivkh are ready to participate in the word-formation process, but are not used for this purpose just yet. They will acquire a new meaning and turn into true phonemes once there has appeared a social demand for them.