Description
Book SynopsisWith this descriptive grammar of Nganasan Beáta Wagner-Nagy presents a comprehensive description of the highly endangered Samoyedic language, spoken only by a small number of individuals on Siberia’s Taimyr Peninsula. Based on corpus data from the Nganasan Spoken Language Corpus as well as field work the grammar follows a traditional structure. Contents range from a description of phonetic features and phonological processes over word classes, morphological features to syntactic and semantic properties. The grammar highlights morphophonological alternations as well as the pragmatic organization of Nganasan. A discussion of the core vocabulary completes the account in addition to two sample texts. The grammar reflects significant typological aspects thus serving as a reasonable basis for further comparison in Uralic studies.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface Abbreviations and Symbols Tables, Figures and Maps 1 Introduction 1 The People 2 The Language 3 Language Data 2 Phonetics and Phonology 1 Consonants 2 Vowels 3 Possible Combinations of Consonants and Vowels 4 Syllable Structure 5 Syllabification 6 Prosodic Characteristics 7 Morphophonological Rules 3 Word Classes 1 Nouns 2 Adjectives 3 Verbs 4 Pronominal Items 5 Adverbs 6 Postposition 7 Numerals and Quantifiers 8 Conjunctions und Particles 9 Interjections and Onomatopoetic Words 4 Nominal Inflection 1 Stems and Their Formation 2 Number and Its Usage 3 Case and Its Functions 4 Possessive Inflection 5 Destinative 5 Verbal Inflection 1 Conjugation Types and Agreement 2 Aspect 3 Tense 4 Mood 5 Stems 6 Aspect 7 Conjugations Types 8 Tense 9 Mood and Modality 10 Non-finite Verb Forms 6 Evidentiality 1 Inferred Evidentiality 2 Reported Evidentiality 3 Sensory Evidentiality 7 Verbal Valence and Valence-Changing Operations 1 Verbal Valence 2 Valence-Changing Operations 8 The Structure of the Noun Phrase 1 Attributive Modifiers 2 Determined Noun Phrase (DP) 3 Quantified Noun Phrase 4 Noun Phrase as Modifier 5 Constituent Order in NPs 6 Coordination within NP and Comitative Constructions 7 Definiteness within the NP 9 Types of Predicate 1 Verbal Predication 2 Non-verbal Predicate 3 Existential and Locative Clauses 4 Possessive Clauses 10 Simple Sentences 1 Clause Participant and Grammatical Relations in Sentences 2 Basic Sentence Types 3 Constituent Order 4 Comparative Constructions 11 Ditransitive Constructions 1 Coding of Recipient and Addressee 2 Coding the Beneficiary 3 Coding the Theme 12 Negation 1 Sentence Negation 2 Constituent Negation 3 Other Negative Constructions 13 Clause Combining 1 Coordination 2 Complementation 3 Adverbial Clauses 4 Relative Clauses 14 Discourse Organization 1 Word Order and Information Structuring 2 Reference Tracking 3 Direct and Indirect Speech 15 Lexicon 1 Noun Class Semantics and Sub-classification 2 Adjective Class Semantics and Sub-classification 3 Verb Class Semantics and Sub-classification 4 Loanwords 16 Word Formation 1 Compounding 2 Conversion 3 Broadening and Narrowing of Meaning 4 Word Creation 5 Stem Vowel Alternation 6 Derivation 7 Clitic-Like Morphemes 17 Text Samples 1 My Life 2 Nenets Man and the Giant References Index
