Khanty languages

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article should specify the language of its non-English content using {{lang}} or {{langx}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used. See why. (August 2024) This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Khanty
Ostyak
Geographic distribution	Khanty-Mansi, Russia
Ethnicity	Khanty
Native speakers	14,000 (2020 census)[1]
Linguistic classification	Uralic Finno-Ugric? Ugric? Ob-Ugric? Khanty
Subdivisions	Northern Southern † Eastern
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kca
Glottolog	khan1279  (Khantyic)
Khanty and Mansi languages at the beginning of the 20th century[2][3]

Khanty (also spelled Khanti or Hanti), previously known as Ostyak (/ˈɒstjæk/),^[4] is a branch of the Ugric languages composed of multiple dialect continua. It is varyingly considered a language or a collection of distinct languages spoken in the Khanty-Mansi and the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs in Siberia. It belongs to the wider Uralic language family. There were thought to be around 7,500 speakers of Northern Khanty and 2,000 speakers of Eastern Khanty in 2010, with Southern Khanty being extinct since the early 20th century.^[5] The number of speakers reported in the 2020 census was 13,900.^[6][1]

The Khanty language has many dialects. The western group includes the Obdorian, Ob, and Irtysh dialects. The eastern group includes the Surgut and Vakh-Vasyugan dialects, which in turn are subdivided into 13 other dialects. All these dialects differ significantly from each other by phonetic, morphological, and lexical features to the extent that the three main "dialects" (northern, southern and eastern) are mutually unintelligible.^[7] Thus, based on their significant multifactorial differences, Eastern, Northern and Southern Khanty may be considered separate but closely related languages.

The Khanty written language was first created after the October Revolution on the basis of the Latin script in 1930 and then with the Cyrillic alphabet (with the additional letter ⟨ң⟩ for /ŋ/) from 1937.

Khanty literary works are usually written in three Northern dialects, Kazym, Shuryshkar and Middle Ob. Newspaper reporting and broadcasting are usually done in the Kazym dialect.

Khanty is divided in three main dialect groups, which are largely mutually unintelligible and therefore best considered three languages: Northern, Southern and Eastern. Individual dialects are named after the rivers on which they are or were spoken. Southern Khanty is now probably extinct.^[8][9]

A general feature of all Khanty varieties is that long vowels are not distinguished, but a contrast between plain vowels (e.g. /o/) and reduced or extra-short vowels (e.g. /ŏ/) is found. That corresponds to a length distinction in Khanty's close relative, Mansi. According to scholars who posit a common Ob-Ugric ancestry for both, that was also the original Proto-Ob-Ugric situation.

Palatalization of consonants is phonemic in Khanty, as in most other Uralic languages. Retroflex consonants are also found in most varieties of Khanty.

Khanty word stress is usually on the initial syllable.^[10]

The 19 consonants reconstructed for Proto-Khanty are listed with the traditional UPA transcription, shown above, and an IPA transcription, shown below.

A major consonant isogloss among the Khanty varieties is the reflexation of the lateral consonants, *ɬ (from Proto-Uralic *s and *š) and *l (from Proto-Uralic *l and *ð).^[11] These generally merge, however with varying results: /l/ in the Obdorsk and Far Eastern dialects, /ɬ/ in the Kazym and Surgut dialects, and /t/ elsewhere. The Vasjugan dialect still retains the distinction word-initially and instead has shifted *ɬ > /j/ in this position. Similarly, the palatalized lateral *ľ developed to /lʲ/ in Far Eastern and Obdorsk, /ɬʲ/ in Kazym and Surgut, and /tʲ/ elsewhere. The retroflex lateral *ḷ remains in Far Eastern but in /t/-dialects develop into a new plain /l/.

Other dialect isoglosses include the development of original *ć to a palatalized stop /tʲ/ in Eastern and Southern Khanty but to a palatalized sibilant /sʲ ~ ɕ/ in Northern, as well as the development of original *č similarly to a sibilant /ʂ/ (= UPA: š) in Northern Khanty and partly also in Southern Khanty.

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Khanty languages" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The nominal suffixes include dual -ŋən, plural -(ə)t, dative -a, locative/instrumental -nə.

For example:^[12]

xot "house" (cf. Finnish koti "home", or Hungarian ház)

xotŋəna "to the two houses"

xotətnə "at the houses" (cf. Hungarian házaknál, Finnish kotona "at home", an exceptional form using the old, locative meaning of the essive case ending -na).

Singular, dual, and plural possessive suffixes may be added to singular, dual, and plural nouns, in three persons, for 3³ = 27 forms. A few, from məs "cow", are:

məsem "my cow"

cow-SG-1S.POSS

məsŋǝtam "my two cows"

cow-DU-1S.POSS

məstam "my cows"

cow-PL-1S.POSS

məsmǝn "the two of our cow"

cow-SG-1D.POSS

məsŋǝtǝmǝn "the two of our two cows"

cow-DU-1D.POSS

məstǝmən "the two of our cows"

cow-PL-1D.POSS

məsew "our cow"

cow-SG-1P.POSS

məsŋǝtǝw "our two cows"

cow-DU-1P.POSS

mǝstǝw "our cows"

cow-PL-1P.POSS

1. Nominative case
2. Accusative case
3. Dative case
4. Lative case, merger of differentiated local cases that is used to indicate relative location.
5. Locative case Used to indicate place and direction.^[13]
6. Ablative case, external case used to mean moving away from something.^[14]
7. Approximative case, used to indicate a path towards.^[13]
8. Translative case, used to indicate transformation.^[14]
9. Instructive case (related to Instrumental case), as in something is an instrument for an action.^[14]
10. Comitative case, used to indicate that something is with (accompanying) X.^[14]
11. Abessive case, used to indicate that something is without x.^[14]

The personal pronouns are, in the nominative case:

The cases of ma are accusative manət and dative manəm.

The demonstrative pronouns and adjectives are:

tamə "this", tomə "that", sit "that yonder": tam xot "this house".

Basic interrogative pronouns are:

xoy "who?", muy "what?"

Khanty numerals, compared with Hungarian and Finnish, are:

The formation of multiples of ten shows Slavic influence in Khanty, whereas Hungarian uses the collective derivative suffix -van (-ven) closely related to the suffix of the adverbial participle which is -va (-ve) today but used to be -ván (-vén). Note also the regularity of [xot]-[haːz] "house" and [sot]-[saːz] "hundred".

Khanty verbs must agree with the subject in person and number. There are two paradigms for conjugation. Subjective conjugation agrees only with the subject, and objective conjugation agrees with both the subject and the object. In a sentence with both a subject and an object, the subjective conjugation puts the object in focus, and the objective conjugation puts the object as a topic.^[15]

Khanty has present and past tenses, indicative and imperative moods and passive and active voices. Generally, the present tense is marked, and the past is unmarked, but some verbs distinguish the present from the past by changing vowels or adding consonants.^[16] The order of suffixes is always tense-(passive.)number-person.^[17]

The non-finite verb forms are the infinitive, the converb and four participle verb forms.^[17] Infinitive can complement a modal verb or a motion verb such as go. If it is alone, necessity or possibility is meant.^[18]

The participles are present, past, negative and conditional. The first two are in use, and the last two are now scarcely used.^[18]

Yes/no questions are marked only by intonation. Indirect yes/no questions are constructed with "or" : S/he asked if Misha was tired [or not]. Wh-questions most often contain a wh-word in the focus position.^[19]

Negation is marked by the particle əntə, which appears adjacent to the verb and between the particles of particle verbs. ^[19] That is different from other Uralic languages, which tend to have a negation verb or at least a negation particle that is inflected in some way.

Both Khanty and Mansi are basically nominative–accusative languages but have innovative morphological ergativity. In an ergative construction, the object is given the same case as the subject of an intransitive verb, and the locative is used for the agent of the transitive verb (as an instrumental). That may be used with some specific verbs such as for "to give", the literal translation would be "by me (subject) a fish (object) gave to you (indirect object)" for the equivalent of the sentence "I gave you a fish".

However, the ergative, since it is marked by using a case, is only morphological, not syntactic. In addition, it may be used in the passive voice in a way that resembles English. For example, in Mansi, the equivalent of "a dog (agent) bit you (object)" may be changed to "you (object) were bitten, by a dog (instrument)".

Khanty, an agglutinative language, has an SOV word order.^[20]

On the phrasal level, the traditional relations are typical for an OV language. For example, the verb may precede prepositional phrases, verb phrases precede manner adverbs and auxiliaries, and the possessor precedes the possessed.^[21]

On the sentence level, case alignment in Surgut Khanty clauses follows a nominative-accusative pattern.^[22] Both the subject and the object may be dropped if they are pragmatically inferable,^[21] possible even in the same sentence.

Khanty is usually a verb-final language, but about 10% of sentences have other phrases after the verb.^[23] The word order in matrix clauses is more variable but is quite strict in embedded clauses.^[24] Those constraints are caused by grammatical relations and discourse information. Those phrases used to have content that was already introduced in the discourse. However, newly introduced content may now be placed after the verb as well. Schön and Gugán speculate that to be caused by contact with Russian.^[23]

Imperative clauses have the same structure as declarative sentences, apart from complex predicates, whose verb may precede the preverb. Prohibitive sentences include a prohibitive particle.^[25]

The passive voice is achieved by moving phrases other than the subject into the subject position to focus on the agent's indefiniteness.^[21]

Nouns or pronouns may be dropped only if they are obvious from the context and marked by the verb.^[21]

The Khanty varieties have a relatively well-documented lexicon. The most extensive early source is Toivonen (1948), based on field records by K. F. Karjalainen from 1898 to 1901. An etymological interdialectal dictionary, covering all known material from pre-1940 sources, is Steinitz et al. (1966–1993).

Schiefer (1972)^[26] summarizes the etymological sources of Khanty vocabulary, as per Steinitz et al., as follows:

Futaky (1975)^[27] additionally proposes a number of loanwords from the Tungusic languages, mainly Evenki.

• Abondolo, Daniel (1998). "Khanty". In Abondolo, Daniel (ed.). The Uralic Languages.
• Csepregi, Márta (1998). Szurguti osztják chrestomathia (PDF). Studia Uralo-Altaica Supplementum. Vol. 6. Szeged. Retrieved 2014-10-11.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Filchenko, Andrey Yury (2007). A grammar of Eastern Khanty (Doctor of Philosophy thesis). Rice University. hdl:1911/20605.
• Gulya, János (1966). Eastern Ostyak chrestomathy. Indiana University Publications, Uralic and Altaic series. Vol. 51.
• Honti, László (1988). "Die Ob-Ugrischen Sprachen". In Sinor, Denis (ed.). The Uralic Languages.
• Honti, László (1998). "ObUgrian". In Abondolo, Daniel (ed.). The Uralic Languages.
• Kaksin, Andrej D. (2007). Казымский диалект хантыйского языка (in Russian). Khanty-Mansijsk: Obsko-Ugorskij Institut Prikladnykh Issledovanij i Razrabotok.
• Steinitz, Wolfgang, ed. (1966–1993). Dialektologisches und etymologisches Wörterbuch der ostjakischen Sprache. Berlin.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Toivonen, Y. H., ed. (1948). K. F. Karjalainen's Ostjakisches Wörterbuch. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
• Bakró-Nagy, Marianne; Laakso, Johanna; Skribnik, Elena, eds. (2022-03-24). The Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198767664.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-876766-4.
• Nikolaeva, Irina Alekseevna (1999). Ostyak. Languages of the world: Materials. Lincom Europa. ISBN 3-89586-562-1.
• Holmberg, A., Nikanne, U., Oraviita, I., Reime, H., & Trosterud, T. (1993). The structure of INFL and the finite clause in Finnish. Case and other functional categories in Finnish syntax, 39, 177

Khanty languages test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Khanty Language
• Omniglot page for Khanty alphabets
• Documentation of Eastern Khanty
• Khanty basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
• Khanty Language and People
• Khanty–Russian Russian–Khanty dictionary (download), mirror (in case the PDF link gets misdirected)
• Khanty Bibliographical Guide
• OLAC resources in and about the Khanty language