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Yakut language

Yakut (/jəˈkuːt/ yə-KOOT),[2] also known as Yakutian, Sakha, Saqa or Saxa (Yakut: саха тыла), is a Turkic language belonging to Siberian Turkic branch and spoken by around 450,000 native speakers, primarily the ethnic Yakuts and one of the official languages of Sakha (Yakutia), a federal republic in the Russian Federation.

The Yakut language differs from all other Turkic languages in the presence of a layer of vocabulary of unclear origin (possibly Paleo-Siberian). There is also a large number of words of Mongolian origin related to ancient borrowings, as well as numerous recent borrowings from Russian. Like other Turkic languages and their ancestor Proto-Turkic, Yakut is an agglutinative language and features vowel harmony.

Classification

Yakut is a member of the Northeastern Common Turkic family of languages, which also includes Shor, Tuvan and Dolgan. Like most Turkic languages, Yakut has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. Word order is usually subject–object–verb. Yakut has been influenced by Tungusic and Mongolian languages.[3]

Historically, Yakut left the community of Common Turkic speakers relatively early.[4] Due to this, it diverges in many ways from other Turkic languages and mutual intelligibility between Yakut and other Turkic languages is low[5] and many cognate words are hard to notify when heard. Nevertheless, Yakut contains many features which are important for the reconstruction of Proto-Turkic, such as the preservation of long vowels.[6]

Geographic distribution

Yakut is spoken mainly in the Sakha Republic. It is also used by ethnic Yakuts in Khabarovsk Region and a small diaspora in other parts of the Russian Federation, Turkey, and other parts of the world. Dolgan, a close relative of Yakut, which formerly was considered by some a dialect of Yakut,[7] is spoken by Dolgans in Krasnoyarsk Region. Yakut is widely used as a lingua franca by other ethnic minorities in the Sakha Republic – more Dolgans, Evenks, Evens and Yukagirs speak Yakut than their own languages. About 8% of the people of other ethnicities than Yakut living in Sakha claimed knowledge of the Yakut language during the 2002 census.[8]

Phonology

Consonants

Yakut has the following consonants phonemes,[9] where the IPA value is provided in slashes '//' and the native script value is provided in bold followed by the romanization in parentheses.

Yakut is in many ways phonologically unique among the Turkic languages. Yakut and the closely related Dolgan language are the only Turkic languages without hushing sibilants. Additionally, no known Turkic languages other than Yakut and Khorasani Turkic have the palatal nasal /ɲ/.

Consonant assimilation

Consonants at morpheme boundaries undergo extensive assimilation, both progressive and regressive.[14][15] All suffixes possess numerous allomorphs. For suffixes which begin with a consonant, the surface form of the consonant is conditioned on the stem-final segment. There are four such archiphonemic consonants: G, B, T, and L. Examples of each are provided in the following table for the suffixes -GIt (second-person plural possessive suffix, oɣoɣut 'your [pl.] child'), -BIt (first-person plural possessive suffix, oɣobut, 'our child'), -TA (partitive case suffix, tiiste 'some teeth'), -LArA (third-person plural possessive suffix, oɣoloro 'their child'). Note that the alternation in the vowels is governed by vowel harmony (see the main article and the below section).

  1. ^ Regressive velarization.
  2. ^ Regressive labialization.

There is an additional regular morphophonological pattern for [t]-final stems: they assimilate in place of articulation with an immediately following labial or velar. For example at 'horse' > akkït 'your [pl.] horse', > appït 'our horse'.

Debuccalization

Yakut initial s- corresponds to initial h- in Dolgan and played an important operative rule in the development of proto-Yakut, ultimately resulting in initial Ø- < *h- < *s- (example: Dolgan huoq and Yakut suox, both meaning "not").[clarification needed] The historical change of *s > h, known as debuccalization, is a common sound-change across the world's languages, being characteristic of such languages as Greek and Indo-Iranian in their development from Proto-Indo-European, as well as such Turkic languages as Bashkir, e.g. höt 'milk' < *süt.[16] Debuccalization of /s/ to /h/ is also found as a diachronic change from Proto-Celtic to Brittonic, and has actually become a synchronic grammaticalised feature called lenition in the related Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish, and Manx).

Debuccalization is also an active phonological process in modern Yakut. Intervocalically the phoneme /s/ becomes [h]. For example the /s/ in кыыс (kïïs) 'girl' becomes [h] between vowels:[17]

a.

kïïs

girl

>

>

kïïh-ïm

girl-POSS.1SG

kïïs > kïïh-ïm

girl > girl-POSS.1SG

'girl; daughter' > 'my daughter'

Vowels

Yakut has twenty phonemic vowels: eight short vowels, eight long vowels,[a] and four diphthongs. The following table give broad transcriptions for each vowel phoneme,[b] as well as the native script bold and romanization in italics:

  1. ^ The long vowel phonemes /eː/, /ɔː/, and /øː/ appear in very few words and are thus considered marginal phonemes.[18]
  2. ^ Note that these vowels are extremely broad. Narrower transcriptions[19] transcribe the high back non-front vowel ы as central /ɨ/. The front non-high unrounded open vowel in э, ээ, and иэ are more accurately [ɛ], [ɛː], [iɛ], respectively.
  3. ^ ы is occasionally Romanized as y,[20] consistent with the BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian Cyrillic. Turkologists and Altaicists tend to transcribe the vowel as ï,[21] or as ɨ.[22]
  4. ^ Some authors romanize long vowels with a macron (e.g. /iː/ ī, /yː/ ǖ)[5] or with a colon (e.g. /iː/ i:/iː, /yː/, ü:/üː).[23]

Vowel harmony

Like other Turkic languages, a characteristic feature of Yakut is progressive vowel harmony. Most root words obey vowel harmony, for example in кэлин (kelin) 'back', all the vowels are front and unrounded. Yakut's vowel harmony in suffixes is the most complex system in the Turkic family.[24] Vowel harmony is an assimilation process where vowels in one syllable take on certain features of vowels in the preceding syllable. In Yakut, subsequent vowels all take on frontness and all non-low vowels take on lip rounding of preceding syllables' vowels.[25] There are two main rules of vowel harmony:

  1. Frontness/backness harmony:
    1. Front vowels are always followed by front vowels.
    2. Back vowels are always followed by back vowels.
  2. Rounding harmony:
    1. Unrounded vowels are always followed by unrounded vowels.
    2. Close rounded vowels always occur after close rounded vowels.
    3. Open unrounded vowels do not assimilate in rounding with close rounded vowels.

The quality of the diphthongs /ie, ïa, uo, üö/ for the purposes of vowel harmony is determined by the first segment in the diphthong. Taken together, these rules mean that the pattern of subsequent syllables in Yakut is entirely predictable, and all words will follow the following pattern:[26] Like the consonant assimilation rules above, suffixes display numerous allomorphs determined by the stem they attach to. There are two archiphoneme vowels I (an underlyingly high vowel) and A (an underlyingly low vowel).

Examples of I can be seen in the first-person singular possessive agreement suffix -(I)m:[27] as in (a):

The underlyingly low vowel phoneme A is represented through the third-person singular agreement suffix -(t)A[28] in (b):

Orthography

After three earlier phases of development, Yakut is currently written using the Cyrillic script: the modern Yakut alphabet, established in 1939 by the Soviet Union, consists of all the Russian characters with five additional letters for phonemes not present in Russian: Ҕҕ, Ҥҥ, Өө, Һһ, Үү, as follows:

Long vowels are represented through the doubling of vowels, e.g. үүт (üüt) /yːt/ 'milk,' a practice that many scholars follow in Romanizations of the language.[29][30][31]

The full Yakut alphabet contains letters for consonant phonemes not present in native words (and thus not indicated in the phonology tables above): the letters В /v/, Е /(j)e/, Ё /jo|/, Ж /ʒ/, З /z/, Ф /f/, Ц /t͡s/, Ш /ʃ/, Щ /ɕː/, Ъ, Ю /ju/, Я /ja/ are used exclusively in Russian loanwords. In addition, in native Yakut words, the soft sign ⟨Ь⟩ is used exclusively in the digraphs ⟨дь⟩ and ⟨нь⟩.

Transliteration

There are numerous conventions for the Romanization of Yakut. Bibliographic sources and libraries typically use the ALA-LC Romanization tables for non-Slavic languages in Cyrillic script.[32] Linguists often employ Turkological standards for transliteration,[33] or a mixture of Turkological standards and the IPA.[22] In addition, others employ Turkish orthography.[34] Comparison of some of these systems can be seen in the following:

(a)

дьон

/d͡ʒon/

people

дьон

/d͡ʒon/

people

'people'[35]

(b)

айыы

/ajɯː/

creation

айыы

/ajɯː/

creation

'creation'[36]

(c)

бу

/bu

DEM

ыт

ɯt

dog

аттааҕар

at.taːɣar

horse-COMP

түргэнник

tyrgɛn.nɪk

fast-ADV

сүүрэр

syːrɛr/

run-PRES

бу ыт аттааҕар түргэнник сүүрэр

/bu ɯt at.taːɣar tyrgɛn.nɪk syːrɛr/

DEM dog horse-COMP fast-ADV run-PRES

'This dog runs faster than a horse'[37]

(d)

эһэ

/ɛhɛ

bear

бөрөтөөҕөр

bøɾøtøːɣør

wolf-COMP

күүстээх

kyːstɛːχ/

strong-have

эһэ бөрөтөөҕөр күүстээх

/ɛhɛ bøɾøtøːɣør kyːstɛːχ/

bear wolf-COMP strong-have

'A bear is stronger than a wolf'[37]


Grammar

Syntax

The typical word order can be summarized as subject – adverb – object – verb; possessor – possessed; adjective – noun.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns in Yakut distinguish between first, second, and third persons and singular and plural number.

  1. ^ Cognate with Turkish kendi (self)

Although nouns have no gender, the pronoun system distinguishes between human and non-human in the third person, using кини (kini, 'he/she') to refer to human beings and ол (ol, 'it') to refer to all other things.[39]

Grammatical number

Nouns have plural and singular forms. The plural is formed with the suffix /-LAr/, which may surface as -лар (-lar), -лэр (-ler), -лөр (-lör), -лор (-lor), -тар (-tar), -тэр (-ter), -төр (-tör), -тор (-tor), -дар (-dar), -дэр (-der), -дөр (-dör), -дор (-dor), -нар (-nar), -нэр (-ner), -нөр (-nör), or -нор (-nor), depending on the preceding consonants and vowels. The plural is used only when referring to a number of things collectively, not when specifying an amount. Nouns have no gender.

  1. ^ baydar 'rich people' and ederder 'young' people are examples of predicative adjectives (i.e. baay 'rich', eder 'young') being pluralized

There is a parallel construction with plural suffix -ттАр, which can even be added to adjectives e.g.

The word кыргыттар, disregarding the composite -(ы)ттар plural suffix, has cognates in numerous Turkic languages, such as Uzbek (qirqin 'bondwoman'), Bashkir, Tatar, Kyrgyz (кыз-кыркын 'girls'), Chuvash (хӑрхӑм), Turkmen (gyrnak) and extinct Qarakhanid, Khwarezmian and Chaghatay.

Nominal inflection (cases)

Only Sakha (Yakut) has a rich case system that differs markedly from all the other Siberian Turkic languages. It has retained the ancient comitative case from Old Turkic (due to strong influence from Mongolian) while in other Turkic languages, the old comitative has become an instrumental case. However, in Sakha language the Old Turkic locative case has come to denote partitive case, thus leaving no case form for the function of locative. Instead, locative, dative and allative cases are realized through Common Turkic dative suffix:

Норуокка

"хайа

хаппыыстата"

диэн

аатынан

биллэр

хайаҕа

үүнэр

үүнээйи.

Норуокка "хайа хаппыыстата" диэн аатынан биллэр хайаҕа үүнэр үүнээйи.

A plant known among locals as "mountain cabbage" that grows on a mountain.

where -ҕа is dative and хайаҕа literally means "to the mountain". Furthermore, (in addition to locative,) genitive and equative cases are lost as well. Yakut has eight grammatical cases: nominative (unmarked), accusative -(n)I, dative -GA, partitive -TA, ablative -(t)tan, instrumental -(I)nAn, comitative -LIIn, and comparative -TAAɣAr.[40] Examples of these are shown in the following table for a vowel-final stem eye (of Mongolian origin) 'peace' and a consonant-final stem uot 'fire':

  1. ^ Sakha partitive suffix is believed by some linguists to be an innovation stemming from the influence of Evenki which led the Old Turkic locative suffix to assume partitive function in Sakha; no other Turkic language has partitive suffix save for Khalaj and (nearly-extinct) Tofa.[41] Sakha partitive is similar to the corresponding Finnish partitive case.[42]
  2. ^ The Ablative suffix appears as -TAn following a consonant and -TTAn following a vowel. Clear examples of the former are ox 'arrow' → oxton 'from an/the arrow', oxtorton 'from (the) arrows'.
  3. ^ Sakha is the only language within the Turkic family to have comparative case.

The partitive object case indicates that just a part of an object is affected, e.g.:

Uː-ta

water-PTV

is!

drink-IMP.2SG

Uː-ta is!

water-PTV drink-IMP.2SG

Drink some water!

The corresponding expression below with the object in the accusative denotes wholeness:

Uː-nu

water-ACC.

is!

drink-IMP.2SG

Uː-nu is!

water-ACC. drink-IMP.2SG

Drink [all] the water!

The partitive is only used in imperative or necessitative expressions, e.g.

Uː-ta

water-PT

a-γal-ϊaχ-χa

bring-PRO-DAT

naːda.

necessary.

Uː-ta a-γal-ϊaχ-χa naːda.

water-PT bring-PRO-DAT necessary.

One has to bring some water.

Note the word naːda is borrowed from Russian надо (must).

A notable detail about Yakut case is the absence of the genitive,[43] a feature which some argue is due to historical contact with Evenki (a Tungusic language), the language with which Sakha (i.e. Yakut) was in most intensive contact.[44] Possessors are unmarked, with the possessive relationship only being realized on the possessed noun itself either through the possessive suffix[45] (if the subject is a pronoun) or through partitive case suffix (if the subject is any other nominal). For example, in (a) the first-person pronoun subjects are not marked for genitive case; neither do full nominal subjects (possessors) receive any marking, as shown in (b):

a.

min

1SG.NOM

oɣo-m

child-POSS.1SG

/

/

bihigi

1PL.NOM

oɣo-but

child-POSS.1PL

min oɣo-m / bihigi oɣo-but

1SG.NOM child-POSS.1SG / 1PL.NOM child-POSS.1PL

'my son' / 'our child'

b.

Masha

Masha.NOM

aɣa-ta

father-PTV.3SG

Masha aɣa-ta

Masha.NOM father-PTV.3SG

'Masha's father'

Verbal inflection

Tenses

E. I. Korkina (1970) enumerates following tenses: present-future tense, future tense and eight forms of past tense (including imperfect).
Sakha imperfect has two forms: analytic and synthetic. Both forms are based on the aorist suffix -Ar, common to all Turkic languages. The synthetic form, despite expressing a past aspect, lacks the Common Turkic past suffix, which is very unusual for a Turkic language. This is considered by some to be another influence from Even, a Tungusic language.

Imperative

Sakha, under Evenki/Even contact influence, has developed a distinction in imperative: immediate imperative ("do now!") and future/remote imperative ("do later!").[1]

Questions

The Sakha yes–no question marker is enclitic duo or du:, whereas almost all other Turkic languages use markers of the type -mI, compare:

Күөрэгэй

kyœregej

lark-NOM

ырыатын

ïrïa-tï-n

song-3SG.POSS-ACC

истэҕин

ist-e-ɣin

hear-PRS-2SG

дуо?

=duo?

=Q

Күөрэгэй ырыатын истэҕин дуо?

kyœregej ïrïa-tï-n ist-e-ɣin =duo?

lark-NOM song-3SG.POSS-ACC hear-PRS-2SG =Q

Do you hear the song of larks?

and the same sentence in Uzbek (note the question suffix -mi in contrast to Sakha):

To’rg’ay jirini eshit(a)yapsanmi?

Question words in Yakut remain in-situ; they do not move to the front of the sentence. Sample question words include: туох (tuox) 'what', ким (kim) 'who', хайдах (xajdax) 'how', хас (xas) 'how much; how many', ханна (xanna) 'where', and ханнык (xannïk) 'which'.

Vocabulary

Sakha has a large number of Mongolian loanwords, representing around 13% of its vocabulary (including terms pertaining to kinship and body parts). Despite the close contact with Evenki, Sakha has quite a small number of loanwords from that language.


Numerals

Oral and written literature

The Yakut have a tradition of oral epic in their language called Олоҥхо ("Olonkho"), traditionally performed by skilled performers. The subject matter is based on Yakut mythology and legends. Versions of many Olonkho poems have been written down and translated since the 19th century, but only a very few older performers of the oral Olonkho tradition are still alive. They have begun a program to teach young people to sing this in their language and revive it, though in a modified form.[46]

The first printing in Yakut was a part of a book by Nicolaas Witsen published in 1692 in Amsterdam.[47]

In 2005, Marianne Beerle-Moor, director of the Institute for Bible Translation, Russia/CIS, was awarded the Order of Civil Valour by the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) for the translation of the New Testament into Yakut.[48]

Probably the first-ever Islamic book written in Sakha language was published in 2012 entitled "Билсин: Ислам" ("Get to know: Islam").[49]

Examples

Article 1 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (with footnotes on etymologies of some words):

  1. ^ Borrowed from Mongolian зон
  2. ^ Borrowed from Evenki.
  3. ^ The root of the word, быраап, is derived from Russian право
  4. ^ The root of this loanword, суобас, is from Russian совесть - conscience.
  5. ^ From доҕор 'friend', of Mongolic origin.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Sakha language". Britannica.
  2. ^ "Yakut". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary.
  3. ^ Forsyth 1994, p.56: "Their language...Turkic in its vocabulary and grammar, shows the influence of both Tungus and Mongolian.".
  4. ^ Johanson 2021, pp. 20, 24.
  5. ^ a b Stachowski & Menz 1998.
  6. ^ Johanson 2021, p. 19.
  7. ^ Antonov 1997.
  8. ^ Russian Census 2002. 6. Владение языками (кроме русского) населением отдельных национальностей по республикам, автономной области и автономным округам Российской Федерации Archived 2006-11-04 at the Wayback Machine (Knowledge of languages other than Russian by the population of republics, autonomous oblast and autonomous districts) (in Russian)
  9. ^ Pakendorf & Stapert 2020.
  10. ^ Krueger 1962, p. 67.
  11. ^ Pakendorf & Stapert 2020, p. 432.
  12. ^ Krueger 1962, pp. 68–9.
  13. ^ Kharitonov 1947, p. 63.
  14. ^ Kharitonov 1947, p. 64.
  15. ^ Stachowski & Menz 1998, p. 420.
  16. ^ Ubrjatova, E. I. 1960 Opyt sravnitel'nogo izuc˙enija fonetic˙eskix osobennostej naselenija nekotoryx rajonov Jakutskoj ASSR. Moscow. 1985. Jazyk noril'skix dolgan. Novosibirsk: "Nauka" SO. In Tungusic Languages 2 (2): 1–32. Historical Aspects of Yakut (Saxa) Phonology. Gregory D. S. Anderson. University of Chicago.
  17. ^ Johanson 2021, p. 36.
  18. ^ Johanson 2021, p. 283.
  19. ^ Pakendorf & Stapert 2020, p. 433; Anderson 1998.
  20. ^ Vinokurova 2005; Baker & Vinokurova 2010.
  21. ^ Robbeets & Savalyev 2020, p. lxxxii; Johanson 2021; Krueger 1962; Stachowski & Menz 1998.
  22. ^ a b Anderson 1998.
  23. ^ Pakendorf 2007; Pakendorf & Stapert 2020
  24. ^ Johanson 2021, p. 315.
  25. ^ Krueger 1962, pp. 48–9; Stachowski & Menz 1998, p. 419.
  26. ^ Johanson 2021, p. 316.
  27. ^ -(I)m indicates that this suffix appears as -m in vowel-final words (e.g. oɣo 'child' > oɣom 'my child'.
  28. ^ Consonants in parentheses indicate that the suffix loses the consonant in consonant-final words, e.g. uol 'son' > uola 'his/her son.'
  29. ^ Krueger 1962.
  30. ^ Vinokurova 2005.
  31. ^ Petrova 2011.
  32. ^ a b "Non-Slavic languages (in Cyrillic Script)" (PDF). Library of Congress. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 3, 2021. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
  33. ^ Krueger 1962; Stachowski & Menz 1998; Johanson 2021; Menz & Monastyrev 2022
  34. ^ Kirişçioğlu 1999.
  35. ^ "дьон". sakhatyla.ru. Retrieved April 2, 2022.
  36. ^ "айыы". sakhatyla.ru. Retrieved April 2, 2022.
  37. ^ a b Krueger 1962, p. 89.
  38. ^ "Romanization" (PDF). August 2019.
  39. ^ Kirişçioğlu, M. Fatih (1999). Saha (Yakut) Türkçesi Grameri. Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu. ISBN 975-16-0587-3.
  40. ^ Krueger 1962; Stachowski & Menz 1998; Vinokurova 2005
  41. ^ Suihkonen, Pirkko; Comrie, Bernard; Solovyev, Valery (18 July 2012). Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations. John Benjamins. p. 205. ISBN 9789027274717.
  42. ^ Bárány, András; Biberauer, Theresa; Douglas, Jamie; Vikner, Sten (28 May 2021). Syntactic architecture and its consequences III. BoD – Books on Demand. p. 54. ISBN 9783985540044.
  43. ^ Krueger 1962; Stachowski & Menz 1998; Baker & Vinokurova 2010; Johanson 2021.
  44. ^ Pakendorf 2007.
  45. ^ Baker & Vinokurova 2010.
  46. ^ Robin Harris. 2012. Sitting "under the mouth": decline and revitalization in the Sakha epic tradition "Olonkho". Doctoral dissertation, University of Georgia.
  47. ^ "Предпосылки возникновения якутской книги". Память Якутии. Retrieved 2014-10-29.
  48. ^ "People". Institute for Bible Translation, Russia/CIS. Retrieved 5 October 2016.
  49. ^ "В Якутии издали книгу об исламе на языке саха".

Bibliography

External links

Yakut language test of Wiktionary at Wikimedia Incubator
Yakut language test of Wikinews at Wikimedia Incubator

Language-related

Content in Yakut