Southern Yukaghir language

As of 2003, Kolyma Yukaghir is a moribund language, with only 50 remaining speakers with the language as their mother tongue. No speakers are monolingual, since all speak Russian and most speak Yakut. The first language for all Yukaghir under 60 is Russian, although many still have Kolyma Yukaghir as a mother tongue, and the average age for fluent, first-language speakers is 63 or more. In the past, multilingualism was common in the region, and Kolyma Yukaghir, Yakut, Even, and Chukchi all served as languages of intercultural communication, depending on the ethnicity of the addressee. Yukaghirs 60 and older follow this custom. Middle-aged Yukaghir, from 41–60, still have Yukaghir as their mother tongue and speak to elders in it, although they use Russian for all other communication. The youngest generation of Yukaghir is almost entirely monolingual in Russian, the only language used at school. Although Kolyma Yukaghir has been taught at school since 1985, the youngest generation still know little to none of the language.[2]

The relationship of the Yukaghir languages with other language families is uncertain, though it has been suggested that they are distantly related to the Uralic languages, thus forming the putative Uralic–Yukaghir language family.[5]

Kolyma and Tundra Yukaghir are the only two remnants of what used to be one of the dominant language families of northeastern Siberia, spreading from the River Anadyr in the east to the River Lena in the west.[6] On the basis of the evidence of early sources, it can be assumed that there existed a Yukaghir dialect continuum, with what is today Kolyma Yukaghir and Tundra Yukaghir at the extremes.[7]

Kolyma Yukaghir and Tundra Yukaghir are not mutually intelligible. Both Yukaghir languages have residual vowel harmony and a complex phonotactics of consonants, rich agglutinative morphology and are strictly head-final. They have practically no finite subordination and very few coordinate structures. Yukaghir has a split intransitive alignment system based on discourse-pragmatic features. In absence of narrow focus, the system is organised on a nominative–accusative basis; when focused, direct objects and subjects of intransitive verbs are co-aligned (special focus case, special focus agreement).

All charts are from Maslova (2003).

An interlinear glossed sample:

Yarqadan

Recorded by Ljudmila Zhukova from Ljubov' Demina in 1988.[8]

"From the bottom of the mountains, from the whiteness of the ice our mother Yarqadan quietly carries its shining water downstream."

Notes

Bibliography

• Vakhtin, N. B. 1991. The Yukaghir language in Sociolinguistic Perspective. Steszew, Poland: International Institute of Ethnolinguistic and Oriental Studies.
• Krejnovich, Eruhim A., Jukagirskij jazyk. Moscow / Leningrad: Nauka (1958).
• Maslova, Elena, A Grammar of Kolyma Yukaghir, Mouton Grammar Library, 27 (2003).
• Maslova, Elena, Tundra Yukaghir, LINCOM Europa. Languages of the World/Materials 372 (2003).

• Southern Yukaghir at Glottopedia
• The Yukaghir Languages
• Online Documentation of Kolyma (Southern) Yukaghir
• Bibliography