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74-689: The name of the river comes from the Nganasan word "kuoika" , (куойка), meaning a household deity . The Kuoika is a left tributary of the Olenyok. Its sources are at the limit of the Northern Siberian Lowland , off the northeastern end of the Central Siberian Plateau . It flows roughly eastwards to the southwest and south of the Beyenchime in an area with numerous lakes. In its last stretch

148-522: A nasal and a stop . Examples of Nganasan consonant gradation can be seen in the following table (the first form given is always the nominative singular, the latter the genitive singular): The original conditions of the Nganasan gradation can be shown to be identical to gradation in Finnic and Samic; that is, radical/syllabic gradation according to syllable closure, and suffixal/rhythmic gradation according to

222-470: A coronal obstruent /s š t/ : muistua 'to remember' → muissan 'I remember', matka → matan 'trip' (nom. → gen.). This development may be by analogy of the corresponding liquid clusters. On the other hand, some Karelian dialects (such as Livvi or Olonets ) do not allow for gradation in clusters beginning on nasals. Thus, the Olonets Karelian equivalent of Finnish vanhemmat (cf. vanhempi 'older')

296-492: A gradation pattern /s/  : /z/ here ( pezäd ). Veps and Livonian have largely leveled the original gradation system, and reflect both weak and strong grades of single stops as /b d ɡ/ ; this may be an archaism or a substitution of voiced stops for fricatives due to foreign influence (Russian for Veps, Latvian for Livonian). Except for northernmost Veps dialects, both grades of geminate stops are also reflected as /p t k/ . Finnish consonant gradation generally preserves

370-565: A nasal. This change may have occurred already in Proto-Finnic , but is not found in Livonian and Veps . The fricatives later underwent further changes, and the dental and velar fricatives have been lost altogether in most Finnic varieties. The weakened grades of geminate consonants did not merge with the strong grades of the singleton consonants in Proto-Finnic, and still counted as geminates for

444-455: A number of alternations between continuants which are short in the 'weak' grade, and geminates in the 'strong' grade ( kassā 'to sprinkle/water' vs. kasan 'I sprinkle/water'), as well as more voicing alternations between palatalized stops, and the alternations between nasal+consonant~nasal+chroneme found in Finnish. Votic also includes alternations in which the 'strong' grade is represented by

518-425: A number of developments towards the situation in Finnish and Karelian have occurred, such as the change of unlengthened *t to /ð/ . Northern Sami has a system of three phonological lengths for consonants, and thus has extensive sets of alternations. Quantity 3 is represented as lengthening of the coda part of a geminate or cluster, which is absent in quantity 2. Quantity 1 consists of only an onset consonant, with

592-608: A set of fully voiced stops, which Paul Ariste ( A Grammar of the Votic Language ) describes as being the same as in Russian. Thus, in addition to quantitative alternations between /pː tː kː/ and /p t k/ , Votic also has a system of qualitative alternations in which the distinguishing feature is voicing , and so the voiceless stops /p t k/ are known to alternate with /b d ɡ/ . As in Estonian, Karelian, and Eastern dialects of Finnish,

666-585: A short consonant, while the 'weak' grade is represented by a geminate: ritõlõn vs. riďďõlla . For comparison, the Finnish equivalents of these is riitelen 'I quarrel' vs. riidellä 'to quarrel'. Though otherwise closely related to Votic, consonant gradation in Estonian is quite different from the other Finnic languages. One extremely important difference is the existence of three grades of consonants (alternations like strong grade pada 'pot (nom.)', weak grade paja 'pot (gen.)', overlong grade patta 'pot (ill.)'). This can be said to generally correlate with

740-433: A stressed syllable. In the case of verbs like tulla 'to come', the earlier form was * tul-ðak , but the *ð was assimilated to the /l/ according to the patterns described above. The original strong grade was preserved in verbs like hais-ta 'to stink' since gradation did not take place when a consonant followed /s/. The situation appears differently in the many verbs ending in -ata/ätä . These verbs seem to have preserved

814-451: A week. The Ust'ye Avam pupils no longer have this education, as their school closed after it burned down in 2012. In 2019 professor Beáta Wagner-Nagy, who did fieldwork at Taimyr, reported the following. Radio Taimyr , with its station in Dudinka have their broadcasts in Nganasan language daily since 1990, but these programs are only of 10–15 minutes long. 24 percent of Nganasan do listen to

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888-400: Is vahne mb at . The Karelian phoneme inventory also includes the affricate /tʃ/ (represented in the orthography as č ), which may be found geminated and is such subject to quantitative gradation: meččä 'forest' → mečäššä 'in (the) forest'. Votic has two quantities for consonants and vowels, which basically match up with the Finnish counterparts. The Votic phoneme inventory includes

962-426: Is also found after a stressed syllable, however, in the exceptional monosyllabic root *mees  : *meehe- "man"; and in a fossilized form, in the postpositions lähellä "near" vs. läsnä "present", reflecting the adessive and the essive of a root *läse- "vicinity". In cases of root-internal *s , this pattern is not normally found (e.g. Finnish pesä 'nest' : plural pesät ), though Votic later reintroduced

1036-632: Is different from the gradation found in the Finnic languages in some important aspects: Similar to the cases of Veps and Livonian within Finnic, the Southern Sami language at the westernmost end of the Sami language continuum has lost all gradation. In the remaining Sami languages, the strong grade of the singletons merged with the weak grade of geminates, creating a three-quantity distinction between short, long and overlong consonants. In Kildin and Ter Sami , this merger did not affect stops and affricates, due to

1110-499: Is quite similar to Finnish: *β *ð *ɣ have been lost in a fashion essentially identical to Eastern Finnish (and may have occurred in the common ancestor of the two), with the exception that assimilation rather than loss has occurred also for *lɣ and *rɣ. E.g. the plural of jalka 'foot' is jallat , contrasting with jalat in Finnish and jalad in Estonian. Karelian still includes some gradation pairs which Finnish does not. The consonants /t k/ undergo consonant gradation when following

1184-458: Is still the case for similar clusters such as /sp/ , /st/ , /tk/ ). However, gradation pairs ht : *hð and hk : *hɣ were at one point introduced. The first of these patterns remains common in modern Finnish, e.g. vahti : vahdit 'guard(s)'. The second is only found in a limited number of words, e.g. pohje : pohkeet 'calf : calves', but rahka : rahkat ' quark (s)'. Usage varies for some words with /hk/ , e.g. for

1258-495: Is understood to have originally been a predictable phonological process . In all languages that retain it, however, it has evolved further to a less predictable system of consonant mutation , of morphophonological or even purely morphological nature. This is a consequence of later changes in the structure of syllables, which made closed syllables open or vice versa, without adjusting the gradation. For example, in Northern Sami,

1332-467: Is used with transitive words. The reflexive conjugation is used for some intransitive verbs. Each conjugation type has its own personal endings. There are three subtypes of objective conjugation endings that correspond to object number. Nganasan has a broad mood paradigm with nine forms: indicative, imperative, interrogative, inferential, renarrative, irrealis, optative, admissive-cohortive, debitive, abessive and prohibitive. Mood forms are mostly built with

1406-603: The -da infinitive has the opposite grade from the present ( hakata 'to begin', lugeda 'to read'). The system of gradation has also expanded to include gradation of all consonant clusters and geminate consonants (generally quantitative), when occurring after short vowels, and vowel gradation between long and overlong vowels, although these are not written except for the distinction between voiceless stops and geminate voiceless stops (e.g. overlong strong grade tt with weak grade t ). E.g. linn [linːː] , 'city (nom.)' vs. linna [linːɑ] 'city (gen.)'. In consonant clusters, in

1480-561: The Samoyedic branch of the Uralic language family (Janhunen 1998). There are two main dialects , Avam ( авамский говор , avamsky govor ) and Vadeyev ( Russian : вадеевский говор , romanized :  vadeyevsky govor ). A part of the vocabulary can be traced to elements of unknown substrate origin, which are roughly twice as common in Nganasan than in other Samoyedic languages such as Nenets or Enets , and bear no apparent resemblance to

1554-498: The 42 kilometres (26 mi) long Kuchchugui-Kuoyka, the 39 kilometres (24 mi) long Kusagan-Khayalakh and the 36 kilometres (22 mi) long Oyur from the left. The last, tortuous stretch of the river was described in such terms by Yuri Tsenin in Vokrug sveta : Its channel bends so whimsically in a wide canyon that sometimes one can't understand in which direction it flows. We are surrounded by lemon-yellow mountains. The shores of

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1628-607: The Finnic and Samic peoples on one hand, and the Nganasans on the other, leads Helimski to reject the second option of these. The original effect of gradation in the Finnic languages can be reconstructed as a lenition of the consonant at the beginning of a closed syllable. Lenition resulted in geminate (long) stops and affricates being shortened, and in short voiceless obstruents /*p *t *k/ becoming voiced, while short voiced obstruents /*b *d *g/ became fricatives: Only stops and affricates were affected, not other consonants. Moreover, only

1702-453: The Kuoika rise above the water as a fortified wall with odd-looking towers and ramparts. Nganasan language The Nganasan language (formerly called тавгийский , tavgiysky , or тавгийско-самоедский , tavgiysko-samoyedsky in Russian; from the ethnonym тавги , tavgi ) is a moribund Samoyedic language spoken by the Nganasan people . Nganasan is the most divergent language of

1776-494: The Kuoika turns in a SSE direction entering the Central Siberian Plateau area. It meanders strongly in its southernmost section within a wide gorge until it meets the left bank of the Olenyok 473 km (294 mi) from its mouth. The river is frozen between early October and early June. Its main tributary is the 169 kilometres (105 mi) long Sektelyakh from the right. Other tributaries are much shorter, such as

1850-656: The Proto-Finnic pattern fairly well. The conditioning of syllable structure is still visible in most cases, but it is no longer productive: gradation has become a grammatical feature. These changes have made qualitative gradation become more complex, especially in the case of k . In standard Finnish, k is the phoneme with the most possible changes. It can disappear as in jalka 'foot' → jalan 'foot-Gen', or: /j/ has been lost in this position in Southeastern Tavastian, Northern Bothnian and Eastern dialects, resulting in kurki (crane) : kuren (crane's) instead of

1924-524: The additional preaspiration found on original geminates. In the others, the merger affected stops and affricates as well, with the strong grade of singletons receiving secondary preaspiration. In the Western Samic languages, geminate nasals became pre-stopped, which affected the strong grade of singletons as well (outside Southern Sami) due to the historical merger of these grades. In the languages in closest contact to Finnic ( Northern , Inari and Skolt ),

1998-513: The branches. In the Samic languages it was realised through fortition , specifically lengthening, in the strong grade. In the Finnic and Samoyedic languages, there was instead lenition in the weak grade. Thus, the exact realization of the contrast is not crucial. The language groups differ in regard to their treatment sequences of a vowel followed by j or w in Proto-Uralic. In the Samic languages,

2072-549: The clusters /ht/ and /hk/ with a voicing-neutral first member, but also further clusters, even several ones introduced only in Russian loans. The alternations involving the voiced affricate dž are only found in the Eastern dialects. In the Western dialects, there are several possible weak grade counterparts of tš : Further minor variation in these gradation patterns was found down to the level of individual villages. Votic also has

2146-501: The consonant from a geminate * -tt- to a single * -t- , and later loss of -k resulted in the final form -ata/ätä . However, even though this is now a single consonant, it was originally a geminate and therefore triggers the weak grade on the syllable before it. So whereas the infinitive may be for example hypätä 'to jump', its original stem was * hyppät- , as can be seen in the first-person singular form hyppään 'I jump', from earlier * hyppäðen with loss of *-ð- . An opposite effect

2220-545: The constituents they modify. The relative construction is always placed immediately before the modified constituent, whereas other types of constructions allow other constituents to interfere. The word order in such construction is the same as in simple sentences (Tereščenko, 1973). Coordination is most often achieved by means of intonation. Sometimes pronominal and adverbial derivatives can be used as conjunctions. For example, adverb ŋonə 'also' can be used as conjunction. The category of conjunctions may be undergoing formation under

2294-419: The corresponding possessed forms of the postposition na- . Other pronouns are inflected like nouns (Helimski, 1998). Verbs agree with their subjects in person and number, and have three conjugation types. Like other Samoyedic languages, Nganasan has the opposition of perfective and imperfective verbs. The subjective conjugation is used when there is no object or the object is focused. The objective conjugation

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2368-479: The existence of three degrees of consonant length (e.g. d , t , and tt ), but since the alternation d ~ t occurs only after heavy syllables, and the alternations d ~ tt and t ~ tt occur only after light syllables, there is no single paradigm that has this simple alternation. However, weak grades like v , j , or ∅ that alternate with stops like b , d , or g originate from the weak grade of these stops, and these may still synchronically alternate with

2442-508: The first of these only happens in word-initial syllables. /ⁱa/ does not occur after palatal consonants, having been neutralized into /a/ . /o/ does not occur after labial consonants, having unrounded to /ə/ in this position. One of the main features of Nganasan is consonant gradation , which concerns the consonant phonemes /h, t, k, s/ alternating with /b, d, g, ɟ/ and their nasal combinations /ŋh, nt, ŋk, ns/ with /mb, nd, ŋg, ɲɟ/ . The language's Cyrillic -based alphabet

2516-495: The following apostrophe marking the over-long grade is not used in the official orthography, although it is generally found in dictionaries. Some gradation triads include the following: Nganasan , alone of the Samoyedic languages (or indeed any Uralic languages east of Finnic), shows systematic qualitative gradation of stops and fricatives . Gradation occurs in intervocalic position as well as in consonant clusters consisting of

2590-415: The form of personal, negative or demonstrative pronouns can be inserted between the negative auxiliary and the main verb (Wagner-Nagy, 2011). There are a few negative verbs other than ni- , such as kasa — "nearly", ləði — "vainly", əku — "maybe", and ŋuəli — "of course", but their functionality is restricted, with only ni- having a full paradigm. Existential sentences are negated with

2664-413: The genitive and the partitive singular are formed by adding -e , but the genitive takes the weak form ( leh-e ), while the partitive takes the strong form ( leht-e ). In the end, the types of generalizations that can be made are that some inflectional categories always take the strong form (e.g. partitive plural, -ma infinitive), some always take the weak form (e.g. -tud participle), some forms may take

2738-401: The heads in case, and adjectives also agree with the head in number. The case agreement is only complete in grammatical cases; in locative cases the attribute gets genitive form. There are no prepositions in Nganasan, postpositions are composite parts of words and also require the attributes in genitive cases. Possession is expressed with genitive construction or by a possessive suffix attached to

2812-479: The help of affixation but special particles are also sometimes used. All mood forms, except the imperative, have the same personal suffixes. Tenses are distinguished in the indicative, imperative and interrogative moods (Tereščenko, 1979). Most corresponding imperfective and perfective stems have the same root, but in rare cases the roots can be different. The aspectual opposition between imperfective and perfective verbs remains semantic in most verbal forms. However, in

2886-399: The home' (from earlier * kotihin , from koti ). This explains why kotiin retains a strong grade even though a closed syllable follows it. The Pohjanmaa dialect of Finnish retains the -h- , however. Words that now end in -e are in fact very similar to those ending in -s . These originally ended with -k or -h so that the nominative ended in a consonant just as kuningas and therefore

2960-573: The indicative mood it is used to express present continuous and present perfect meanings, respectively. In this case, the opposition is present formally: imperfective verbs take imperfective suffixes and the perfective ones have the perfective suffixes (Helimski, 1998). Imperfective verbs can also express future meanings. These forms are not considered tense in the strict sense. The proper tense forms of past and future include past, past perfect, future, future-in-the past (Katzschmann, 2008). sG kotumunə hireə "worth killing" sLat niimsiəm kotomundə "I

3034-467: The influence of Russian (Tereščenko, 1973). Consonant gradation Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation (mostly lenition but also assimilation ) found in some Uralic languages , more specifically in the Finnic , Samic and Samoyedic branches. It originally arose as an allophonic alternation between open and closed syllables , but has become grammaticalised due to changes in

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3108-410: The last member of a consonant cluster was subject to gradation, and single stops and affricates were only affected if they were not adjacent to another obstruent. Thus, two-obstruent combinations like kt , st and tk did not undergo lenition, nor did obstruent-sonorant combinations like kl and tr . The voiced stops *b *d *g generally lenited to fricatives /β ð ɣ/ unless they were preceded by

3182-460: The loss of -h- then resulted in the modern form kuninkaan . The intermediate steps are seen in mies 'man'. Here, following a stressed syllable, the -h- was not lost, so that its genitive is miehen . Similar changes affected the illative ending, which was -hVn where V was the same as the vowel preceding the ending. The h is preserved after stressed syllables, as in maahan 'into the land' (from maa ), but lost otherwise as in kotiin 'into

3256-425: The modern Finnish infinitive ending, which was historically * -tak/täk . The final * -k triggered gradation, so that the ending normally became * -dak/däk . In turn, following the loss of d between unstressed vowels, and the loss of final * -k only * -aˣ/äˣ remained. Thus, hakea (originally * hakedak ) has only -a as the d was lost. But in verbs like juo-da 'to drink' the /d/ remained since it followed

3330-418: The negative existential predicate d'aŋku or its derivative stem d'anguj- . D'aŋku can only be used in present indicative as it behaves like a noun: it takes nominal predicative endings. D'anguj- (a composite of d'aŋku and ij- "be") is used for all other tense/mood combinations. Subordination is typically formed by constructions with non-finite verbal forms. Such constructions are usually placed before

3404-412: The neighboring Tungusic and Yukaghir languages . The source of this substrate remains a mystery so far. Compulsory education did not exist for Nganasans until the 1930s. Until then, Nganasans were illiterate with no exceptions. Not many Nganasans spoke Russian; any spoken Russian would not be in standard Russian. Rather, it would be a pidgin called Taimyr Pidgin Russian or Govorka. The first school

3478-480: The only difference between giella and giela ("language", nominative and genitive singular respectively) is the grade; the consonant that originally closed the syllable in the genitive form has disappeared. Even in Finnish, which is relatively conservative with respect to consonants, there are many cases of strong grades in closed syllables and weak grades in open syllables, e.g. sade and sateen ("rain", nominative and genitive singular). These, again, are

3552-441: The original syllable closure can be seen in sandhi effects: these classes of words can still be analyzed to contain the assimilative word-final 'consonant' ˣ, realized as lengthening of the next word's initial consonant. Therefore, hae side varastosta 'get a bandage from storage!' is pronounced [hɑe‿sːide‿ʋːɑrɑstostɑ] , where the weak grades indeed occur in closed syllables. The loss of -k combined with loss of d gave rise to

3626-458: The over-long grades ( pp , tt , kk ) within the same paradigm, giving paradigms with three underlying grades. Another extremely important feature of Estonian gradation is that, due to the greater loss of word-final segments (both consonants and vowels), the Estonian gradation is an almost entirely opaque process, where the consonant grade (short, long, or overlong) must be listed for each class of wordform. So, for example, embus 'embrace' has

3700-541: The overlong form (some partitive singulars, short illative singular), while other inflectional categories are underdetermined for whether they occur with weak or strong grade. In this last case, within a paradigm some forms are constrained to have the same grade and others are constrained to have the opposite grade; thus all present tense forms for the same verb have the same grade, though some verbs have strong ( hakkan 'I begin', hakkad 'you begin', etc.) and others have weak ( loen 'I read', loed , 'you read', etc.), and

3774-413: The plural of nahka 'leather, hide', both nahat and nahkat are acceptable. Quantitative consonant gradation has expanded to include in addition to the pairs kk : k , pp : p , tt : t , also gg : g and bb : b (but not dd : d ) in a number of recent loanwords, such as blogata : bloggaan 'to blog'; lobata : lobbaan 'to lobby'. One important change

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3848-440: The possessed (Helimski, 1998; Katzschmann, 2008). Nganasan is a pro-drop language: pronominal subjects are often omitted when the verb conjugation type is subjective (Tereščenko, 1979). Standard negation is expressed by negative auxiliary ( ńi- ) followed by the main verb in connegative form marked with ʔ, e.g. ńi-ndɨ-m konɨʔ "I do not go". All inflectional markers are taken by the negation auxiliary (Gusev, 2015). Objects in

3922-536: The preceding syllable having no coda. In addition, most dialects of Northern Sami feature coda maximisation , which geminates the last member of a cluster in various environments (most commonly in two-consonant clusters of quantity 2, in which the first member is voiced). Most sonorants and fricatives are only subject to quantitative gradation, but nasals, stops, affricates and the glide /j/ are subject to both quantitative and qualitative changes. Some words alternate between three grades, though not all words do. Note that

3996-511: The preceding syllable was in the weak grade. But after an ending was added, the weak grade g appeared, which eventually disappeared just as h did. While syllabic gradation remains generally productive, the distortions of its original phonetic conditions have left it essentially a morphologically conditioned process. This is particularly visible in forms that display a strong grade where a weak would be historically expected, or vice versa. Possessive suffixes , in particular, are always preceded by

4070-414: The purposes of syllabification. There remained for a period an intermediate quantity, half-long * -t̆t- , which still closed the preceding syllable. Consequently, a syllable ending with a geminate in the weak grade still triggered a weak grade on the preceding syllable as well. In Finnish, the half-long consonants eventually merged with the strong-grade singleton consonants, but in most other Finnic languages,

4144-961: The radio program; some more want to but do not have a radio set. There are no TV broadcasts in Nganasan. Since 1993, the newspaper Sovetsky Taimyr (renamed to Taimyr after the collapse of the Soviet Union ) has been irregularly publishing news and other stories in Nganasan. Nganasan has 10 vowel phonemes and 21 consonant phonemes. Several disyllabic sequences of vowels are possible: The sequences / ⁱai / and / iu / also occur, but only across morpheme boundaries. The vowels /e/ and /o/ only occur in initial syllables. Vowels can be divided two pairs of groups based on harmony: Front /ⁱa e i y/ vs Back /a o ɨ u/ , and Unrounded /ⁱa e i ɨ/ vs Rounded /a o y u/ . Backness harmony only applies to high vowels. Front vowels do not occur after initial dental consonants. /ə ɨ u/ do not occur after palatal consonants, as they have fronted to /e i y/ , although

4218-554: The result of changes in syllable structure, with the original Proto-Finnic *sadek and *sategen following the rules more obviously. In addition, not all Finnish words have gradation, so that the occurrence of gradation is not even morphologically predictable anymore, it is a property of each individual word. There is no consensus view on the ultimate origin of consonant gradation in the Uralic languages. Three broad positions may be distinguished: In all three groups, consonant gradation has

4292-442: The same conditioning, the distinction between open and closed syllables. In this light, and in the absence of any evidence of the same system having existed in any unrelated language in the world, Helimski (1995) has argued that the latter two options should be rejected as implausible. If a connection exists, it is also disputed what its nature may be, again allowing for three broad positions: The great geographical distance between

4366-422: The same form for all cases (e.g. genitive embuse ), while hammas 'tooth' has weak grade mm in the nominative hammas and partitive hammast , but strong form mb in the genitive hamba and all other cases of the singular. There is a large number of cases in which inflectional endings are identical except for how they affect the consonant grade, e.g. leht 'leaf' belongs to a declension class in which both

4440-432: The second part of these remains phonologically a consonant, and can thus close the syllable before it, triggering the weak grade. It also takes part in gradation itself, lengthening in the strong grade. In Finnic, on the other hand, these were treated as diphthongs, and were equivalent to long vowels in terms of syllable structure. Consequently, they did not close the syllable and did not affect gradation. Consonant gradation

4514-441: The sentence focus, especially in emphatic speech. The focused constituent usually immediately precedes the verb. Wagner-Nagy (2010) suggests that Nganasan is similar to Hungarian in its behavior, in that its word order is determined by pragmatic factors rather than being fixed. On the phrase level, the attributes within the noun phrase usually precede the noun and become focused when placed after it. Numerals and adjectives agree with

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4588-539: The standard form kurjen . Short t also has developed more complex gradation due to various assimilations. Patterns include t  : d (tie t ää : tie d än), rt  : rr (ke rt oa : ke rr on), lt  : ll (pe lt o : pe ll on), and nt ~ nn (a nt aa ~ a nn an). Alternation patterns for p include p  : v (ta p a : ta v an) and mp  : mm (la mp i : la mm en). The consonant clusters /ht/ and /hk/ were, comprising two obstruents, not originally subject to gradation (as

4662-433: The strong grade in the infinitive ending, going counter to the rules of gradation. However, historically it is in fact a weak grade: the stem of the verb itself ended in * -at/ät- , and this is still visible in the 3rd person imperative ending -atkoon/ätköön . Thus, when combined with the infinitive ending, the verb ended in * -attak/ättäk (similar to the origin of the -ton/tön suffix described above). The -k then weakened

4736-474: The strong grade the first consonant is lengthened, e.g. must [musːt] , 'black (nom.)' vs. musta [mustɑ] 'black (gen.)'. Before single consonants, long vowels and diphthongs also become overlong in strong forms and remain merely long in weak forms, e.g. kool [koːːl] , 'school (nom.)' vs. kooli [koːli] 'school (gen.)'. Gradation was present in Proto-Samic , and is inherited in most Samic languages. It

4810-652: The strong grade, even if the suffix may cause the syllable to be closed. For example, 'our bed' is sänkymme , not ˣsängymme . Strong grades may also be found in closed syllables in contractions such as jotta en → jotten . Several recent loans and coinages with simple /p, t, k/ are also left entirely outside of gradation, e.g. auto (: auton ) 'car', eka (: ekan ) 'first', muki (: mukin ) 'mug', peti (: petin , sometimes pedin ) 'bed', söpö (: söpön ) 'cute'. A number of proper names such as Alepa , Arto , Malta , Marko belong in this class as well. Suffixal gradation has been largely lost, usually in favor of

4884-418: The strong-grade singletons underwent a secondary lenition which prevented this merger. Gradation later expanded to include a pattern *s ~ *h , presumed to reflect a former pattern *s ~ *z . This type of gradation only systematically appears in cases of word-final *s , which between vowels uniformly becomes *h : Finnish pensas 'bush' has the genitive pensaan < * pensahen . An example

4958-426: The syllable structure of the languages affected. The term "consonant gradation" refers to a word-medial alternation of consonants between fortis and lenis realisations. The fortis strong grade appears in historically open syllables (ending in a vowel), while the lenis weak grade appears in historically closed syllables (ending in a consonant). The exact realisation of the fortis–lenis distinction differs between

5032-534: The weak grade *ð of /t/ in inherited vocabulary has been lost or assimilated to adjacent sounds in Votic; the weak grade *β of /p/ has similarly become /v/ , or assimilated to /m/ in the cluster /mm/ . However, the weak grade of /k/ survives, as /ɡ/ before a back vowel or /j ~ dʲ ~ dʒ/ before a front vowel. A noticeable feature of Votic is that gradation has been extended to several consonant clusters that were not originally affected. As in Finnish, this includes

5106-639: The weak grade. While the partitive plurals of kana 'hen' and lakana 'bedsheet' still show distinct treatment of the original *-ta ( kanoja , lakanoi t a ), the partitive singulars in modern Finnish both have the weak grade ( kanaa , lakanaa ), although in several dialects of older Finnish the form lakanata occurred for the latter. Similarly the participle ending *-pa is now uniformly -va , even after stressed syllables; e.g. syö-vä 'eating', voi-va 'being able'. (The original forms may remain in diverged sense or fossilized derivatives: syöpä 'cancer', kaikki-voipa 'almighty'.) Karelian consonant gradation

5180-525: Was afraid to kill" sEla + s1 kotumu(ng)ətənə "so that I do not kill", etc. sLoc + s1 koðaʔmuəntənunə "where I killed", etc. sLat koðutundə "when killed" koðutundənə "when I killed" s3 kotunagətu "in order that he killed", etc. The dominating word order in Nganasan is SOV, similar to other Samoyedic languages. However, Nganasan is considered to exhibit more freedom in word order than other languages of its group. According to Tereščenko (1979), other types of word orders are used for shifting

5254-431: Was caused by the loss of * h and * ð between unstressed vowels. Loss of h affected nouns and adjectives ending in * -s or * -h , such as kuningas 'king'. In the nominative, this -s appeared as usual, and as the preceding syllable was closed, the weak grade ng appeared. But when a case ending such as the genitive -(e)n was added, the result was originally * kuninkasen , which was then weakened to * kuninkahen , and

5328-646: Was devised in the 1990s: Nouns in Nganasan have the grammatical categories of number (singular, dual, plural), case (nominative, genitive, accusative, lative, locative, elative, prolative, comitative) and possessivity (non-possessive versus possessive forms). Nganasan lacks determiners; however, the possessive forms of second person singular and third person singular can be used to express definiteness (Katzschmann, 2008). Nganasan has personal, demonstrative, interrogative, negative and determinative pronouns. Personal pronouns are not inflected: their grammatical case forms coincide and their local case forms are expressed by

5402-491: Was founded in Dudinka in 1920. After its foundation, other villages started to have schools. Russian was taught as the primary language in these schools, not only because the administration desired to Russify the population, but also due to the fact Nganasan was spoken rather than written until the 1980s. In schools, there are some learning materials for some age groups: Volochanka pupils only learn their heritage language 2 times

5476-496: Was the loss of word-final *-k and *-h early on in the history of Finnish. This resulted in many open syllables with weak grades. In particular, the majority of nouns ending in -e are affected by this, with a weak grade in the nominative form. The imperative form of verbs also ended in a now-lost -k . For examples, side 'bandage', from * siðe , earlier * siðek (cf. Veps sideg , Eastern Votic sidõg ); hakea 'to get' → hae! 'get! (imp.)' from * haɣe , earlier * haɣek . Traces of

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