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37-509: From hydronymic and genetic data, it is suggested that the Yeniseian languages were spoken in a much greater area in ancient times, including parts of northern China and Mongolia. It has been further proposed that the recorded distribution of Yeniseian languages from the 17th century onward represents a relatively recent northward migration, and that the Yeniseian urheimat lies to the south of Lake Baikal . The Yeniseians have been connected to

74-588: A back-migration from Beringia to central Siberia, and the Dené–Yeniseians a result of a radiation of populations out of the Bering land bridge. The spread of ancient Yeniseian languages may be associated with an ancestry component from the Baikal area (Cisbaikal_LNBA), maximized among hunter-gatherers of the local Glazkovo culture . Affinity for this ancestry has been observed among Na-Dene speakers. Cisbaikal_LNBA ancestry

111-562: A distinctive discipline of hydronymy (or hydronomastics ) studies the proper names of all bodies of water, the origins and meanings of those names, and their development and transmission through history. Within the onomastic classification, main types of hydronyms are (in alphabetical order): Often a given body of water will have several entirely different names given to it by different peoples living along its shores. For example, Tibetan : རྫ་ཆུ , Wylie : rDza chu , ZYPY : Za qu and Thai : แม่น้ำโขง [mɛ̂ː náːm kʰǒːŋ] are

148-621: A genealogical relation between the Yeniseian languages of Siberia and the Na–Dené languages of North America. At the time of publication (2010), Vajda's proposals had been favorably reviewed by several specialists of Na-Dené and Yeniseian languages—although at times with caution—including Michael Krauss , Jeff Leer , James Kari , and Heinrich Werner , as well as a number of other respected linguists, such as Bernard Comrie , Johanna Nichols , Victor Golla , Michael Fortescue , Eric Hamp , and Bill Poser (Kari and Potter 2010:12). One significant exception

185-458: A river-name pattern against which to fit the story of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain and pockets of surviving native British culture. His river map of Britain divided the island into three principal areas of English settlement: the river valleys draining eastward in which surviving British names are limited to the largest rivers and Saxon settlement was early and dense; the highland spine; and

222-506: A third region whose British hydronyms apply even to the smaller streams. Proto-Yeniseian Proto-Yeniseian or Proto-Yeniseic is the unattested reconstructed proto-language from which all Yeniseian languages are thought to descend from. It is uncertain whether Proto-Yeniseian had a similar tone/pitch accent system as Ket . Many studies about Proto-Yeniseian phonology have been done; however, there are still many things unclear about Proto-Yeniseian. The probable location of

259-466: Is inferred to be rich in Ancient Paleo-Siberian ancestry, and also display affinity to Inner Northeast Asian (Yumin-like) groups. In Siberia, Edward Vajda observed that Yeniseian hydronyms in the circumpolar region (the recent area of distribution of Yeniseian languages) clearly overlay earlier systems, with the layering of morphemes onto Ugric, Samoyedic, Turkic, and Tungusic place names. It

296-691: Is presented below: It has been suggested that the Xiongnu and Hunnic languages were Southern Yeniseian. Only two languages of this family survived into the 20th century: Ket (also known as Imbat Ket ), with around 200 speakers, and Yugh (also known as Sym Ket ), now extinct. The other known members of this family—Arin, Assan, Pumpokol, and Kott—have been extinct for over 150 years. Other groups—the Baikot , Yarin ( Buklin ), Yastin , Ashkyshtym (Bachat Teleuts ), and Koibalkyshtym —are identifiable as Yeniseic speaking from tsarist fur-tax records compiled during

333-656: Is that the Yarden , Yarkon , and Yarmouk (and possibly, with distortion, Yabbok and/or Arnon ) rivers in the Israel / Jordan area contain the Egyptian word for river ( itrw , transliterated in the Bible as ye'or ). It is also possible for a toponym to become a hydronym: for example, the River Liffey takes its name from the plain on which it stands, called Liphe or Life ;

370-489: Is the critical review of the volume of collected papers by Lyle Campbell and a response by Vajda published in late 2011 that clearly indicate the proposal is not completely settled at the present time. Two other reviews and notices of the volume appeared in 2011 by Keren Rice and Jared Diamond . The Karasuk hypothesis, linking Yeniseian to Burushaski , has been proposed by several scholars, notably by A.P. Dulson and V.N. Toporov. In 2001, George van Driem postulated that

407-475: Is therefore proposed that the homeland, or dispersal point, of the Yeniseian languages lies in the boreal region between Lake Baikal, northern Mongolia, and the Upper Yenisei basin, referred to by Vajda as a territory "abandoned" by the original Yeniseian speakers. On the other hand, Václav Blažek (2019) argues that based on hydronomic evidence, Yeneisian languages were originally spoken on the northern slopes of

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444-404: Is very controversial or viewed as doubtful or rejected by other linguists. Hydronymic A hydronym (from Greek : ὕδρω , hydrō , "water" and ὄνομα , onoma , "name") is a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water . Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans. As a subset of toponymy ,

481-623: The Burusho people were part of the migration out of Central Asia, that resulted in the Indo-European conquest of the Indus Valley. Alexei Kassian has suggested a connection between Hattic , Hurro-Urartian and Karasuk, proposing some lexical correspondences. As noted by Tailleur and Werner, some of the earliest proposals of genetic relations of Yeniseian, by M.A. Castrén (1856), James Byrne (1892), and G.J. Ramstedt (1907), suggested that Yeniseian

518-736: The Kan River . From toponyms it can be seen that Yeniseian populations probably lived in Buryatia , Zabaykalsky , and northern Mongolia . As an example, the toponym ši can be found in Zabaykalsky Krai , which is probably related to the Proto-Yeniseian word *sēs 'river' and likely derives from an undocumented Yeniseian language. Some toponyms that appear Yeniseian extend as far as Heilongjiang . Václav Blažek argues, based on hydronymic data, that Yeniseians were once spread out even farther into

555-601: The Tianshan and Pamir Mountains before dispersing downstream via the Irtysh River . The modern populations of Yeniseians in central and northern Siberia are thus not indigenous and represent a more recent migration northward. This was noted by Russian explorers during the conquest of Siberia: the Ket are recorded to have been expanding northwards along the Yenisei, from the river Yeloguy to

592-622: The Tibetan and Thai names, respectively, for the same river, the Mekong in southeast Asia . (The Tibetan name is used for three other rivers as well.) Hydronyms from various languages may all share a common etymology . For example, the Danube , Don , Dniester , Dnieper , and Donets rivers all contain the Scythian name for "river" (cf. don , "river, water" in modern Ossetic ). A similar suggestion

629-628: The Xiongnu confederation , whose ruling elite may have spoken a southern Yeniseian language similar to the now extinct Pumpokol language . The Jie , who ruled the Later Zhao state of northern China, are likewise believed to have spoken a Pumpokolic language based on linguistic and ethnogeographic data. For those who argue the Xiongnu spoke a Yeniseian language, the Yeniseian languages are thought to have contributed many ubiquitous loanwords to Turkic and Mongolic vocabulary, such as Khan , Tarqan , and

666-508: The prefixing verb inflection, and highly complex morphophonology . The Yeniseian languages have been described as having up to four tones or no tones at all. The 'tones' are concomitant with glottalization , vowel length , and breathy voice , not unlike the situation reconstructed for Old Chinese before the development of true tones in Chinese. The Yeniseian languages have highly elaborate verbal morphology . The following table exemplifies

703-609: The 17th century, but nothing remains of their languages except a few proper names. Ket , the only extant Yeniseian language, is the northernmost known. Historical sources record a contemporaneous northern expansion of the Ket along the Yenisei during the Russian conquest of Siberia. Today, it is mainly spoken in Turukhansky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai in far northern Siberia, in villages such as Kellog and Sulomay  [ ru ] . Yugh, which only recently faced extinction,

740-568: The East Asia area such as Hmong-Mien, Altaic (which is actually a sprachbund), Austroasiatic, Kra-Dai, Austronesian came through contact; but as there has been no recent contact between Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dené, and Yeniseian language families then any similarities these groups share must be residual. Bouda, in various publications in the 1930s through the 1950s, described a linguistic network that (besides Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan) also included Caucasian , and Burushaski , some forms of which have gone by

777-577: The Kureyka, from the 17th century onward. Based on these records, the modern Ket-speaking area appears to represent the very northernmost reaches of Yeniseian migration. The origin of this northward migration from the Mongolian steppe has been connected to the fall of the Xiongnu confederation . It appears from Chinese sources that a Yeniseian group might have been a major part of the heterogeneous Xiongnu tribal confederation, who have traditionally been considered

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814-696: The Sino–Dené hypothesis. Caveney considered a link between Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dené, and Yeniseian to be plausible but did not support the hypothesis that Sino-Tibetan and Na-Dené were related to the Caucasian languages (Sino–Caucasian and Dené–Caucasian). A 2023 analysis by David Bradley using the standard techniques of comparative linguistics supports a distant genetic link between the Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dené, and Yeniseian language families. Bradley argues that any similarities Sino-Tibetan shares with other language families of

851-457: The ancestors of the Huns and other Northern Asian groups. However, these suggestions are difficult to substantiate due to the paucity of data. Alexander Vovin argues that at least parts of the Xiongnu, possibly its core or ruling class, spoke a Yeniseian language. Positing a higher degree of similarity of Xiongnu to Yeniseian as compared to Turkic, he also praised Stefan Georg 's demonstration of how

888-512: The basic Yeniseian numerals as well as the various attempts at reconstructing the proto-forms: The following table exemplifies a few basic vocabulary items as well as the various attempts at reconstructing the proto-forms: Until 2008, few linguists had accepted connections between Yeniseian and any other language family, though distant connections have been proposed with most of the ergative languages of Eurasia. In 2008, Edward Vajda of Western Washington University presented evidence for

925-400: The development of former affricates to stops , and the use of postpositions or grammatical enclitics as clausal subordinators . Yeniseic nominal enclitics closely approximate the case systems of geographically contiguous families. Despite these similarities, Yeniseian appears to stand out among the languages of Siberia in several typological respects, such as the presence of tone ,

962-728: The existing name of a body of water rather than rename it in their own language. For example, the Rhine in Germany bears a Celtic name, not a German name. The Mississippi River in the United States bears an Anishinaabe name, not a French or English one. The names of large rivers are even more conservative than the local names of small streams. Therefore, hydronomy may be a tool used to reconstruct past cultural interactions, population movements, religious conversions, or older languages. For example, history professor Kenneth H. Jackson identified

999-445: The name of Sino-Caucasian. The works of R. Bleichsteiner and O.G. Tailleur, the late Sergei A. Starostin and Sergei L. Nikolayev have sought to confirm these connections. Others who have developed the hypothesis, often expanded to Dené–Caucasian, include J.D. Bengtson, V. Blažek, J.H. Greenberg (with M. Ruhlen ), and M. Ruhlen. George Starostin continues his father's work in Yeniseian, Sino-Caucasian and other fields. This theory

1036-496: The other. The Sino-Caucasian hypothesis of Sergei Starostin posits that the Yeniseian languages form a clade with Sino-Tibetan, which he called Sino-Yeniseian . The Sino-Caucasian hypothesis has been expanded by others to " Dené–Caucasian " to include the Na-Dené languages of North America, Burushaski , Basque and, occasionally, Etruscan . A narrower binary Dené–Yeniseian family has recently been well received. The validity of

1073-675: The process demonstrating both a linguistic and geographic proximity between Yeniseian and Jie. The decline of the southern Yeniseian languages during and after the Russian conquest of Siberia has been attributed to language shifts of the Arin and Pumpokol to Khakas or Chulym Tatar , and the Kott and Assan to Khakas. The Yeniseian languages share many contact-induced similarities with the South Siberian Turkic languages , Samoyedic languages , and Evenki . These include long-distance nasal harmony ,

1110-537: The rest of the family, however, is viewed as doubtful or rejected by nearly all historical linguists . A link between the Na–Dené languages and Sino-Tibetan languages, known as Sino–Dené had also been proposed by Edward Sapir . Around 1920 Sapir became convinced that Na-Dené was more closely related to Sino-Tibetan than to other American families. Edward Vadja's Dené–Yeniseian proposal renewed interest among linguists such as Geoffrey Caveney (2014) to look into support for

1147-676: The river originally was called An Ruirthech . An unusual example is the River Cam , which originally was called the Granta , but when the town of Grantebrycge became Cambridge , the river's name changed to match the toponym. Another unusual example is the River Stort which is named after the town on the ford Bishops Stortford rather than the town being named after the river. Compared to most other toponyms, hydronyms are very conservative linguistically, and people who move to an area often retain

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1184-554: The ruling elite of the Huns spoke a Yeniseian language and influenced other languages in the region. One sentence of the language of the Jie , a Xiongnu tribe who founded the Later Zhao state, appears consistent with being a Yeniseian language. Later studies suggest that Jie is closer to Pumpokol than to other Yeniseian languages such as Ket. This has been substantiated with geographical data by Vajda, who states that Yeniseian hydronyms found in northern Mongolia are exclusively Pumpokolic, in

1221-522: The west. He compares, for example, the word šet , found in more westerly river names, to Proto-Yeniseian * sēs 'river'. According to a 2016 study, Yeniseian people and their language originated likely somewhere near the Altai Mountains or near Lake Baikal . According to this study, the Yeniseians are linked to Paleo-Eskimo groups. The Yeniseians have also been hypothesised to be representative of

1258-598: The word Tengri (the Turkic and Mongolic word for 'sky' and later 'god') originated from Proto-Yeniseian tɨŋVr . It has been further suggested that the Yeniseian-speaking Xiongnu elite underwent a language shift to Oghur Turkic while migrating westward, eventually becoming the Huns . However, it has also been suggested that the core of the Hunnic language was a Yeniseian language. Vajda et al. 2013 proposed that

1295-584: The word for 'god', Tengri . This conclusion has primarily been drawn from the analysis of preserved Xiongnu texts in the form of Chinese characters . The classification of the Yeniseian languages has changed from time to time. A traditional classification is presented below: Georg 2007 and Hölzl 2018 use a slightly different classification, placing Pumpokol in both branches: A more recent classification, introduced in Fortescue and Vajda 2022 and used in Vajda 2024,

1332-518: Was a northern relative of the Sino–Tibetan languages. These ideas were followed much later by Kai Donner and Karl Bouda. A 2008 study found further evidence for a possible relation between Yeniseian and Sino–Tibetan, citing several possible cognates . Gao Jingyi (2014) identified twelve Sinitic and Yeniseian shared etymologies that belonged to the basic vocabulary, and argued that these Sino-Yeniseian etymologies could not be loans from either language into

1369-425: Was spoken from Yeniseysk to Vorogovo , Yartsevo , and the upper Ket River . The early modern distributions of Arin, Pumpokol, Kott, and Assan can be reconstructed. The Arin were north of Krasnoyarsk , whereas the more distantly related Pumpokol was spoken to the north and west of it, along the upper Ket. Kott and Assan, another pair of closely related languages, occupied the area south of Krasnoyarsk, and east to

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