Converbal & equivalent structures: a comparative study of Selcup and Samoyedic languages

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Beáta Wagner-Nagy
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 445353352

The project aims at gathering and deepening the knowledge of the Selkup language, a small Uralic language close to extinction. The project is a followup project of the ongoing project „Syntactic description of Southern and Central Selkup: a corpus based study“, in which a digital corpus of the Selkup language has been compiled and has been used to draw conclusions on before undescribed syntactic features of the Selkup language. While researching these syntactical structures with the help of the corpus it became obvious that the rate of occurrences of converbs in the three main dialectal groups is highly variable – an issue that needs further explanation: converb constructions in general but especially under a syntactical viewpoint are not researched and described well enough for Selkup. The project aims can be subdivided into two: Firstly a typological categorization of Selkup converb constructions into functional categories has to be established. Particularly the differences in the dialects will be a focal point: Southern Selkup uses ten times the amount of converb constructions than its Central Selkup counterpart, also the Northern Selkup dialect makes much less use of these constructions. A key aspect will be the question, which structures functionally overtake the role of converb constructions in these cases.Secondly the project aims at establishing a connection between the Selkup language and the other Samoyedic languages Enets, Nenets, Nganasan and Kamas. This comparison will specifically examining the advanced functions of converb constructions in the continuum of clause linkage strategies, like the aspectual reading in auxiliary verb constructions or as an actant of phase verbs.The project will in this manner not only close a research gap in the understanding of the Selkup syntax, but will also be useful in enabling areal typological approaches for language contact research. The already compiled corpus is an ideal basis for this research project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants