Buch, Englisch, Band 305, 100 Seiten
Buch, Englisch, Band 305, 100 Seiten
Reihe: Languages of the World, Materials
ISBN: 978-3-89586-562-6
Verlag: LINCOM
This study is intended to provide a grammatical description of Ostyak, one of the Uralic languages spoken in Western Siberia. The description is based on the Northern Ostyak dialect of Obdorsk, although divergent features of other dialects are also discussed. The present paper emphasizes the syntactic aspect of the language, typically ignored in previous descriptive work on Ostyak, which mostly concentrates on its phonology and morphology.
Part 1 is a concise sketch of the Ostyak grammar, made up of the following sections: "Introductory remarks" (geo- and sociolinguistic data, previous studies, dialect division), "Phonology" (including phonotactics and prosody), "Morphology" (grammatical categories, word formation, illustrative paradigms), and "Basic syntax" (types of simple and complex sentences, discourse phenomena). A sample text in the Obdorsk dialect of Ostyak is provided.
Part 2 elaborates on certain syntactic topics that are of a particular interest from the typological viewpoint. In particular, the following topics are discussed: information structure and word order, object agreement, passivization, the relative clause, clause-chaining and reference tracking, and the category of the evidential.
Part 3 serves to provide the necessary reference. It contains the bibliography relevant to the present study, as well as the basic bibliography on Ostyak. The latter includes editions of the folklore texts, lexicographic publications, comprehensive descriptions, and the most important studies on certain aspects of the Ostyak grammar.
