Table Of ContentMaterials on Forest Enets,
an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia
SUOMALAIS-UGRILAISEN SEURAN TOIMITUKSIA
MÉMOIRES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ FINNO-OUGRIENNE
❋ 267 ❋
Florian Siegl
Materials on Forest Enets,
an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia
SOCIÉTÉ FINNO-OUGRIENNE
HELSINKI 2013
Florian Siegl: Materials on Forest Enets,
an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia
Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia
267
Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne
Copyright © 2013 Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura —
Société Finno-Ougrienne — Finno-Ugrian Society
& Florian Siegl
Layout Anna Kurvinen, Niko Partanen
Language supervision Alexandra Kellner
This study has been supported by Volkswagen Foundation.
ISBN 978-952-5667-45-5 (print) MÉMOIRES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ FINNO-OUGRIENNE
ISBN 978-952-5667-46-2 (online) SUOMALAIS-UGRILAISEN SEURAN TOIMITUKSIA
ISSN 0355-0230
Editor-in-chief Riho Grünthal (Helsinki)
Vammalan Kirjapaino Oy Editorial board
Sastamala 2013 Marianne Bakró-Nagy (Szeged),
Márta Csepregi (Budapest),
Ulla-Maija Forsberg (Helsinki),
Kaisa Häkkinen (Turku),
Tilaukset — Orders Gerson Klumpp (Tartu),
Johanna Laakso (Wien),
Tiedekirja Lars-Gunnar Larsson (Uppsala),
Kirkkokatu 14 Matti Miestamo (Stockholm),
FI-00170 Helsinki Sirkka Saarinen (Turku),
Elena Skribnik (München),
www.tiedekirja.fi
Trond Trosterud (Tromsø),
[email protected]
Berhard Wälchli (Stockholm),
FAX +358 9 635 017 Jussi Ylikoski (Kautokeino)
He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs
were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business,
Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t
keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to […]”
(The Fellowship of the Ring, New York: Ballantine Books, 1982, 102).
6 Florian Siegl: Materials on Forest Enets
Acknowledgments
As every monograph, also this one has its own history, and of course, various sup-
porters. The current monograph is a corrected and enhanced version of my PhD thesis
submitted to and defended at the University in Tartu in June 2011 (Siegl 2011a). The
print run which was needed to fulfill local publication requirements was deliberately
kept small as the description was not finalized. Further, during the compilation of the
dissertation text I anticipated that several topics might allow for a different and perhaps
a better interpretation, and in most instances these suspicions turned out to be justified
during fieldwork in the summer of 2011. This monograph incorporates both corrections
and new data and replaces its predecessor Siegl (2011a).
Along the road to the final version of the dissertation and its transformation into this
monograph, I have been supported by many individuals and institutions which deserve
to be mentioned. As this monograph grew larger and larger, my personal acknowledg-
ments have to be restricted to those whose immediate support, effort, and just criticism
have made this piece of writing possible. First and foremost, the Forest Enetses1 in both
Potapovo and Dudinka2 are without a doubt the most important, as without their efforts
nothing could have been collected, analyzed, or written. As Forest Enets has no way to
say thank you, a hearty спасибо goes out to my major consultants Zoja Bolina, Leonid
Bolin, Nadežda Bolina, Vitalij Bolin, Anatolij Palč́ in, Viktor Palč́ in, Darja Bolina, Nina
Bolina, Ivan Silkin, and Ekaterina Glebova for finding both time and will to share their
language and teach it to me. Unfortunately, my thanks will not reach Elizaveta Bolina;
her untimely and sudden death in March 2008 deprived the tundra around Potapovo of a
Forest Enets who tried to live the old way of life until her last breath. Nor will my thanks
reach Nina Borissova, whose kuči was the first Forest Enets fairytale I heard.
Surely as important as the Forest Enets community has been Oksana Dobžanskaja
(formerly City Center of National Affairs in Dudinka, now Professor at the Department
of Humanities and Social Studies at the Taimyr branch of Leningrad State University),
who helped me obtain the necessary invitations and permits and whose current em-
ployer, but also her former employer, the City Center of National Affairs and its former
co-workers, as well as her family, made my stays in Dudinka a pleasing experience. I
would also like to thank the Taimyr Center of National Affairs in Dudinka for granting
me working space, and especially the section of ethnography, for providing help and
support in so many ways that it would be impossible to list all of them. Individually,
again Zoja Bolina has to be mentioned here. Further, паасиба to Anna Barbolina for
1. The following conventions apply throughout this monograph. The non-English plural Enetses is used when
referring to the Enets people. Forest Enets in the singular refers either to one ethnic Forest Enets or to the language.
The same applies to other Siberian peoples mentioned throughout the text.
2. Romanization of Russian is based on scientific transliteration. Names of Russian authors which have been
used in a different spelling in international publications are preserved. Reasonably well-known geographic names, for
example the river Yenisei, are used in their English form and not in transliteration.
Acknowledgments 7
her lobbying behind the scenes, for her hospitality on the weekends, for teaching me her
mother tongue Dolgan and for opening the way to the Dolgan community.
Special thanks are due to the supervisors of the underlying thesis, Tiit-Rein Viitso
(Tartu) and Ulrike Mosel (Kiel). Ein herzliches Dankeschön to Ulrike for accepting the
task of becoming my second supervisor and subsequently first supervisor, for always
asking the right questions at the right moment, for providing informative feedback and
especially for the intensive working weekends in Kiel. Aitäh sulle Tiit for granting me
both the necessary freedom and support to compile a monograph dissertation and for
your insight behind the scenes of Soviet linguistics, which has helped me to understand
“those things” behind the papers. My gratitude extends to the reviewers, Juha Janhunen
(Helsinki) and Gerson Klumpp (then Munich, now Tartu) who did a marvelous job re-
viewing and commenting a 500 page manuscript in a very short period. Ett särskilt tack
till Juha, also the opponent in Tartu, for making his handwritten notes on the manuscript
available to me. The defense discussion on an early summer day in Tartu was certainly
the shortest two hours of my academic life so far and we could have easily continued
for several more hours if we would have been given the time by the committee. Ein
herzliches Dankeschön to the second reviewer, Gerson Klumpp, with whom I could
continue to discuss pan-Samoyedic matters after his arrival to Tartu. Additional thanks
go to Ago Künnap for clarifying discussions on Southern Samoyedic languages outside
the weary paths of revolutions and for providing unexpected help out of the depths of his
bookshelves on more than just one occasion – aitäh Ago! Tänud to Tõnu Seilenthal for
finding additional financial support which gave me the necessary extra time to final-
ize the thesis after the end of the DOBES-funded phase and for providing institutional
support for the fieldtrip in 2011. Aitäh Kaur for the time spent on the project and for all
the discussions then and now. Kaur Mägi’s hidden help is visible on almost every page
as we must have discussed and compared almost every Forest Enets morpheme and
clause type with Forest Nenets over the years. Further, two more individuals have to be
mentioned as they have observed the growth and whose expertise contributed to the pre-
liminary 2011 version of this monograph. Eberhard Winkler (Göttingen) who served as
the German partner of the DOBES project showed vivid interest in the progress and our
meetings have been a constant source of positive energy for which I am most grateful.
On the other side of the globe, Farrell Ackerman has been a similar source of motiva-
tion. I warmly remember our discussions at the 2007 LSA Summer Institute in Stanford
and my stay in San Diego in early 2008 and most certainly our discussions on syntax,
science, and politics both on campus and at home, or while traveling between both des-
tinations. Chapters 2, 3, 11, and 12, in particular, are a direct outcome of this stay, as the
first versions were presented at UCSD.
Whereas revision of the text started in early 2012 in Tartu, this process continued
and was finalized after my moving to Helsinki. Kiitoksia paljon to Janne Saarikivi who
gave me the time to continue the revision during my participation in the MINOREUS
project in the spring of 2012. The text was finalized in the summer of 2012 in the first
month of my post-doc position at the Department of Finno-Ugrian Languages.
8 Florian Siegl: Materials on Forest Enets
Finally, I would like to thank two institutions for their substantial support. First, I
am grateful to Volkswagenstiftung for financing the DOBES Tartu-Göttingen “Docu-
mentation of Enets and Forest Nenets” project, without whose support the whole enter-
prise would not have been possible. Second, I am equally grateful to the Finno-Ugrian
Society in Helsinki for inviting me to participate in the Manuscripta Castreniana project
and for providing financial support for a pilot study on Castrén’s unpublished Tundra
Enets grammar. Although a detailed study is in preparation, the initial comparison with
Castrén’s data on Tundra Enets increased my understanding of the differences between
both Enets varieties and assured me of the existence of two independent Enets lan-
guages. Further I want to thank them for the financial support for consequent fieldwork
in Dudinka in the summer of 2011 and for accepting this monograph in the MSFOu se-
ries. Individually, I want to thank Paula Kokkonen, Anna Kurvinen, Niko Partanen and
Alexandra Kellner for their work which transferred the manuscript into this monograph.
Last but not least, Helen, since the summer of 2009 Marie, and since winter 2012
Ida have been supporting me on this long and winding road towards this monograph.
Once in a while words cannot describe what one wants to say…
With the publication of this monograph, I hope to have fulfilled a central wish of
my consultants to present their voices to the world outside the Taimyr Peninsula. This
has been a constant wish of many consultants and I hope that I have fulfilled their ex-
pectations to show the world how Forest Enetses lived and live, and how wonderful their
language is.
Contents
Acknowledgments 6
Abbreviations, symbols and conventions 24
0. The Forest Enets language and its remaining speakers 30
0.1 Remaining speakers of Forest Enets and their territorial distribution 30
0.2 Materials on Forest Enets – prologue 31
0.3 Materials on Forest Enets vs. Sorokina’s Enetskij jazyk (2010b) 33
0.4 Genetic affi liation 35
0.5 Forest Enets and its linguistic neighbors 36
0.6 Enetses among Taimyrian indigenous peoples 38
0.7 How many Enetses are left? 38
0.7.1 The ethnonym “Enets” and its origin 38
0.7.2 Census data on Enetses 39
0.7.3 How many Forest Enetses are left? 39
0.8 Forest Enetses in early historical accounts 40
0.9 Traditional Forest Enets culture 41
0.9.1 Reindeer breeding, foraging, and traditional diet 42
0.9.2 Traditional clothing 43
0.9.3 Traditional way of life 43
0.9.4 Social organization 44
0.9.5 Religion and taboo 44
0.9.6 Warfare 45
0.10 The advent of Communism on the Taimyr Peninsula 47
0.10.1 Early Forest Enets supporters of Communism 47
0.10.2 The Volochanka uprising in 1932 48
0.11 Recent history – how Forest Enets ultimately became
an endangered language 48
0.11.1 Assimilation and homogenization in Potapovo 51
0.11.1.1 The role of the boarding school 52
0.11.1.2 Loss of marriage rules and new interethnic marriages 52
0.11.1.3 New ways of living 53
0.11.2 The outcome of assimilation 54
0.11.3 Geography for good and worse 55
0.11.4 The fate of a village as the fate of a language 56
0.11.5 Potapovo today 56
10 Florian Siegl: Materials on Forest Enets
0.12 Previous research 57
0.12.1 Enets in M. A. Castrén’s work 57
0.12.2 Other Finnish researchers among the Enetses 58
0.12.3 Enets studies by Soviet and Russian researchers 58
0.12.3.1 Enets studies by linguists from Leningrad and Tomsk 59
0.12.3.2 Enets studies by Moscow-based researchers 60
0.12.3.3 Local eff orts by Kazys Labanauskas 60
0.12.4 Insitute of the People of the North 60
0.12.5 Enets studies outside Russia 61
0.13 Some pitfalls of recent publications on Enets 61
0.14 Primary language data on Enets 61
0.14.1 Materials published in recent years 62
0.14.2 Primary materials published on Forest Enets before 1995 62
0.14.3 A note on unpublished data on Enets 63
0.15 Generational variation in existing data 64
0.16 Intergenerational language change 65
1. A typological profile of Forest Enets 67
1.1 Nominal morphology and its morphosyntax 67
1.1.1 Nouns – case, possession, and grammatical relations 67
1.1.2 Adjectives 71
1.1.3 Pronouns 73
1.2 Verbal morphology and its morphosyntax 74
1.2.1 Verbal endings 74
1.2.2 T-A-M-E 75
1.2.3 Standard negation of verbal predicates 76
1.2.4 Non-fi nite verb forms 76
1.2.5 Verbally conjugated nominals in predicative position 77
1.2.6 Valency-decreasing and valency-increasing operations 77
1.3 Syntax 78
2. Phonetics and Phonology 82
2.1 Phoneme inventory 82
2.2 Palatalization and distribution of palatal consonants 83
2.3 Consonants 84
2.3.1 Oral stops 84
2.3.2 The glottal stop 87
2.3.3 Nasal stops 89
2.3.4 Fricatives 90
2.3.5 Approximant 91
2.3.6 Trills and laterals 92
