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Khanty (also spelled Khanti or Hanti), previously known as Ostyak (), is a branch of the Ugric languages composed of multiple dialect continua. It is varyingly considered a language or a collection of distinct languages spoken in the Khanty-Mansi and the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs in Siberia. It belongs to the wider Uralic language family. There were thought to be around 7,500 speakers of Northern Khanty and 2,000 speakers of Eastern Khanty in 2010, with Southern Khanty being extinct since the early 20th century. The number of speakers reported in the 2020 census was 13,900.

Proto-Khanty

{| class="wikitable"

|- style="text-align:center;"

! colspan="2"| !! Bilabial !! Dental !! Palatal(ized) !! Retroflex !! Velar

|- style="text-align:center;"

! colspan="2"| Nasal

| <br /> || <br /> || <br /> || <br /> || <br />

|- style="text-align:center;"

! colspan="2"| Stop/<br />Affricate

| <br /> || <br /> || <br />|| <br />|| <br />

|- style="text-align:center;"

! rowspan="2"| Fricative

! <small>median</small>

| || <br /> || || || <br />

|- style="text-align:center;"

! <small>lateral</small>

| || <br /> || || ||

|- style="text-align:center;"

! colspan="2"| Lateral

| || <br /> || <br /> || <br /> ||

|- style="text-align:center;"

! colspan="2"| Trill

| || <br /> || || ||

|- style="text-align:center;"

! colspan="2"| Semivowel

| <br /> || || <br /> || ||

|}

The 19 consonants reconstructed for Proto-Khanty are listed with the traditional UPA transcription, shown above, and an IPA transcription, shown below.

A major consonant isogloss among the Khanty varieties is the reflexation of the lateral consonants, *ɬ (from Proto-Uralic *s and *š) and *l (from Proto-Uralic *l and *ð). These generally merge, however with varying results: /l/ in the Obdorsk and Far Eastern dialects, /ɬ/ in the Kazym and Surgut dialects, and /t/ elsewhere. The Vasjugan dialect still retains the distinction word-initially and instead has shifted *ɬ > /j/ in this position. Similarly, the palatalized lateral *ľ developed to /lʲ/ in Far Eastern and Obdorsk, /ɬʲ/ in Kazym and Surgut, and /tʲ/ elsewhere. The retroflex lateral *ḷ remains in Far Eastern but in /t/-dialects develop into a new plain /l/.

Other dialect isoglosses include the development of original *ć to a palatalized stop /tʲ/ in Eastern and Southern Khanty but to a palatalized sibilant /sʲ ~ ɕ/ in Northern, as well as the development of original *č similarly to a sibilant /ʂ/ (= UPA: ) in Northern Khanty and partly also in Southern Khanty.

Morphology

Noun

The nominal suffixes include dual ', plural ', dative ', locative/instrumental '.

For example:

:xot "house" (cf. Finnish koti "home", or Hungarian ház)

:xotŋəna "to the two houses"

:xotətnə "at the houses" (cf. Hungarian házaknál, Finnish kotona "at home", an exceptional form using the old, locative meaning of the essive case ending -na).

Singular, dual, and plural possessive suffixes may be added to singular, dual, and plural nouns, in three persons, for 3<sup>3</sup> = 27 forms. A few, from məs "cow", are:

:məsem "my cow"

::

:məsŋǝtam "my two cows"

::

:məstam "my cows"

::

:məsmǝn "the two of our cow"

::

:məsŋǝtǝmǝn "the two of our two cows"

::

:məstǝmən "the two of our cows"

::

:məsew "our cow"

::

:məsŋǝtǝw "our two cows"

::

:mǝstǝw "our cows"

::

Cases

  1. Nominative case
  2. Accusative case
  3. Dative case
  4. Lative case, merger of differentiated local cases that is used to indicate relative location.
  5. Locative case Used to indicate place and direction.
  6. Ablative case, external case used to mean moving away from something.
  7. Approximative case, used to indicate a path towards.
  8. Translative case, used to indicate transformation.

Word order

On the phrasal level, the traditional relations are typical for an OV language. For example, the verb may precede prepositional phrases, verb phrases precede manner adverbs and auxiliaries, and the possessor precedes the possessed.

On the sentence level, case alignment in Surgut Khanty clauses follows a nominative-accusative pattern. Both the subject and the object may be dropped if they are pragmatically inferable, possible even in the same sentence.

Khanty is usually a verb-final language, but about 10% of sentences have other phrases after the verb. The word order in matrix clauses is more variable but is quite strict in embedded clauses. Those constraints are caused by grammatical relations and discourse information. Those phrases used to have content that was already introduced in the discourse. However, newly introduced content may now be placed after the verb as well. Schön and Gugán speculate that to be caused by contact with Russian.

Imperative

Imperative clauses have the same structure as declarative sentences, apart from complex predicates, whose verb may precede the preverb. Prohibitive sentences include a prohibitive particle.

Passive

The passive voice is achieved by moving phrases other than the subject into the subject position to focus on the agent's indefiniteness.

Pro-drop

Nouns or pronouns may be dropped only if they are obvious from the context and marked by the verb.

Lexicon

The Khanty varieties have a relatively well-documented lexicon. The most extensive early source is Toivonen (1948), based on field records by K. F. Karjalainen from 1898 to 1901. An etymological interdialectal dictionary, covering all known material from pre-1940 sources, is Steinitz et al. (1966–1993).

Schiefer (1972) summarizes the etymological sources of Khanty vocabulary, as per Steinitz et al., as follows:

{|class="wikitable"

|-

| rowspan="4"| Inherited || rowspan="4"| 30%

| Uralic || 5%

|-

| Finno-Ugric || 9%

|-

| Ugric || 3%

|-

| Ob-Ugric || 13%

|-

| rowspan="4"| Borrowed || rowspan="4"| 28%

| Komi || 7%

|-

| Samoyedic<br /><small>(Selkup and Nenets)</small> || 3%

|-

| Tatar || 10%

|-

| Russian || 8%

|-

| unknown || 40%

|}

Futaky (1975) additionally proposes a number of loanwords from the Tungusic languages, mainly Evenki.

Notes

References

  • Holmberg, A., Nikanne, U., Oraviita, I., Reime, H., & Trosterud, T. (1993). The structure of INFL and the finite clause in Finnish. Case and other functional categories in Finnish syntax, 39, 177
  • Khanty Language
  • Omniglot page for Khanty alphabets
  • Documentation of Eastern Khanty
  • Khanty basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
  • Khanty Language and People
  • Khanty–Russian Russian–Khanty dictionary (download), mirror (in case the PDF link gets misdirected)
  • Khanty Bibliographical Guide
  • OLAC resources in and about the Khanty language