The twelve articles in this volume describe Yeniseic, Samoyedic and Siberian Turkic languages as a linguistic complex of great interest to typologists, grammarians, diachronic and synchronic linguists, as well as cultural anthropologists. The articles demonstrate how interdependent the disparate languages spoken in this area actually are. Individual articles discuss borrowing and language replacement, as well as compare the development of language subsystems, such as numeral words in Ket and Selkup. Three of the articles also discuss the historical and anthropological origins of the tribes of this area. The book deals with linguistics from the vantage of both historical anthropology as well as diachronic and synchronic linguistic structure. The editor's introduction offers a concise summary of the diverse languages of this area, with attention to both their differences and similarities. A major feature uniting them is their mutual interaction with the unique Yeniseic language family – the only group in North Asia outside the Pacific Rim that does not belong to Uralic or Altaic. Except for the papers by Anderson and Harrison, all of the articles were originally written in Russian and they are made available in English here for the first time.

Table of contents

Editor’s foreword Edward J. Vajda vii

I. The languages of Central Siberia

Introduction and overview Gregory D.S. Anderson 1

II. Yeniseic linguistics

Yeniseic counting systems Heinrich Werner 123

Patterns of plural formation in Kott nouns and adjectives Telmina I. Porotova 129

On distinguishing loanwords from the original Proto-Yeniseic lexicon Lyudmila G. Timonina 135

Incorporation and word formation in Ket Zoya V. Maksunova 143

III. Selkup linguistics

Morphological reanalysis in the Selkup verb Nadezhda G. Kuznetsova 151

Synonymy, allomorphy, and free variation in Selkup derivational suffixes E.V. Zyrjanova 157

The Selkup worldview as reflected in basic number words Valentina V. Bykonja 161

Selkup-Ket parallels in ritual and spiritual terminology Alexandra Kim-Maloney 169

IV. South Siberian Turkic linguistics

Shaman and bear: Siberian prehistory in two Middle Chulym texts Gregory D.S. Anderson and K. David Harrison 179

South Siberian sound symbolism K. David Harrison 197

Linguistic reflections of Xakas ethnohistory Viktor Ja. Butanaev 212

V. Archeological perspectives on Central Siberian language groups

Cultural origins of the taiga-dwelling peoples of the Middle Yenisei N.P. Makarov and M.S. Batashev 233

Sunken earth dwellings as evidence of a Paleoasiatic substrate among the Ket A.V. Razinkin 249

Prehistoric cultural links along the Yenisei: Revelations from a bronze idol Roman V. Nikolaev 257

Index 265