Article

Name: On probable socio-cultural determinants of non-visual sensory perception evidentials grammemes in diachrony of Northern Asian languages

Authors: Ilyina L. A.

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: The theoretical grammar theory has mainly described the evidential grammemes indicating nonvisual perception data sources (audio, tactile, and smelling sensation, etc.) basing on the Amerindian languages data. The Eurasian languages having the grammaticalized evidential category express these grammemes extremely rarely. These are found only in the materials of four Samoyedic languages: Nenets, Enets, Ngasan, and Selkup. In the Samoyedic Studies, these grammemes are denoted as «auditive», since primarily they refer to an auditive information source in the majority of documented uses. The subject and objectives of the paper presented are determined by the following: a) founding out a closely related grammatical and semantic analogue of Samoyedic auditive in Kolyma Yukaghir folklore texts; b) giving evidence to an identical nature of synchronically basic and diachronically fundamental auditive grammemes – indicating auditive perception of a non-observable event; c) substantiating that this auditive grammeme meaning is most regularly realized in their diachronically earlier communicative functions reproduced in Samoyedic and Yukaghir texts since early times; d) supposing that some of the diachronically earlier communicative functions of auditive grammemes are directly related in historical retrospective to probable sociocultural determinants of their diachronically fundamental meaning – indicating audible perception of a non-observable event. The main goal of the article is to substantiate a diachronically identical character of the fundamental meaning of Samoyedic and Yukaghir auditive grammemes by the fact of their being diachronically influenced by identical or similar socio-cultural determinants – either materialcultural or spiritual-cultural ones. To solve the problem in question an inter-disciplinary approach synthesizing both diachronic linguistic typology and historical ethnology has been realized. The Samoyedic and Yukaghir auditive grammemes in their diachronically original meanings necessarily represent non-observable referential events and oppose them to observable events in speech utterances. That is why the earlier mental opposition of observability and non-observability is considered in the paper to be the most fundamental socio-cultural (spiritual-cultural) determinant of this meaning. In ethnology, this opposition is supposed to be a central opposition in the system of the binary oppositions of the ancient mythological mentality type, and it is traced in the archaic mythology of American and North Asian aboriginal ethnic groups. This socio-cultural determinant gives a good evidence of grammaticalization of the semantics of nonvisual sensory perception of non-observable events but does not explain the fact why in Samoyedic and Yukaghir languages the semantics under discussion was initially grammaticalized as auditive but not as any other one, e.g. tactile. To explain this fact the author identifies and both linguistically and factually verifies some other ancient but more specific material-cultural and spiritual-cultural determinants.

Keywords: evidentials, north asian languages, sensory grammemes, extalinguistic determination, inter-disciplinary approach, diachronic typology

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