Article

Name: Review of the dissertation “Reconstruction of the linguistic landscape of Western Siberia (a case study of the Samoyedic languages),” submitted by A. Y. Urmanchieva for the degree of Doctor of Philology

Authors: N. A. Tuchkova

In the section Рецензии

Abstract:

The dissertation “Reconstruction of the linguistic landscape of Western Siberia (a case study of Samoyedic languages)” written by A. Y. Urmanchieva focuses on tracing the Samoyedic group language history. The period under study starts after the collapse of the Proto‒Samoyedic language and ends with the resettlement of the native speakers of Samoyedic languages as recorded in historical documents (16th–18th centuries). The work substantiates the preservation of the links between the Proto-Samoyedic and the Proto-Ob-Ugric languages after their collapse, with separate contacts between the Mansi and South Samoyedic languages. The author confirms the original boundary between the Mansi and Khanty languages, from west to east, and shows that Proto-Mansi was widespread in more southern territories, while Proto-Khanty was prevalent to the north (and not to the east) of the lower Ob basin. Additionally, the author confirms that Matorsky belongs to the Northern Samoyed subgroup. The analysis of separate parallels allowed the author to establish the early contacts between Nganasan, Selkup, and Kamassian and later between Nganasan and common Enets lan-guages. Given these findings, the following successive linguistic landscapes of Western Siberia have been reconstructed. Initially, the migration of the forebears of Samoyedic language speakers moved towards the Ob basin from their original homeland, with a settlement pattern along the Ob tributaries determined by taiga fishing culture. Later, the expansion of the Khants towards the east along the middle Ob River disrupted the previously established pattern, leading to a break in the linguistic continuity of the Samoyed area.

Keywords: Uralic languages of Siberia, Ob-Ugric languages, Samoyed languages, language contacts, history of the for-mation of linguistic areas in Siberia, lexicostatistics, linguistic reconstruction, narrative strategies

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