| Nivkh | |
|---|---|
| Gilyak, Amuric | |
| нивх диф,нивх туғс | |
| Pronunciation | [merɲivxdif/tuɣs](Amur dialect); [ɲiɣvŋduf](S.E. Sakhalin dialect) |
| Native to | Russian Far East, more specificallyAmur Oblast,Khabarovsk Krai andSakhalin Oblast |
| Region | Island of Sakhalin, along the lowerAmur River and around theAmur Liman. Formerly, also in theShantar Islands and parts ofAmur Oblast |
| Ethnicity | 4,652Nivkh |
Native speakers | 1,300 (2020 census)[1] |
One of the world's primarylanguage families | |
Early form | |
| Dialects |
|
| Cyrillic,Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | niv |
| Glottolog | nivk1234 |
| ELP | Sakhalin Nivkh |
 Settlements with Nivkh populations in theRussian Census of 2002 | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Nivkh (/ˈniːfk/NEEFK; occasionally also Nivkhic; self-designation: Нивхгу диф,Nivhgu dif,/ɲivxɡudif/),Gilyak (/ˈɡɪljæk/GIL-yak),[2] orAmuric, is a smalllanguage family, often portrayed as alanguage isolate, of two or three mutually unintelligible languages[3][4] spoken by theNivkh people inOuter Manchuria, in the basin of theAmgun (a tributary of theAmur), along the lower reaches of theAmur itself, and on the northern half ofSakhalin. "Gilyak" is the Russian rendering of terms derived from the Tungusic "Gileke" and Manchu-Chinese "Gilemi" (Gilimi, Gilyami) for culturally similar peoples of theAmur River region, and was applied principally to the Nivkh in Western literature.[5]
The population of ethnic Nivkhs has been reasonably stable over the past century, with 4,549 Nivkhs counted in 1897 and 4,673 in 1989. However, the number of native speakers of the Nivkh language among these dropped from 100% to 23.3% in the same period, so by the 1989 census there were only 1,079 first-language speakers left.[6] That may have been an overcount, however, as the 2010 census recorded only 198 native speakers, less than 4% of the ethnic population.[7]
Proto-Nivkh(ic), theproto-language ancestral to the modern-day languages, has been reconstructed byFortescue (2016).[4]
Nivkh is adialect continuum. There is a high degree of variability of usage among Nivkhs depending on village, clan, and even the individual speaker. Varieties are traditionally grouped into four geographic clusters. These are the lower-Amur variety, the North Sakhalin variety (spoken on the coasts around theAmur Liman, including the mainland and west Sakhalin), the East Sakhalin variety (including populations around theTym River), and the South Sakhalin variety (spoken around thePoronay River). The lexical and phonological differences across these varieties is great enough that specialists describe them as falling into two or three languages, though for purposes of language revival among a small and already divided population, Nivkh is generally presented as a single language, due to fears of the consequences of further division.
Gruzdeva (1998) notes that speakers of East Sakhalin and the lower Amur cannot understand each other, and divides the varieties into two languages,Nivkh proper (including the lower Amur, Northern Sakhalin / Straits and Western Sakhalin varieties) andNighvng (the East and South Sakhalin varieties). Fortescue (2016)[4] notes that the Amur, East Sakhalin and South Sakhalin varieties have low intelligibility with each other, and considers each of them to constitute a separate language.
Nivkh is not known to be related to any other language, making it alanguage isolate. For convenience, it may be included in the geographical group ofPaleosiberian languages. Many words in the Nivkh languages bear a certain resemblance to words of similar meaning in otherPaleosiberian languages,Ainu,Korean, orTungusic languages, but no regular sound correspondences have been discovered to systematically account for the vocabularies of these various families, so any lexical similarities are considered to be due to chance or to borrowing.
Michael Fortescue suggested in 1998 that Nivkh might be related to theMosan languages of North America.[8] Later, in 2011, he argued that Nivkh, which he referred to as an "isolated Amuric language", was related to theChukotko-Kamchatkan languages, forming aChukotko-Kamchatkan–Amuric language family.[9] However,Glottolog considers the evidence to be "insufficient".[10]
In 2015,Sergei Nikolaev argued in two papers for a systematic relationship between Nivkh and theAlgic languages of North America, and a more distant relationship between these two together and theWakashan languages of coastalBritish Columbia.[11][12]
The Nivkh languages are included in the widely rejectedEurasiatic languages hypothesis byJoseph Greenberg.[13]
An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)[14] found lexical similarities among Nivkh,Mongolic, andTungusic, likely due to lexical borrowings.
Hudson & Robbeets (2020) presumed that a Nivkh-like language was once distributed inKorea and became thesubstratum ofKoreanic languages.[15]Kim Bang-han proposed thatplacename glosses in theSamguk sagi reflect the original language of the Korean peninsula and a component in the formation of both Korean and Japanese. He proposed that this language was related to Nivkh.[16]Juha Janhunen suggests the possibility that similar consonant stop systems in Koreanic and Nivkh may be due to ancient contact.[17]
TheNivkh people have lived, by many accounts for thousands of years, on the island of Sakhalin and the Amur River. They maintained trade with the neighboring Ainu, Japanese, and Chinese, until Russian contact, which began in the 17th century.[18] The 19th century shows the first recorded decline of Nivkh numbers, with official estimates dropping from 1856 to 1889. This coincided with smallpox epidemics and the expansion of Sakhalin's prisoner population, as Russia began sending groups of its convicts to Sakhalin in 1873. At this time, reportedly few Nivkh spoke Russian.[19]
The official Russian census reported similar numbers of ethnic Nivkhs in 1897 (4,500) and in 2002 (5,200). However, the number of native speakers among the ethnic Nivkhs dropped from 100% to 23.3% in the same period. All recorded native Nivkh speakers were bilingual in Russian, most of them were born in 1920-1940s,[1] when a significant decline in the number of native Nivkh speakers occurred, due toJoseph Stalin's policy of collectivization imposed on indigenous economies,[19] and in many cases, driving Nivkh individuals to hired labor, marking a departure from traditional means of subsistence.[18][20] Many Nivkh were forcibly displaced from their more widely spread settlements toNogliki, a small city, in the process of centralization. The traditional Nivkh way of life was gradually and sometimes forcibly converted to a Soviet way of life, as changes in subsistence, diet, dwellings, and education have resulted. As of the 2010s, the Nivkh language was taught in grades 1–3 in several schools in bothSakhalin andKhabarovsk Krai. A monthly newspaper "Nivkh dif" (Nivkh language) is published in Sakhalin. Nivkh language books are also regularly published in Russia.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Stop | tenuis | p | t | t͡ʃ | k | q | |
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | t͡ʃʰ | kʰ | qʰ | ||
| voiced | b | d | d͡ʒ | ɡ | ɢ | ||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | x | χ | h | |
| voiced | v | z | ɣ | ʁ | |||
| Approximant | w | l | j | ||||
| Trill | voiceless | r̥ | |||||
| voiced | r | ||||||
The labial fricatives are weakly articulated, and have been described as bothbilabial[ɸ,β] andlabiodental[f,v]. The palatal stops may have some degree of affrication, as[tʃʰ,tʃ].[22] After nasals or/l/, the unaspirated stops become voiced[b,d,d͡ʒ,ɡ,ɢ]. Unlike consonant alternation, this can occur within a morpheme. The Amur dialect deletes some word-final nasals, which leads to word-initial voiced stops, allophonic in other dialects, being phonemic in Amur.[citation needed] The voiceless trill is realized as[r̥ʃ] in East Sakhalin dialect (and presumably also in Amur dialect, where it is written⟨рш⟩) and as an untrilled[r̥ʃ] in North Sakhalin dialect.[21]
Consonants are palatalized in some contexts, most commonly in younger speakers, where all consonants are palatalized before[i] and[e]. Additionally, there is another context in which consonants are always palatalised, viz. before[e] when it precedes a uvular consonant[q,χ,ʁ], e.g.[pʰeq] >[pʰʲe̞q] ‘chicken’.[23]
Nivkh features a process ofconsonant alternation like inCeltic languages, in whichmorpheme-initial stops alternate with fricatives and trills:[22]
| Aspirated ↔ voiceless | Unaspirated ↔ voiced | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | pʰ | tʰ | t͡ʃʰ | kʰ | qʰ | p | t | t͡ʃ | k | q |
| Continuant | f | r̥ | s | x | χ | v | r | z | ɣ | ʁ |
This occurs when a morpheme is preceded by another morpheme within the samephrase (e.g. aprefix or anadjunct), unless the preceding morpheme ends itself in a fricative or trill, or in a nasal or/l/.
Only the morpheme-initial position is affected: other clusters ending in a stop are possible within a morpheme (e.g./utku/ "man").
In sometransitive verbs, the process has been noted to apparently run in reverse (fricatives/trills fortiting to stops, with the same distribution). This has been taken a distinct process, but has also been explained to be fundamentally the same, with thecitation form of these verbs containing an underlying stop, lenited due to the presence of a formeri- prefix (which still survives in the citation form of other verbs, where it causes regular consonant alternation). Initial fricatives in nouns never change.[22]
There are these sixvowels in Nivkh:
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ɨ | u |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Open | a |
Long vowels are not a phonemic feature of Nivkh but can arise due to sentence prosody, or compensatory lengthening when fricatives are deleted after the vowel.[24]
Stress can fall on any syllable, but tends to be on the first; there is dialectal variation, and minimal pairs distinguished by stress seem to be rare.[25]
The Nivkh language uses aCyrillic alphabet.
| А а | Б б | В в | Г г | Ӷ ӷ | Ғ ғ | Ӻ ӻ |
| /a/ | /b/ | /v/ | /ɡ/ | /ɢ/ | /ɣ/ | /ʁ/ |
| Д д | Е е | Ё ё | З з | И и | Й й | К к |
| /d/,/d͜ʒ/ | /(j)e/ | /(j)o/ | /z/ | /i/ | /j/ | /k/ |
| Кʼ кʼ | Қ қ (Ӄ ӄ) | Қʼ қʼ (Ӄʼ ӄʼ) | Л л | М м | Н н | Ң ң (Ӈ ӈ) |
| /kʰ/ | /q/ | /qʰ/ | /l/ | /m/ | /n/,/ɲ/ | /ŋ/ |
| О о | П п | Пʼ пʼ | Р р | Р̆ р̆ (Р̌ р̌) | С с | Т т |
| /o/ | /p/ | /pʰ/ | /r/ | /r̥/~/ʃ/ | /s/ | /t/,/t͜ʃ/ |
| Тʼ тʼ | У у | Ф ф | Х х | Ҳ ҳ (Ӽ ӽ) | Ӿ ӿ | Чʼ чʼ |
| /tʰ/ | /u/,/w/ | /f/ | /x/ | /χ/ | /h/ | /t͜ʃʰ/ |
| Ъ ъ | ь | Ы ы | Э э | Ю ю | Я я | |
| (d,n,t) | (d͜ʒ,ɲ,t͜ʃ) | /ə/ | /e/ | /(j)u/ | /(j)a/ |
Other letters of theRussian alphabet are only used for Russian loan words. Variousallographs of the letters with descenders are found, ander may take either abreve or acaron. The allographs listed first in the table above are the choice ofНивх диф, the only Nivkh newspaper.
The letters Д, Н and Т stands for two sounds each. When they are followed by aiotized vowel letter, or at the end of a syllable followed byь, they stand for the affricate or palatal consonants/d͜ʒ,ɲ,t͜ʃ/; otherwise they stand for the alveolar consonants/d,n,t/. At the beginning of a syllable, the letters Е, Ё, Ю, Я stands for/je,jo,ju,ja/.
The letter Ӷ is not used in Amur dialect, while/r̥/ is spelled РШ.
Nivkh is an agglutinating synthetic language. It has a developed case system, as well as other grammatical markers, but no grammatical gender. The basic word order of Nivkh issubject–object–verb, the subject being frequently omitted in speech.[26] Nivkh is notable for the high degree of incorporation between words. For example, morphemes that express spatial relationships (prepositions or postpositions in many other languages) are incorporated into the noun to which they relate.[27] Words consist of easily definable roots and productive grammatical morphemes, most of which are suffixes. Nivkh has no adjectives, but rather verbs that describe a state of being. There are two verb tenses: non-future and future. The non-future form may combine with adverbials, as well as context, to indicate a time frame.[28]
As Russian has become the dominant language in all spheres of life, Nivkh grammar has changed in the last century. For example, Nivkh has recently begun to mark plurals on counting nouns and pairs, a change that originated from the grammar rules of Russian. However, it has been postulated that due to the vastly differing grammatical structures of the two tongues, grammatical interference has not been extensive. Simplification has occurred past borrowed Russian structure, though; due to disuse of the language and a changing culture, many of the complex morphological aspects of Nivkh have been simplified or fallen out of use.[29] In a process referred to as obsolescence, things like the distinction between the morpheme for counting sledges and the morpheme for counting fishnets has disappeared, with speakers opting to use more general categories of counting numbers or other descriptors.[30]
TheAinu appear to have experienced intensive contact with theNivkhs during the course of their history. It is not known to what extent this has affected the language. Linguists believe the vocabulary shared between theAinu language and Nivkh (historically spoken in the northern half ofSakhalin and on the Asian mainland facing it) is due toborrowing.[31]
| English | Cyrillic Nivkh | Phonetic transcription |
|---|---|---|
| Hello, dear friends! I am very pleased to meet you.The aspirated sound [chʰ] is pronounced by drawing the tongue in and opening the teeth slightly on a sharp exhale. | Урла муғв к‘инӈула ӈафӄғу! Ч‘ыӈ ордь ни маӈгут эзмудьра.Ӿилх ыӈг ми ниняӄ тывыгута, ари ӿава ӈығску т‘аӻрух п‘ова кутлироӽ тьыу [ч‘] т‘ат итт п‘угута. | Urla muɣf kʰinŋula ŋafq-ɣu! Cʰəŋ or-ɟ ɲi maŋgut e-zmu-ɟ=ra.Hilx əŋg mi ɲiɲaq təvə-gu-ta ari hava ŋəɣs-ku tʰaʁr-ux pʰova kutli-roχ cəu [cʰ] tʰat it-t pʰu-gu-ta. |
| Chukotko-Kamchatkan |
| .svg) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yeniseian |
| |||||
| Yukaghir | ||||||
| Nivkh | ||||||
| Others | ||||||
| Proposed groupings | ||||||
Italics indicateextinct languages | ||||||
