North Mansi

• Main Authors: Bakró-Nagy, Marianne, Sipőcz, Katalin, Skribnik, Elena
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressOxford 2022
• Subjects: mansi; ob river; Mansi
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198767664.003.0029; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/47096335/oso-9780198767664-chapter-29.pdf

Abstract The highly endangered North Mansi is the only surviving dialect of the four main dialect groups and the basis of the literary language. It is spoken on the western tributaries of the Ob river (North Sos’va, Lyapin, Sos’va, and Upper Loz’va); the census of 2010 gives 938 speakers out of 11,873 ethnic Mansi. North Mansi has a rich agglutinating morphology, especially verbal (including subject and subject-object agreement paradigms, evidentials / miratives and a very unusual passive voice). It’s an SOV language, the clause combining is based on the usage of non-finite verbal forms (infinitives, converbs, and participles with case markers and postpositions). North Mansi has an elaborate system of information structuring, combining the strategies of obligatory topic promotion to subject (discourse topic, passive voice) and object (secondary topic, “dative shift” plus object agreement) with zero anaphora. The chapter includes a glossed text example.