Nivkh

• Main Author: Mattissen, Johanna
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 2017
• Subjects: Nivkh; Sakhalin; Siberia
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199683208.013.47; https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/40413/chapter/347389558

Abstract Nivkh (Paleosiberian group), spoken on the lower reaches of the Amur River and on Sakhalin island in Siberia by a few hundred speakers in four main varieties, but rapidly dying out, is a polysynthetic head-marking but configurational SOV language, with defective polypersonalism, noun incorporation, verb root serialization, and complex noun forms. Its dominant structural principle and characteristic design is dependent-head-synthesis, with dependents lexically head-marked and still referentially active. Nivkh displays compositional polysynthesis with a mixed internal structure, as the suffixal domain of a word-form may be described by a template, whereas the pre-root domain is scope-ordered due to dependent chaining. The evolutionary path of complex forms is best conceived of as coalescence of formerly adjacent words. Morphophonemic processes at the word-internal morpheme boundaries, especially consonant dissimilation and assimilation, and bound allomorphs prove the wordhood of the complexes. Non-root bound morphemes encode modalities, degree, scalar, and focus operators and phase of action.