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 Post subject: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Sun 29 Apr 2012, 15:07 
mayan
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People seem to study Uralic languages both historically and synchronically, and there are also discussion about them around the board, so I thought we could have an own thread for discussing the Uralic languages and linguistics.

This is not a theachin thread but I though to start it with some typology.
What are said to be Uralic features:

vowel harmony
:fin: tuo-ssa 'there'
:fin: työ-ssä 'at work'

palatalisation

trochee
The main stress on the first syllable and secondary stresses on every second syllable, the last syllable never stressed

agglutinative morphology, but no Uralic language is polysynthetic
Morphemes can make 'grammatical' but meaningless combinations like the famous :fin: epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän

many noun cases, all of the Uralic lnaguges have cases. The number varies between around 3 and 30.
Proto-Uralic, one version (Fish)
NOM kala
ACC kalam
GEN(DAT?) kalan
LOC kalana
SEP kalata
LAT kalas/k
TRANSL kalaksi
PL.NOM kalat
PL.OBL kalaj

Object conjugation, different verb endings if the (direct) object is definite. (Some languages have a third intransitive/middle-voice/reflexive conjugation)
:hun:
látok 'I see'
látom 'I see it'

The negative verb


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Sun 29 Apr 2012, 21:17 
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As it happens, I am currently reading a "Comparative Overview of Finno-Ugric Languages".
Surprisingly, 6 out of 11 languages described there have lost vowel harmony.
Also, the Udmurt language has stress on the ultimate syllable, probably due to Turkic influences.

And, what you haven't mentioned is that, as a general rule, no Uralic language permits word-initial consonant clusters.

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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Tue 01 May 2012, 21:54 
mayan
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I've always had a desire to create a Uralic language spoken in India, so I'll be watching this.

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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Tue 01 May 2012, 22:34 
mayan
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Maximillian wrote:
As it happens, I am currently reading a "Comparative Overview of Finno-Ugric Languages".
Surprisingly, 6 out of 11 languages described there have lost vowel harmony.
Also, the Udmurt language has stress on the ultimate syllable, probably due to Turkic influences.


What are those languages? Estonian, Davvin Sami, I suppose.

Does your book agree that it's easy to postulate an older state of these languages with the vowel harmony? I've heard that but never found any justification.
Another thing is that Proto-Uralic maybe had three manners of articulation, unlike the modern languages. Only the closed and the open vowel agreed vowel harmony, so it seems to me that the phenomenon has got stronger in Finnish and Hungarian, at least.

Udmurt has the stress on the last vowel, and Komi has it on the last full vowel, if I remember right what languages they were.

Maximillian wrote:
And, what you haven't mentioned is that, as a general rule, no Uralic language permits word-initial consonant clusters.

Yes, Estonian permits them better than Finnish but only in loan words.
Sami has odd sC klusters, for example the name of Skolt Sami is really Skolt.


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Tue 01 May 2012, 23:00 
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Omzinesý wrote:
What are those languages? Estonian, Davvin Sami, I suppose.

The languages in the book are Mansi, Komi, Udmurt, Khanty, Estonian and Sami. The annoying thing is that the author grouped all Sami languages into one, so most probably under "Sami" he means Northern Sami.
Omzinesý wrote:
Does your book agree that it's easy to postulate an older state of these languages with the vowel harmony? I've heard that but never found any justification.

Yes. It says that Proto-Uralic had front and back vowels and vowel harmony.
Omzinesý wrote:
Another thing is that Proto-Uralic maybe had three manners of articulation, unlike the modern languages. Only the closed and the open vowel agreed vowel harmony, so it seems to me that the phenomenon has got stronger in Finnish and Hungarian, at least.

I never encountered this theory. Can you explain further?
Omzinesý wrote:
Udmurt has the stress on the last vowel, and Komi has it on the last full vowel, if I remember right what languages they were.

Also Mari has not-initial stress pattern. It says that Hill Mari has mostly penultimate stress, but Meadow Mari has no fixed stress.
Omzinesý wrote:
Sami has odd sC klusters, for example the name of Skolt Sami is really Skolt.

Sami languages are strange in general. There is little information about them out there, which is sad.

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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Wed 02 May 2012, 13:02 
mayan
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Maximillian wrote:
Omzinesý wrote:
Another thing is that Proto-Uralic maybe had three manners of articulation, unlike the modern languages. Only the closed and the open vowel agreed vowel harmony, so it seems to me that the phenomenon has got stronger in Finnish and Hungarian, at least.

I never encountered this theory. Can you explain further?

Code:
The Proto-Uralic vowel system is reconstructed (in IPA cos I don't find UPA marks anywhere):
i, y  ɯ, u
e        o
(ɔ)     (ɛ)
æ        ɑ

Sami (again) and another language, I don't remember, give hint that ɔ and ɛ could have exested. So, only o, ɔ, ɛ and e don't have the harmony. So, the harmony thendense must have got stronger in the languages that nowadays have ø.

Maximillian wrote:
Sami languages are strange in general. There is little information about them out there, which is sad.
Sami is somewhat odd. There are hypothesis that it has a strong substrate of some older European language. Even the Same peoples genes are different. On the other hand, some claim that Finnic and Sami have slowly separated just where they are now.


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Wed 02 May 2012, 13:46 
roman
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Would be interesting to know to what extent traces of vowel harmony can be found in Uralic languages that have lost it.

On the topic of vowel harmony, Finnish has a couple of funny words. /i/ and /e/ are neutral in Finnish, so there's basically (/y ä ö/ vs. /u a o/) + /i e/ or whatever way we pick to reasonably annotate that. However, a word whose stem only contains /i e/ belongs to the /y ä ö/-class.

There's two words, meri and veri (sea, blood), which for all cases except one belong to the /y ä ö/-class:
meressä, veressä, merellä, verellä, meriä, merettä, merittä, ... then you have the singular partitive, which is merta/verta. I like those words.


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Wed 02 May 2012, 13:52 
mayan
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Systemzwang wrote:
Would be interesting to know to what extent traces of vowel harmony can be found in Uralic languages that have lost it.

On the topic of vowel harmony, Finnish has a couple of funny words. /i/ and /e/ are neutral in Finnish, so there's basically (/y ä ö/ vs. /u a o/) + /i e/ or whatever way we pick to reasonably annotate that. However, a word whose stem only contains /i e/ belongs to the /y ä ö/-class.

There's two words, meri and veri (sea, blood), which for all cases except one belong to the /y ä ö/-class:
meressä, veressä, merellä, verellä, meriä, merettä, merittä, ... then you have the singular partitive, which is merta/verta. I like those words.

I just one day found that fenomenon but forgot what the words were, and began to suspect I had mistaken. Thanks, thay are odd. And as seen, completely autonomous and not conscious.

There are words that have changed their harmony (why?) tälvi > talvi

The derivational suffixes that Manoba (how his name is typed) likes tek-o 'an act' < tehdä 'to do' Apparently, the derivation is older than the ö-sound.


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Mon 07 May 2012, 21:13 
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I've read that Proto-Uralic and some modern Uralic languages don't mark number on nouns marked for case.
So that, singular and plural is only distinguished in nominative (and maybe accusative?) case, but not in other cases.
Can someone point me on further information about this feature?

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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Tue 08 May 2012, 17:22 
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Apparently Russia's song for Eurovision this year is in Udmurt. Sounds like just another Slavic language to me. Dat influence from Mother Russia.

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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Tue 08 May 2012, 17:38 
mayan
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Maximillian wrote:
I've read that Proto-Uralic and some modern Uralic languages don't mark number on nouns marked for case.
So that, singular and plural is only distinguished in nominative (and maybe accusative?) case, but not in other cases.
Can someone point me on further information about this feature?


Plural had two cases, nominative -t and oblique -j.
I have no idea of how the oblique was used, either it was used for the local functions or then the local cases were just used as in the singular.

I guess no one knows too much about it. That's what I found. Not the whole book. It has something about the cases/numbers, too.
https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10224/4083


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Tue 08 May 2012, 17:43 
mayan
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Skógvur wrote:
Apparently Russia's song for Eurovision this year is in Udmurt. Sounds like just another Slavic language to me. Dat influence from Mother Russia.


Many Uralic languages sound like the Slavonic languages, I guess it's palatalisation.
Actually, I have thought the Slavonic languages sound like the Uralic languages. Palatalisation is however not an Indo-European feature.

I saw a video clip that said 'a language closely related to Finnish'.
WTF, if when somebody sings in French, do they say it's closely related to English?


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Tue 08 May 2012, 17:48 
hieroglyphic
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Omzinesý wrote:


I saw a video clip that said 'a language closely related to Finnish'.
WTF, if when somebody sings in French, do they say it's closely related to English?


kaikki on suhteellista, niinkuin sanotaan:DD Do you remember what video it was?

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taylorS wrote:
Something about the word "child" seems to lend itself to attracting redundant pluralization.


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Tue 08 May 2012, 18:01 
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AK-92 wrote:
Omzinesý wrote:


I saw a video clip that said 'a language closely related to Finnish'.
WTF, if when somebody sings in French, do they say it's closely related to English?


kaikki on suhteellista, niinkuin sanotaan:DD Do you remember what video it was?

everyone is relative as if it's said? What do you mean by relative?


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Tue 08 May 2012, 18:36 
hieroglyphic
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nmn wrote:
AK-92 wrote:
Omzinesý wrote:


I saw a video clip that said 'a language closely related to Finnish'.
WTF, if when somebody sings in French, do they say it's closely related to English?


kaikki on suhteellista, niinkuin sanotaan:DD Do you remember what video it was?

everyone is relative as if it's said? What do you mean by relative?


everything is relative. kohtuullisen yleinen sanonta täälläpäin. Sitä voi, muummuassa, käyttää ylläolevan(See: omniksen viesti) kaltaisissa tilanteissa.

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taylorS wrote:
Something about the word "child" seems to lend itself to attracting redundant pluralization.


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Tue 08 May 2012, 21:12 
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Omzinesý wrote:
https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10224/4083

Either the link is broken, or it just won't open =\
Edit: False alarm, sorry. That was where I read it in the first place =]

Skógvur wrote:
Apparently Russia's song for Eurovision this year is in Udmurt.

WTF? Can you provide me with a link?

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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Tue 08 May 2012, 21:26 
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Maximillian wrote:
Omzinesý wrote:
Skógvur wrote:
Apparently Russia's song for Eurovision this year is in Udmurt.

WTF? Can you provide me with a link?

I'm not Sko, but http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J-7YWLyNo8


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Wed 09 May 2012, 07:49 
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OMG, Cthulhu devour me now! I wonder if they even understand what they're singing in English...

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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Sun 13 May 2012, 10:40 
mayan
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Maximillian in Macro Families wrote:
Finnish tenses: non-past, past, perfect, pluperfect.
Germanic tenses: non-past, past, perfect, pluperfect.
Also, Finnish perfect and pluperfect both are almost identical in structure and usage to their Germanic counterparts.
Moreover, Finnish has other structures similar (i.e. they are calques) to Swedish and Russian. In the latter case it is not yet known who affected whom. It's all so intertwined that it's hard to know the truth.

Russian is affected much more by Mari and Udmurt... in the core area of standard Russian in the environment or Moscow. There is much substrate effect:
- Nominal copula
- existentil possission structure
- The a>o change in unstressed syllables (It has a finer name?)

If the Uralic languages have affected Swidish, it must be an older event. "pojke" is a loan word. There is much more Swedish effect in Finnish, eg. the /d/ sound - the normal example how a sound can develop in a very odd way.
Swedish had so strong prestige in Finland. It's unnormal that Finnish even became the leading language in Finland. Nationalism relly made the upper class Swedish speakers to change their language for lower Status Finnish, be cause it shall be the national language of our young nation.


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 Post subject: Re: Uralic Thread
PostPosted: Sun 13 May 2012, 12:49 
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Cheesus, so much I need to share here. Where to begin?

1.Yes: French, and any Romance language sounds similar to English, but not because of palatalization but because of the Latin loan words in English.
2. Moscow is an "Russified" Uralic word. If I remember correctly "mosk" meaning "bear", but it was a while since I redd that.
3. Finnish /d/ was [D], in the begin.

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