The Permic or Permian languages are a branch of the

Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian lan ...

language family. They are spoken in several regions to the west of the

Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...

within the

Russian Federation Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eight ...

. The total number of speakers is around 950,000, of which around 550,000 speak the most widely spoken language, Udmurt. Like other Uralic languages, the Permic languages are primarily agglutinative and have a rich system of grammatical cases. Unlike many others, they do not have

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, mea ...

. The earliest Permic language to be preserved in writing was

Old Permic The Old Permic script ( kv, Важ Перым гижӧм, ), sometimes known by its initial 2 characters as Abur or Anbur, is a "highly idiosyncratic adaptation" of the Cyrillic script once used to write medieval Komi (a member of the Permic bra ...

or Old Zyryan, in the 14th century. The extant Permic languages division of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic language family consists of the: * Udmurt (Votyak) * Komi (Zyryan) * Permyak (Komi-Permyak) The Permic languages have traditionally been classified as Finno-Permic languages, along with the Finnic, Saami, Mordvin, and Mari languages. The Finno-Permic and

Ugric languages The Ugric or Ugrian languages ( or ) are a proposed branch of the Uralic language family. The name Ugric is derived from Ugrians, an archaic exonym for the Magyars (Hungarians) and Yugra, a region in northwest Russia. Ugric includes three s ...

together made up the Finno-Ugric family. However, this taxonomy has more recently been called into question, and the relationship of the Permic languages to other Uralic languages remains uncertain.

Phonology

Proto-Uralic Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give differenti ...

word roots have been subject to particularly heavy reduction in the Permic languages. * Original geminates *pp, *tt, *kk were reduced to single voiceless stops *p, *t, *k. * Between vowels, original single *p, *t, *k as well as *w and *x were lost entirely. * Second-syllable vowels were lost almost entirely. Certain words in Udmurt may preserve traces (PU *lumi "snow" → Udm ''лымы'' /lɨmɨ/). * The sibilants *s, *ś, *š have remained distinct from each other in all positions, but were voiced to *z, *ź, *ž between voiced sounds. * Consonant clusters were largely simplified: in particular nasal + stop/affricate clusters yield voiced stops/affricates, and stop + sibilant clusters yield voiceless sibilants. A peculiarity of Permic is the occurrence of the voiced consonants such as *b, *g word-initially even in inherited vocabulary, apparently a development from original PU voiceless consonants. The Proto-Permic consonant inventory is reconstructed as: This inventory is retained nearly unchanged in the modern-day Permic languages. Komi has merged original into and undergone a change → or in many dialects, while Udmurt has changed word-initially → or . is retained only in some Udmurt dialects; in other Permic varieties it has become next to

back vowel A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be c ...

s, next to central vowels, next to front vowels. In later Russian loanwords, the consonants can occur. The consonant was marginal and occurred only word-initially or after a word-initial , generally traceable to diphthongization of the close back vowel of the 2nd series. An exceptional word is the numeral "six", , which in Komi is the only native word root with an initial cluster. Literary Komi and literary Udmurt both possess a seven-vowel system . These are however not related straightforwardly, and numerous additional vowels are required for Proto-Permic, perhaps as many as 15 altogether. The reconstruction of Proto-Permic vocalism and its development from

has always been a puzzling topic, for which there are several models. There is general agreement on the existence of two series of

close vowel A close vowel, also known as a high vowel (in U.S. terminology), is any in a class of vowel sounds used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of th ...

s, one of which results in modern in literary Udmurt and literary Komi-Zyryan, the other in correspondences of Udmurt to Komi (but

long Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mensu ...

in the

Komi-Yodzyak language The Komi-Yazva language (Коми-Ёдз кыл, ''Komi-Yodz kyl'') is spoken mostly in Krasnovishersky District of Perm Krai in Russia, in the basin of the Yazva (Yodz) River. It is a Permic language closely related to Komi-Zyrian and Permy ...

). Proposed distinguishing factors for these include length (),

tenseness In phonology, tenseness or tensing is, most broadly, the pronunciation of a sound with greater muscular effort or constriction than is typical. More specifically, tenseness is the pronunciation of a vowel with less centralization (i.e. either mo ...

() and height ().

Morphophonology

Noun

roots A root is the part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors the plant body, and absorbs and stores water and nutrients. Root or roots may also refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * ''The Root'' (magazine), an online magazine focusing ...

in the Permic languages are predominantly monosyllabic and invariable with the canonical shape (C)VC. CV roots, such as Udmurt ву /vu/, Komi and Permyak ва /va/ 'water', and (C)VCC roots, such as Udmurt урт /urt/, Komi орт /ort/ 'soul', exist as well. In Udmurt, there are furthermore a number of bisyllabic roots, mostly of the shape (C)VCɨ. In noun roots with certain final clusters, the second consonant surfaces only when followed with a vowel in inflected or derived forms : Udmurt has similar alternation for a number of other clusters of the shape ''voiced consonant''+/m/, while Komi-Zyryan adds a number of clusters of the shape ''voiced consonant''+/j/. The verb root for 'to come': Udmurt лыкты- /lɨktɨ-/, Komi локты- /loktɨ-/ also shows alternation to plain /k/ in e.g. the imperative (in Udmurt only dialectally).Bartens 2000, p. 178

Notes

Bibliography

* *

External links

* ''S. K. Belykh.'
Swadesh list for Permic languages

Permic languages
{{DEFAULTSORT:Permic Languages Languages of Russia

Phonology

Morphophonology

Notes

Bibliography

Further reading

External links