Proto-Yeniseian or Proto-Yeniseic is the

unattested In linguistics, attested languages are languages (living or dead) that have been documented and for which the evidence ("attestation") has survived to the present day. Evidence may be recordings, transcriptions, literature or inscriptions. In cont ...

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...

from which all

Yeniseian languages The Yeniseian languages ( ; sometimes known as Yeniseic, Yeniseyan, or Yenisei-Ostyak;" Ostyak" is a concept of areal rather than genetic linguistics. In addition to the Yeniseian languages it also includes the Uralic languages of Khanty and ...

are thought to descend from. It is uncertain whether Proto-Yeniseian had a similar tone/pitch accent system as Ket. Many studies about Proto-Yeniseian phonology have been done; however, there are still many things unclear about Proto-Yeniseian. The probable location of the Yeniseian homeland is proposed on the basis of geographic names and genetic studies, which suggests a

homeland A homeland is a place where a national or ethnic identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethnic natio ...

Southern Siberia South Central Siberia is a geographical region in North Asia, just north of the meeting point between Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The Four Corners At approximately , the borders of Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan inters ...

Phonology

According to Vajda, Proto-Yeniseian had the following

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

s, expressed in

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation ** International Phonetic Association, the organization behind the alphabet * India pale ale, a style of beer * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA ...

symbols.Fortescue, Michael D.; Vajda, Edward J. (2022), ''Mid-Holocene Language Connections Between Asia and North America'', (Brill's Studies in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, 17), Leiden, Boston: Brill.

Consonants

Vowels

Vocabulary

* *xuɬ ‘water’ * *xuše ‘

birch tree A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech-oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' contains 30 to ...

’ * *am ‘mother’ * *ejn ‘wedge’ * *qed ‘man’ * *bes ‘rabbit’ * *don ‘knife’ * *kus ‘horse’ * *pub ‘son’ * *bus ‘penis’ * *satʳ ‘ crucian (fish)’ * *baŋ ‘land’ * *tijk ‘snow’ * *bejx ‘wind’ * *tɬiwdʳ ‘lard’, ‘oil’ * *ɬaɢa ‘star’

References

* * ** * * Accessed 19 June 2023. * * * * Vajda, Edward. "Losing semantic alignment: from Proto-Yeniseic to Modern Ket". In: ''The typology of semantic alignment''. Eds. Tim Donohue & Soeren Wichman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. pp. 140–161. . * * Vajda, Edward. "8 The Yeniseian language family". The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia: Language Families, edited by Edward Vajda, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2024, pp. 365–480. * М. В. Филимонов. "Праенисейская падежная система и некоторые проблемы морфологии имени в енисейских языках" ROTO-YENISSEAN CASE SYSTEM AND SOME PROBLEM OF NOUN MORPHOLOGY IN YENISSEAN LANGUAGES In: Вестник Томского государственного педагогического университета, no. 4 (12), 1999, pp. 64–66. URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/praeniseyskaya-padezhnaya-sistema-i-nekotorye-problemy-morfologii-imeni-v-eniseyskih-yazykah (дата обращения: 19.06.2023). (in Russian)

External links

Proto-Yeniseian Proto-Yeniseian or Proto-Yeniseic is the unattested linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language from which all Yeniseian languages are thought to descend from. It is uncertain whether Proto-Yeniseian had a similar tone/pitch accent sy ...

reconstructions at

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{{Yeniseian languages Yeniseian languages