The Sakha (Yakut) Language

An Analytic Grammar

강덕수 지음

한국외국어대학교 지식출판콘테츠원 2023년 09월 08일 출간

작품소개

책소개

The present volume “The Sakha (Yakut) Language: An Analytic Grammar” is the output of a 30-year acquaintance with the land and people of Sakha (Yakutia). Mikhajlova Evgenija Isajevna, former president of North-Eastern Federal Universty, engaged me in founding the Sakha-Korean school in Yakutsk in 1994. Since that time, I have visited the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) every year, bringing groups of students who have volunteered in fostering friendship with students and pupils in Sakha. It was natural for a linguist to have interest in the Sakha language and its culture. In 2005 I translated “Eles Bootur” into Korean. It is one of the masterpieces of Olonkho, and has been designated as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO. After that I began to seriously study the Sakha language with the late Professor Kolodeznikov. I found out why E.K. Pekarskij said, “якутский язык неисчерпаем, как море” (The Sakha language is inexhaustible like the ocean). In 2011 I published the grammar book “The Sakha Language” in Korean with the support of the Institute of Russia at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. As a purely descriptive work, it was lacking in academic insights.
It was lucky to have the chance to work with professor Torotoev Gavril Grigorievich, Director of the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Peoples of the Northeast at North-Eastern Federal University in Russia. We have worked together since 2018 by exchanging questions and answers, reaching conclusions cooperatively.
We hope this book will make a contribution to the understanding of the
structural complexities of the Sakha language and will entice Altaic linguists
to do comparative research with the Sakha language.

목차

Preface 5
Abbreviations 7

0. Introduction 11
1. Nominal constructions 14
2. Pronouns 45
3. Adjectival participle 56
4. Converbs 78
5. Verbal constructions 97
6. Postpositions 193
7. Conjunctions 214
8. Adjectives 223
9. Adverbs 236
10. Numerals 250

Appendixes 252
References 264

책 속으로

0.1 The Sakha language (Yakut) is spoken as one of the official languages of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), which is located in the north-eastern region of Siberia in the Russian Federation. This language is usually called Yakut by outsiders, but in 1992 the constitution of the newly autonomous Sakha Republic prescribed its name as the Sakha language. This language is recognized as a native tonge by 93.8% of the population of the Republic, including minorities such as Evens, Evenkis, and Yukagirs, as well as Russian settlers. (Vinogradov 2005: 532)
The Sakha language belongs to the Turkic language family, specifically to the Uigur-Oguz group, but for a long time has been isolated from many Turkic languages, preserving the diachronic consistency of its grammar. In this sense, the Sakha language is considered a valuable source for the comparative study of Altaic languages.
According to O.N. Bötlingk, Sakha was the first language to be separated from common Proto-Turkic (Ivanov 2007: 448). A group of Turkic tribes, who lived in the Mongol steppe, moved northward during the reign of Genghis Khan. As a result, Sakha came into contact with Tungus-Manchu languages, and consequently became isolated from other Turkic languages. Sakha contains many words borrowed from Mongol and shows influences from Even and Evenki, which are aboriginal languages spoken in the northeastern region of Siberia. (Sleptsov 1990: 5)

0.2 The present volume “The Sakha (Yakut) Language: An Analytic Grammar” has basically been designed as a textbook for study at the university level as well as a research source for linguists of Altaic languages. This book focuses on structural analysis of the grammar of the Sakha language. The first attempt at structural analysis is made with the plural form {-LAr}, whose allomorphs contain the initial dental consonants (t, d, n). This makes it possible to draw comparisons with the plural morphemes of other Altaic languages, for example, Uigur {-tur} and Korean –dɨl . The construction of possessive phrases in Sakha is one of the grammatical complexities that hinders the proper understanding of nominal inflection, and auxiliary nouns are commonly typical to Altaic languages. Thus, this book first tackles the nominal constructions of the Sakha language.

작가정보

저자(글) 강덕수

한국외국어대학교 노어과 교수. 한국외국어대학교 노어과 졸업. 미국 위스콘신대학교(매디슨) 슬라브어문학과 언어학박사. 저서로는 '한노사전(공저)', '노어음성학', '파워 러시아어 문법(공저)', '러시아어 문장의 이해' 외 다수가 있으며, 역서로는 '엘레스 보오투르', '동구 현대 시인 선집' 외 다수가 있다. 논문으로는 "최적성 이론에 의한 러시아어 음절구조 연구", "야쿠트어 자음체계 연구: 러시아어 차용어 분석" 외 다수가 있다.