Irina Alekseevna Nikolaeva Knihy

The book is the first substantial description of Tundra Nenets, a highly endangered Uralic language spoken in Western Siberia and the north of European Russia, destined for the international linguistic community. Its purpose is to provide a thorough documentation of all of the major grammatical phenomena in the language. The grammar particularly emphasizes the description of syntax, because this has traditionally been a very neglected area of Nenets studies. Many syntactic aspects have not received a systematic treatment in the existing literature or have not been addressed at all. Since the existing works are not easily available, incomplete, or idiosyncratically presented, Tundra Nenets syntax has played little or no role in the considerations of modern linguists, whether more descriptively or theoretically inclined. The book is largely descriptive: it is not intended to address theoretical questions per se and the description is not meant to be formulated within a particular framework. However, it identifies and discusses issues which are of broad typological and theoretical interest. The description is richly exemplified. Most of the cited examples are the result of fieldwork conducted by the in various locations. They are sentences produced by native speakers either spontaneously or elicited in response to questions posed in Russian. Other examples are excerpts from original texts.

The Historical Dictionary of Yukaghir serves two primary purposes. First, it aims to be a comprehensive source of information on the lexicon of Yukaghir, which includes the closely related and endangered Tundra and Kolyma varieties spoken in extreme North-East Siberia. Currently, there is no modern, thorough lexicographic description available for these languages in the international linguistic community. This dictionary presents all known Yukaghir varieties in a comparative format, drawing from both published sources and original fieldwork by the author, with some materials published for the first time. It also includes examples of now-extinct early forms of Yukaghir recorded since the late 17th century. Second, the dictionary offers a reconstruction of the common ancestor of all known Yukaghir varieties. Proto-Yukaghir stems are established through internal reconstruction and comparisons among various idioms, along with external data. While it does not provide etymologies for all Yukaghir words, it includes possible cognates from other languages, mainly Uralic and Altaic. By presenting modern forms alongside reconstructions, the dictionary lays the groundwork for future etymological research and aids in exploring the genetic affiliations of Yukaghir, often considered an isolated language. It will also benefit linguists studying the distant genetic relationships between language families and the prehistoric linguistic lands

This book is a collection of fairy tales in Udeghe (Udihe), an endangered Tungus language spoken by approximately 100 people in the southern part of the Russian Far East. It provides the first fairly representative sample of folklore in the Southern dialect of Udeghe. The twenty-five texts were recorded from Udeghe speakers in the Primorje region of Russia between 1984 and 1997. They are published in phonological transcription and supplied with morpheme-by-morpheme glosses and English translations. The footnotes clarify certain Udeghe words, expressions, objects and customs, and provide information on when and how the texts were recorded, as well as about similar motifs that appear in other published sources on the folklore of the Udeghe, and other Tungus people. The book also contains a preface which explains the conventions used in rendering the texts, and gives a brief introduction to Udeghe language and culture.

The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.