Proto-Uralic language

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Proto-Uralic is the hypothetical language ancestral to the Uralic language family, which includes Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic. No earlier protolanguage has been constructed.

The language was originally spoken in a small area in about 7000-2000 BC (estimates vary), and expanded to give differentiated protolanguages. The exact location of the area or Urheimat is not known, but the vicinity of the Ural Mountains is usually assumed. The available reconstruction may not be a representation of the language itself; instead, it may summarize features common to a dialect continuum spanning from the Eastern center later producing Samoyedic and Ugric, to the Western center producing Finno-Permic languages. According to the traditional binary tree model, Proto-Uralic diverged into Proto-Samoyedic and Proto-Finno-Ugric. However, reconstructed Proto-Finno-Ugric differs very little from Proto-Uralic, and many apparent differences follow from the methods used. Thus, Proto-Finno-Ugric may be seen as a geographical classification of more closely related dialects of Proto-Uralic, not as a true language separate from Proto-Uralic.

There are several reconstructions of the split of Proto-Uralic. The traditional idea is a binary split into Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic; another one has three branches (Finno-Permic, Ugric and Samoyedic). Recently these tree-like models have been challenged by the hypothesis of larger number of protolanguages giving a "comb" rather than a tree. The protolanguages would be Sami, (Baltic-)Finnic, Mordva, Mari, Permic, Ugric and Samoyedic, in this order. This order is coincidentally both the order of geographical positions as well as linguistic similarity, with neighboring languages being more similar than distant ones.

Phonology

Similarly to the situation for Proto-Indo-European, reconstructions of Proto-Uralic are traditionally not written in IPA but in UPA. UPA is used here, followed by the IPA equivalents between slashes (because it is a phonemic reconstruction).

Proto-Uralic had vowel harmony and a rather large inventory of vowels in initial syllables, much like the modern Finnish or Estonian system:

Rounded vowels were restricted to initial syllables. Vocalic phonemes in non-initial syllables were restricted to two or three. One view is that there were only two archiphonemic non-initial vowels /a/ and /i/, realized as four allophones as per vowel harmony. Another view is that there were /a/, /i/ and /ə/. There were no diphthongs or long vowels.

The consonant system was rich with palatalized consonants, but only one series of stops (unvoiced unaspirated) existed:

The phonemes in parentheses are supported by only limited evidence, and are not assumed by all scholars. The consonant symbolized by x is reconstructed by certain scholars in word-stems where a contrastive long vowel later developed, best preserved in the Finnic languages. Because this hypothetical consonant has not been preserved in any language as such, its original phonetic nature is uncertain; /x/, /ɣ/ and /h/ have been suggested among others.

No initial or final consonant clusters were allowed, so words could begin and end with a maximum of one consonant only. Inside words only clusters of two consonants were permitted. There may have also been double (i.e. geminate) consonants. Voicing was not a phonemic feature.

The postalveolar sibilant /š/ is scarcely attested, but certain loans from as far back as the Proto-Indo-European language have reflexes traceable to a postalveolar fricative. Palatalization, or palatal-laminal instead of apical articulation, was a phonemic feature, as it is in many modern Uralic languages.

Proto-Uralic did not have tones, which contrasts with Yeniseian and some Siberian languages. Neither was there contrastive stress as in Indo-European; in Proto-Uralic the first syllable was invariably stressed.

Grammar

Grammatically Proto-Uralic was an agglutinative language with at least six noun cases and verbs inflected for number, person, mood and tense. There were three numbers, singular, dual and plural. Proto-Uralic was a nominative-accusative language. Verbs may have had a separate subjective and objective conjugation, the latter of which was used in connection with a definite object.

Grammatical gender was not recognized and no Uralic language does so even today. Noun articles were unknown. The plural marker of nouns was *-t in final position and *-j- in non-final position, as seen in Finnish.^{[citation needed]} The dual marker has been reconstructed as *-k-, but the dual number has been lost in many of the contemporary Uralic languages. The nouns also had possessive suffixes; possessive pronouns were not found.

The cases had only one three-way locative contrast of entering, residing and exiting. This is the origin of the three-way systems as the three different ones in Karelian Finnish (illative/inessive/elative, allative/adessive/ablative, translative/essive/exessive). The partitive case, developed from the ablative, was a later innovation by Fennic languages.

The cases were:

• nominative (no suffix)
• accusative *-m
• genitive *-n
• locative *-na / *-nä
• ablative *-ta / *-tä
• lative *-ŋ

Verbs were conjugated at least according to number, person and tense. The reconstructions of mood markers are controversial. Some scholars argue that there were separate subjective and objective conjugations, but this is disputed; clear reflexes of the objective conjugation are only found in the easternmost branches, and hence it may also represent an areal innovation. Negation was expressed with the means of a negative verb *e-, found as such in e.g. Finnish e+mme "we don't".

Vocabulary

Only some 200 words can be reconstructed for Proto-Uralic, if it is required that every word reconstructed for the proto-language should be present in Samoyed languages. With a laxer criterion of reconstructing words which are attested in most branches of the language family, a number in the range of 300-400 words can be reached.

The following examples of reconstructed items are considered to fulfill the strictest criteria and are thus accepted as Proto-Uralic words by practically all scholars in the field:

• Body parts and bodily functions: *ïpti hair on the head, *ojwa head, *śilmä eye, *poski cheek, *käxli tongue, *elä- to live, *kaxli- to die, *wajŋi breath, *kosi cough, *kunśi urine, *küńili tear, *sexji pus.
• Kinship terms: *emä mother, *čečä uncle, *koska aunt, *mińä daughter-in-law, *wäŋiw son-in-law.
• Verbs for universally known actions: *meni- to go, *toli- to come, *aśkili- to step, *imi- to suck, *soski- to chew, *pala- to eat up, *uji- to swim, *sala- to steal, *kupsa- to extinguish.
• Basic objects and concepts of the natural world: *juka river, *toxi lake, *weti water, *päjwä sun, warmth, *suŋi summer, *śala- lightning, *wanča root, *koxji birch, *kaxsi spruce, *sïksi Siberian pine, *δ'ïxmi bird cherry
• Elementary technology: *tuli fire, *äjmä needle, *pura drill, *jïŋsi bow, *jänti bow string, *ńïxli arrow, *δ'ümä glue, *lïpśi cradle, *piksi rope, *suksi ski, *woča fence.
• Basic spatial concepts: *ïla below, *üli above, *wasa left, *pälä side.
• Pronouns: *mun I, *tun you, *ke- who, *mi- what.

A reconstruction of a word *wäśkä, meaning 'metal', has also been proposed. However, this word shows irregularities in sound correspondence, and some scholars believe it to be a Wanderwort instead.

The reconstructed vocabulary is compatible with a Mesolithic culture (bow, arrow, needle, sinew, but also rope, fence, cradle, ski), a north Eurasian landscape (spruce, birch, Siberian pine), and contains interesting hints on kinship structure.

Examples of vocabulary correspondences between the modern Uralic languages are provided in the list of comparisons at the Finnish Wikipedia.

External links

• Encyclopedia Britannica's take
• Criticism of binary tree model

References

• Janhunen, Juha. 1981a. "On the structure of Proto-Uralic." Finnisch-ugrische Forschungen 44, 23–42. Helsinki: Société finno-ougrienne.

• Janhunen, Juha. 1981b. "Uralilaisen kantakielen sanastosta ('On the vocabulary of the Uralic proto-language')." Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 77, 219–274. Helsinki: Société finno-ougrienne.

• Sammallahti, Pekka. 1988. "Historical phonology of the Uralic languages, with special reference to Samoyed, Ugric, and Permic." In The Uralic Languages: Description, History and Foreign Influences, edited by Denis Sinor, 478–554. Leiden: Brill.