I. V. Novitskaya National Research Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russian Federation, National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk, Russian Federation, irno2012@yandex.ru
V. V. Vorobyova Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation, National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk, Russian Federation, vorobeva@tpu.ru
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Eastern Khanty dialects (Vakh-Vasyugan and Surgut) do not have an unquestionably identifiable system of morphological indicators for marking evidential meanings. This fact contrasts them with the Western Khanty dialects in the Ob-Ugric branch of the Uralic languages, which are generally classified as the languages with a grammaticalized category of evidentiality. Lexical and grammatical means of expressing evidentiality in the Ob-Ugric languages have been described fragmentarily, in Vakh-Vasyugan dialect they have not become an independent object of study. Moreover, in
classical grammatical essays on Vakh-Vasyugan dialect, the markers of evidentiality were not mentioned. In this regard, an analysis of lexical and grammatical means of expressing evidential meanings in the Vakh-Vasyugan language corpus, available at the Lingvodoc platform, is relevant for clarifying the uniqueness of the East Khanty group of dialects in the domain of verbal morphological categories.
Objective: to clarify the specificity of the study of lexical and grammatical means of expressing direct evidentiality in the Vakh-Vasyugan Khanty language based on digitized and annotated field data.
Research materials: annotated corpus of the Vakh-Vasyugan dialect of the Khanty language, collected in 2018 in the village of Korliki of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug – Yugra and posted on the Linguodok platform.
Results and novelty of the research: in Vakh-Vasyugan Khanty the source of the reported information is not regularly marked with special morphological indicators. The lexical means participating in the expression of direct evidentiality include verbs of sensory perception (to see, to hear, etc.) / the verbs ‘happen / turn out’, demonstrative pronouns, adverbs, connectives, multifunctional particles. It is argued that the grammatical markers of the past tenses with -s, -ɣas / -ɣäs and -ɣal / -ɣäl are likely to be involved in marking evidential semantics. It is the first time in this study that linguistic means of
expressing direct evidentiality in the Vakh-Vasyugan dialect of the Khanty language have been identified and comprehensively described. The novelty of the study draws upon the use of field data that have not previously been introduced in scientific publications, with the corpus approach to the study of linguistic material, as well as on the clarification of the functional features of temporal markers and their possible integration into the system of lexical and grammatical means of expressing the semantics of evidentiality.
Key words: Khanty language, Vakh-Vasyugan dialect, evidentiality, direct evidence, corpus, Lingvodoc
Acknowledgments: the research was funded by Russian Science Foundation, grant № 25-28-00328 “Systemic characteristics of the Khanty and Mansi verb and its infinite forms in the light of the corpus and field data”.
For citation: Novitskaya I. V., Vorobyova V. V. Means of representation of direct evidentiality in Vakh-Vasyugan dialect of the Khanty language // Vestnik ugrovedenia = Bulletin of Ugric Studies. 2025; 15 (3/62): 445–458.