Aspects of Russian-Nivkh Grammatical Interference: The Nivkh Imperative

Abstract

The paper discusses the various ways in which Nivkh grammar has been affected during the last years as a result of interaction between Russian and Nivkh, focusing on the changes that have occurred in the realm of the Nivkh imperative. It may be supposed that such phenomena as the development of number opposition of synthetic third person imperative forms? the emergence of analytical first person singular imperative forms, the appearance of redundant third person imperative markers, the rise of new polite imperative forms, as well as some other language changes which have taken place in different areas of Nivkh grammar, were caused not only by intralinguistic and evolutionary tendencies, but also by possible influence of the Russian grammatical system. Nivkh is spoken on Sakhalin Island and in the Amur region of Russia. Being a language isolate, not genetically connected with any other languages spoken in the area or elsewhere, it is traditionally classified as a Paleosiberian language. Typologically, Nivkh is an agglutinating synthetic language with SOV word order. There are four dialects in Nivkh, i.e. the Amur, the East Sakhalin, the North Sakhalin, and the South Sakhalin dialects. The paper deals with the data of the Amur (hereafter, Niv.A) and East Sakhalin (hereafter, Niv.S) dialects. Grammatical information and examples fixing the state of Nivkh at the turn and in the first half of the twentieth century come from Steinberg (1908), Krejnovic (1934), Austerlitz (1958), Panfilov (1962, 1965), Savel'eva and Taksami (1970). Facts of presentday Nivkh are taken mainly from the data collected during my field work on Sakhalin Island (Nogliki, Katangli, Cir-Unvd) in 1989 and 1991. According to the data of the 1989 general Census of the population, there were 4,681 Nivkh people in Russia, of whom 2,008 lived on Sakhalin (Nacional'nyj... 1991). Historically, the Nivkh people have undergone varying degrees of contact and influence from the Tungus-Manchu tribes, namely, the Orochs (Uiltas), the Nanays, the Evenkis etc., on the Amur, and the Orochs and the Evenkis on Sakhalin. Moreover, the Sakhalin Nivkh people have been living for a long time in close touch with the Ainu people, especially with those who lived in the south of the