Three Nganasan-Evenki/Dolgan Morphosyntactic Parallels and Their Implications
Three Nganasan-Evenki/Dolgan Morphosyntactic Parallels and Their Implications

Summary/Abstract: The following study discusses three morphosyntactic features of Nganasan, the negative verb ’not want’, the distribution of the copula in predicative noun/adjective constructions, and the grammaticalization of a directional postposition into an allative case marker. Whereas for all these features, some Samoyedic parallels are available, there exist equally good parallels in two of Nganasan’s potential contact languages Evenki and Dolgan. Although contacts with the aforementioned languages have been postulated in research on Nganasan earlier, prior studies have concentrated on lexical borrowings. This article attempts to show that these three morphosyntactic features are the outcome of contact induced convergence.

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