The Samoyed languages
Abstract
Samoyed languages, centred in north-western Siberia, represent a branch of the Uralic language family that is syntactically and morphologically conservative but phonologically and lexically innovative. Their general structure exhibits all the typical features of a consistent SOV language, save perhaps their complex morphophonology. In short, they are entirely suffixal and can be shown to have derived from an agglutinating proto-language which also had vowel harmony, variously preserved in modern Samoyed languages. The Samoyed languages have much in common with each other, yet they appear quite different in many aspects, which is the main topic of what follows. The chapter moves from Proto-Uralic through Proto-Samoyed to modern Samoyed languages, with selected topics of grammar discussed in separate sections.