Article

Name: Semantic features of the sensory-evidential “auditive” grammeme in the Nenets shamanistic songs

Authors: Lyudmila A. Ilyina

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: The specific semantic features and the functions of sensory evidential verbal “auditive” forms are identified and specified in Nenets shamanistic ritual songs documented by Toivo Lehtisalo at the beginning of the 20th century. The significant typological specificity of Samoyedic evidential systems is the availability of verbal forms marked by special morphological formants expressing sensory evidential meanings. The verbal forms in question, indicating an auditory, acoustic source of receiving the information being communicated, are traditionally termed as “auditive” in Samoyedic linguistics. The cognitive problem is that the particular grammatical meaning of the auditive that is basic in the diachronic levels documented, in fact, coincides with the lexical meaning of the Samoyedic verbs of auditory perception. When used in evidential utterances, they indicate an auditory source of information communicated in the same way as the auditive grammemes in their basic meaning. That is why, at the later stages documented, the Samoyedic “auditive” is assumed to be redundant archaism that is not based on any actual communicative demand but only depends on folklore tradition. Nenets shamanistic ritual song texts informatively documented by Toivo Lehtisalo offer linguistically fact-based, historical, and ethnological facts. These facts make it possible to assume that the Samoyedic “auditive” primarily was grammaticalized in the sacral sphere, and its diachronically earlier semantics reflected the specificity of sacral shamanistic performance ritual communication with invisible ghost helpers. Therefore, the diachronically earlier auditive semantics was specific and different from the lexical semantics of auditive perception verbs.

Keywords: Samoyed languages, Nenets language, sensory evidentiality, grammaticalization, communicative need, sacred communication

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