Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 105. kötet (2008)

Szemle, ismertetések - Riese, Timothy: Serkáli osztják chrestomathia (Sherkal Ostyak Chrestomathy) (szerk. Fejes László) 407

The volume consists of three major parts. After an informative introduction by Sipos and Fejes we find (I) Éva Schmidt's original work, (II) an analysis of this work, and (III) a selection of Sherkal Khanti texts with a (Hungarian) translation and glossary. It would, of course, be possible to read the book in this order, but I presume that many will do it in a different way. I myself began with the introduction (11-12) and then read the two chapters written by Mária Sipos (see above). The information contained in these few pages is necessary for the understanding of the book itself. Sipos relates how Schmidt was drawn to the study of the Sherkal dialect, how this dialect was at one time intended to become the basis for the literary language, how it was superseded in this function by Kazim Khanti and that for all practical purposes it can now be considered as extinct. After gathering the necessary background information one can begin with the Sherkal grammar proper (19-76). I read it section by section in tandem with the corresponding sections of part two written by László Fejes (= II.4. Széljegyzetek a serkáli osztják nyelvtani jegyzethez, 4.2-4.6 [113-133]). Schmidt divided her work (after a short introduction) into the following sections: (1) Phonology (19-23), (2) Prosody (25-26), (3) Morphonology (27-32), (4) Morphology (33-62), and (5) Syntactical Characteristics (63-76). The footnotes offer a wealth of additional information, e.g. some provide needed corrections, some point out differences between Schmidt's observations and those of other researchers, some give possible explanations of unclear passages, some point out new avenues of research which could prove to be helpful in the future. An example of the last point is the usage of the two conjugations in Khanti, in particular the usage of the indefinite conjugation when due to the nature of the object a non-native speaker would have expected the definite conjugation. Fejes mentions in this regard on page 67 Irina Nikolaeva's article Object agreement, grammatical relations, and information structure (in Studies in Language 23. 1999: 331-376. - incidentally not pages 341-386 as given in this volume's bibliography), which searches for explanations in the context of the sentence's informational structure. (For a similar approach with regard to Mansi, cf. e.g. Elena Skribnik's article Pragmatic Structuring in Northern Mansi [CIFU IX, Linguistica III: 222-239]). The major discussion of Schmidt's work with rectifications takes place as mentioned in the section II.4.2. to II.4.6. There is no point in attempting to list all the points covered here. Suffice it to say that Fej es 's observations show a thorough grasp of the subject matter and provide the necessary corrections to various points of Schmidt's grammar. His treatment of the phonological system in the Sherkal dialect, in particular of the (short?, reduced?, tense?, lax?) vowels