Kamas language

The Kamasins had never been a large group, and they lived a nomadic life, living next to Turkic and Yeniseian tribes. In the middle of the 17th century, Sayan Samoyeds started to assimilate into Turkic peoples and Kamas was the only one to survive until investigators came, such as Castrén and Kai Donner. Due to many hardships in Russia, Kai Donner was virtually certain that he would be the last one to investigate the Kamas language before it went extinct. Already in the middle of the 20th century it was thought Kamas had died. However it was later found there was still one speaker of Kamas left: Klavdiya Plotnikova. The Kamas speakers also assimilated into the Russians, as well as being turkicized. In the 20th century half of the Kamass people were born to Russian mothers, due to a higher death-rate of girls, which caused much influence to come from the Russian language. After the Russian Civil War, usage of the Kamas language started to fall drastically.

Kamas had two dialects: Kamas (also known as Kamass) and Koibal. However, the Koibal dialect is not well documented and only about 600 words of it are known, without any text or grammar. The Kamass dialect also had two sub-dialects, "Fat" ({{Lang|xas|sil-əj-zeŋ}}) and "Eagle" ({{Lang|xas|nʲiɡ-əj-zeŋ}}), which mainly differed in phonology.{{Cite book |title=The oxford guide to the uralic languages |date=2022 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-876766-4 |editor-last=Bakró-Nagy |editor-first=Marianne |location=New York |editor-last2=Laakso |editor-first2=Johanna |editor-last3=Skribnik |editor-first3=Elena}} The Eagle dialect was the most dominant Kamas dialect.

The phonological account of Kamas is very basic, due to unclear data labeling by K. Donner and Castren. It is uncertain whether Kamas had primary vowel length, consonant gemination, and palatal stops or affricates as different phonemes. It varied widely between speakers. However, there are audio recordings of the last native speaker.{{Cite web|title=INEL Kamas Corpus 1.0 - Corpus search page|url=https://inel.corpora.uni-hamburg.de/KamasCorpus/search|access-date=2021-01-21|website=inel.corpora.uni-hamburg.de}}

Kamas has both palatalized and palatal phonemes.

1. The affricates may just be consonant clusters.

K. Donner also mentioned a sound {{not a typo|ϑ (θ)}} and a f sound that was used in loanwords. Kamas also had aspiration.{{Cite journal|last=Donner|first=Kai|date=1944|title=Kai Donners Kamassiches Wörterbuch nebst Sprachproblem und Hauptzügen der Grammatik|url=https://fennougrica.kansalliskirjasto.fi/handle/10024/89815|journal =Fenno-Ugrica}}

1. ɣ seems to have been an allophone of g for some speakers.

The maximal syllable structure is CVCC. The only type of cluster allowed in the coda is ʔC. An example of this would be {{Lang|xas|naʔb}} (duck). Palatalization only occurs in front of vowels. Three consonants do not occur word initially: the trill r, the velar nasal, and the glottal stop.

The last Kamas speakers had some variations in their speech and a few vowels and consonants were slightly different depending on the speaker, for example:

oo ~ ee

ə ~ ɯ

x ~ k͔´

b ~ β (w)

Kamas is an agglutinative language and it has many flective markers.

Kamas has 7 cases:

The plural ending is {{lang|xas|-zaŋ ~ -zeŋ ~ -saŋ ~ -seŋ}}. However, there are a few irregularities : {{lang|xas|ešši}} 'child', {{lang|xas|esseŋ}} 'children', {{lang|xas|bulan}} 'moose' and genitive {{lang|xas|bulaan}}.

There are three tenses and moods in Kamas: conditional, imperative, future, present tense, past tense and optative.

The conditional is formed by {{lang|xas|-na ~ -ne}} after vowels and {{lang|xas|-ta ~ -te ~ -da ~ -de}} after consonants. The second component is {{lang|xas|-ze}} which comes after the personal ending.

{{lang|xas|kandamze}} 'I would go'.

• Imperative is done by adding {{lang|xas|-ʔ}} or {{lang|xas|-Kǝ}}.
• Optative ending is {{lang|xas|-š(ti)}} in the singular and {{lang|xas|-Šǝ}} in the plural and dual.
• The past tense is done by adding {{lang|xas|-BiA}} for the 1st and 2nd person singular or {{lang|xas|-Bi}} in others.
• The future tense is marked with {{lang|xas|-LA}}.

In Kamas a verb is made negative by adding the word {{lang|xas|e ~ i}} with the main verb. Examples with the word {{lang|xas|šo-}} 'come':

• {{lang|xas|ej šoliam}} = I don't come
• {{lang|xas|ej šolial}} = you don't come
• {{lang|xas|ej šobiam}} = I did not come
• {{lang|xas|ej šobial}} = you did not come
• {{lang|xas|em šoʔ}} = I will not come
• {{lang|xas|ellǝ šoʔ}} = you will not come

Factitive verbs have the ending {{lang|xas|aa}}: {{lang|xas|ešši}} 'child': {{lang|xas|eššā}} = make children.

Deverbal nouns have the ending {{lang|xas|(ǝ)š}}: {{lang|xas|am-}} 'eat': {{lang|xas|amǝš}} 'food'.

Instrumental nouns have the ending {{lang|xas|(p)zan}} or {{lang|xas|(p)zǝn}}: {{lang|xas|kaj}} = close, {{lang|xas|kajzan}} = lid.

{{More citations needed section|date=August 2024}}

Kamas is a nominative type language, and the common structure of a Kamas sentence includes the subject, the object, the adverbial modifier, and a predicate. The subject is in the nominative case. The indefinite object is often expressed by using the nominative but the definite object with the accusative case. The adverbial modifier can also be expressed with adverbs or nouns in the form of local or instrumental cases. The predicate in Kamas can be preceded by gerundial verb forms, which indicates the manner or tense of an action that is expressed by the predicate. Composite sentences are not used in the Kamas language. Instead of sentences which are complex Kamas uses simple sentences with gerundial verbal constructions in which case it has no need to use conjunctions or a sequence of several simple sentences. In Kamas the subject and predicate must both agree in the person and in number.

Words which typically are used in attributive positions: (demonstrative pronouns, pronominal adjectives, and numerals) can also function as argument expressions. There are also no prepositions in Kamas, instead postpositions are used and the head of a postposition, usually is marked with a genitive ({{lang|xas|-ǝn/-n}}). However, there are also primary postpositions which can govern the lative case. The word order in Kamas is SOV (subject-object-verb), but the word order VO occurs when using an imperative. Clauses which introduce a situation, the locative adverbial often precedes the subject. In clauses which a new subject appears in a place which is given there is a reverse order. In Kamas the third person, zero copula predication varies with the usage of the verb {{lang|xas|i-}} 'be'. Kamas direct objects are subject to differential object agreement and to differential object marking. Subordinating conjunctions in Kamas are {{lang|xas|kamǝn}} 'when' and {{lang|xas|paka}} 'while', which is a borrowing from Russian {{lang|ru|пока}}.

(examples in the UPA script)

{{Interlinear|d͔aγaibᵊ sēləbiə̑m, sēlᵊnnᵊ p͑im bɯn ɯštᵊbiəm. ťš́a˱‘|knife-1SG grind-PST-1SG grind-PTC stone-ACC water-LAT drop-PST-1SG otter|I sharpened my knife, I dropped the sharpening stone into the water.—Fishotter

| abbreviations = PTC:participle

}}{{Interlinear|ťăbaktǝrla’bǝm ĭmbi popalo|speak-DUR.PRES-1SG what {happened (Russian)}|I tell what has happened

}}{{Interlinear|dĭgǝttǝ măna kumbii’ kazān turānǝ|then me-OBL bring-PST-3PL Russian.GEN house-LAT|Then they took me to Aginskoe

}}{{Interlinear|dĭn măna kros embii’|there me-OBL cross put-PST-3PL|there they put a cross to me (probably 'baptized me')

}}

Basic phrases in Kamas:

• {{lang|xas|Kăde tănan kăštəliaʔi?}} = What is your name?
• {{lang|xas|măna kăštəbiʔi}} = My name is
• {{lang|xas|pasiba}} = thank you
• {{lang|xas|Dărowă/zdărowă}} = hello
• {{lang|xas|naga}} = isn't
• {{lang|xas|jakšə}} = good
• {{lang|xas|ej}} = no

{{Reflist}}

{{refbegin}}

• Britannica, 1984 Edition, Vol. 18, p. 1025.
• Wixman, Ronald. The Peoples of the USSR. p. 109.

{{refend}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20121001005330/http://www.reocities.com/Vienna/3259/kamassian-eng.html Kamas-English glossary]
• [https://archive.org/details/malexandercastr02schigoog M. Alexander Castrén's extensive book on the Samoyed grammar, including Kamas (in German)]
• [https://fennougrica.kansalliskirjasto.fi/handle/10024/89815 Kamas dictionary and grammar book]
• [https://www.infuse.finnougristik.uni-muenchen.de/e-learning/kamas/index.html Kamas e-learning]
• [https://inel.corpora.uni-hamburg.de/KamasCorpus/search Kamas corpus] (Audio recordings of Kamass native speakers)
• [https://incubator.miraheze.org/wiki/Wp/xas/%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%BF%D1%8F%D3%88%D0%B4%C7%9D%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%B0%D0%B7%D3%A9%D0%BD Kamas Wikipedia] on Miraheze
• [https://doreco.huma-num.fr/languages/kama1351 Kamas DoReCo corpus] compiled by Valentin Gusev, Tiina Klooster, Beáta Wagner-Nagy and Alexandre Arkhipov. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and time-aligned morphological annotations.

{{Uralic languages}}

Category:Southern Samoyedic languages

Category:Extinct languages of Asia

Category:Indigenous languages of Siberia

Category:Languages extinct in the 1980s