Samoyedic

Abstract The Samoyedic branch now consists of the following languages indigenous to Western Siberia: Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, and Selkup. Two Southern Samoyedic languages, Mator and Kamas, are extinct, and also the remaining Samoyedic languages are severely or critically endangered. This chapter describes the characteristics of Samoyedic languages and their background in the reconstructible Proto-Samoyedic. All Samoyedic languages are predominantly agglutinative, but Northern Samoyedic (Enets, Nenets, Nganasan) shows a high degree of fusion in the marking of case and number. In addition to singular and plural, Samoyedic languages have a dual number. Similarly to Ugric and Mordvin, their verbal inflection includes a distinct objective conjugation (object-agreement paradigm). As concerns their syntax, the Samoyedic languages are characterized by PRO-DROP and diverse types of non-finite subordination.