Distribution of the Permic languages at the beginning of the 20th century[1][2]
The Permic or Permian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in several regions to the west of the Ural Mountains within the Russian Federation. The total number of speakers is around 950,000, of which around 550,000 speak the most widely spoken language, Udmurt. Like other Uralic languages, the Permic languages are primarily agglutinative and have a rich system of grammatical cases. Unlike many other agglutinative languages, they do not have vowel harmony.[3]
The Permic languages have traditionally been classified as Finno-Permic languages, along with the Finnic, Saami, Mordvin, and Mari languages. The Finno-Permic and Ugric languages together made up the Finno-Ugric family. However, this taxonomy has more recently been called into question, and the relationship of the Permic languages to other Uralic languages remains uncertain.[4]
History
The word Permian can be traced back philologically to the Russian word Perem (Перемь) or Perm (Пермь) which is found in medieval Russian chronicles.[5] The word was initially used to designate certain territories, including the lower reaches of the Dvina River, as well as the area bounded by the Pechora, Vychegda and Kama rivers in the north, west and south, and the Urals in the east, which was incorporated into the Russian state in the late 15th century.[5] The word Permian was then used to designate the non-Russian peoples who lived in there, which mostly included the Zyrians, and the Russians later began using the appellation Zyrian.[5] From the 19th century, the word Permian was used in scholarly writing to designate the Zyrians and the Udmurts.[5]
Phonology
Proto-Uralic word roots have been subject to particularly heavy reduction in the Permic languages.
Original geminates *pp, *tt, *kk were reduced to single voiceless stops *p, *t, *k.
Between vowels, original single *p, *t, *k as well as *w and *x were lost entirely.
Second-syllable vowels were lost entirely. This was obscured in Udmurt by adding -ы to certain words. (PU *lumi "snow" → Udm лымы/lɯˈmɯ/ vs PU *lämi "broth" → Udm лым/lɯm/).
The sibilants *s, *ś, *š have remained distinct from each other in all positions, but were voiced to *z, *ž, *ź [zʒʑ] between voiced sounds.
Consonant clusters were largely simplified: in particular nasal + stop/affricate clusters yield voiced stops/affricates, and stop + sibilant clusters yield voiceless sibilants.
A peculiarity of Permic is the occurrence of the voiced consonants such as *b, *g word-initially even in inherited vocabulary, apparently a development from original PU voiceless consonants.
The Proto-Permic consonant inventory is reconstructed as:[6][7][8]
This inventory is retained nearly unchanged in the modern-day Permic languages.
Komi has merged original *w into /ʋ/ and undergone a word-final a change *l → /ʋ/~/w/ in many dialects, while Udmurt has changed word-initially *r → /d͡ʒ/ or /d͡ʑ/. *ŋ is retained only in some Udmurt dialects; in other Permic varieties it has become /m/ next to back vowels, /n/ next to central vowels, /ɲ/ next to front vowels.
In later Russian loanwords, the consonants /fxt͡s/ may occur.
The consonant *w was marginal and occurred only word-initially or after a word-initial *k, generally traceable to diphthongization of the close back vowel of the 2nd series.[clarification needed] An exceptional[clarification needed] word is the numeral "six", *kwatʲ, which in Komi is the only native word root with an initial cluster.[9]
Literary Komi and literary Udmurt both possess a seven-vowel system /iɯueəoa/. These are however not related straightforwardly, and numerous additional vowels are required for Proto-Permic, perhaps as many as 15 altogether. The reconstruction of Proto-Permic vocalism and its development from Proto-Uralic has always been a puzzling topic, for which there are several models. There is general agreement on the existence of two series of close vowels, one of which results in modern /iɯu/ in literary Udmurt and literary Komi-Zyryan, the other in correspondences of Udmurt /eɯu/ to Komi /eəo/ (but /iʉu/ in the Komi-Yazva language). Proposed distinguishing factors for these include length (*u,*uː), tenseness (*ʊ,*u) and height (*u,*o).[10]
Here is the vowel table used in Wiktionary:
Proto-Permic vowels
Front
Central
Back
unrounded
rounded
unrounded
rounded
unrounded
rounded
Close
i
ü
u̇
u
Close-Mid
e
ö
ȯ
o
Mid
Open-Mid
ɛ
ɔ̈
ɔ̇
ɔ
Open
ä
a
å
Vowel correspondences in Permic languages (word-initial syllable)
Vowel correspondences in Permic languages (non-initial syllable)
Proto-Permic
Old Komi
Komi-Zyrian
Komi-Permyak
Komi-Yazva
Udmurt
notes
*a
𐍐
а
а
a
а / о
*ä
𐍩
ӧ
ӧ
ө
е
*i
𐍙 / 𐍨
и / ы
и / ы
и / ө
и / ы / у
different realisations in
dialectal Udmurt
Morphophonology
Noun roots in the Permic languages are predominantly monosyllabic and invariable with the canonical shape (C)VC. CV roots, such as Udmurt ву /ʋu/, Komi and Permyak ва /ʋa/ 'water', and (C)VCC roots, such as Udmurt урт /urt/, Komi орт /ort/ 'soul', exist as well. In Udmurt, there are furthermore a number of bisyllabic roots, mostly of the shape (C)VCɯ.[11]
In noun roots with certain final clusters, the second consonant surfaces only when followed with a vowel in inflected or derived forms:
Full cluster
Shortens to
Example
-nm-
-n
син /ɕin/ 'eye'
-pt-
-p
шеп /ʃep/ 'ear of corn'
-kt-
-k
кык /kɯk/ '2'
-sk-
-s
мус /mus/ 'liver'
-ʃk-
-ʃ
мыш /mɯʃ/ 'back'
-ɕk-
-ɕ
юсь /juɕ/ 'swan'
Udmurt has similar alternation for a number of other clusters of the shape voiced consonant+/m/, while Komi-Zyryan adds a number of clusters of the shape voiced consonant+/j/.[12]
The verb root for 'to come': Udmurt лыкты- /lɯktɯ-/, Komi локты- /loktɯ-/ also shows alternation to plain /k/ in e.g. the imperative (in Udmurt only dialectally).[13]
Lytkin, Vasily (1957). Историческая грамматика коми языка (in Russian). Syktyvkar: Коми книжное издательство.
Lytkin, Vasily (1964). Исторический вокализм пермских языков (in Russian). Moscow: Наука.
Lytkin, Vasily (1970). Краткий этимологический словарь коми языка (in Russian). Moscow: Наука.
Bartens, Raija (2000). Permiläisten kielten rakenne ja kehitys (in Finnish). Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura. ISBN952-5150-55-0.
Csúcs, Sándor (2005). Die Rekonstruktion der permischen Grundsprache. Bibliotheca Uralica (in German). Vol.13. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. ISBN963-05-8184-1.
Fedjunjova, Galina. "Etnitsheskije kontakty i divergentsija permskich jazykov" [Ethnic Contacts and the Divergence of the Permic Languages]. In: Linguistica Uralica 50, nr. 2 (2014). pp. 109-121. DOI: 10.3176/lu.2014.2.03
Finno-Ugric is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th century and is criticized by some contemporary linguists such as Tapani Salminen and Ante Aikio. The three most spoken Uralic languages, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, are all included in Finno-Ugric.
The Uralic languages, sometimes called the Uralian languages, are spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers above 100,000 are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt and Komi spoken in the European parts of the Russian Federation. Still smaller minority languages are Sámi languages of the northern Fennoscandia; other members of the Finnic languages, ranging from Livonian in northern Latvia to Karelian in northwesternmost Russia; and the Samoyedic languages, Mansi and Khanty spoken in Western Siberia.
The Udmurts are a Permian (Finno-Ugric) ethnic group in Eastern Europe, who speak the Udmurt language. They mainly live in the republic of Udmurtia in Russia.
The Komi are a Permian ethnic group who are indigenous to, and primarily inhabit a region around the basins of the Vychegda, Pechora and Kama rivers in northeastern European Russia. They mostly reside in the Komi Republic, Perm Krai, Murmansk Oblast, Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Federation.
Komi-Permyak language, also known as Permyak, is one of two Permic varieties in the Uralic language family that form a pluricentric language, the other being Komi-Zyryan.
The Erzya language, also Erzian or historically Arisa, is spoken by approximately 300,000 people in the northern, eastern and north-western parts of the Republic of Mordovia and adjacent regions of Nizhny Novgorod, Chuvashia, Penza, Samara, Saratov, Orenburg, Ulyanovsk, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan in Russia. A diaspora can also be found in Armenia and Estonia, as well as in Kazakhstan and other states of Central Asia. Erzya is currently written using Cyrillic with no modifications to the variant used by the Russian language. In Mordovia, Erzya is co-official with Moksha and Russian.
The Ugric or Ugrian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family.
Komi, also known as Zyran, Zyrian or Komi-Zyryan, is the native language of the Komi (Zyrians). It is one of the Permian languages; the other regional variety is Komi-Permyak.
Udmurt is a Permic language spoken by the Udmurt people who are native to Udmurtia. As a Uralic language, it is distantly related to languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Mansi, Khanty, and Hungarian. The Udmurt language is co-official with Russian within Udmurtia.
Nenets is a pair of closely related languages spoken in northern Russia by the Nenets people. They are often treated as being two dialects of the same language, but they are very different and mutual intelligibility is low. The languages are Tundra Nenets, which has a higher number of speakers, spoken by some 30,000 to 40,000 people in an area stretching from the Kanin Peninsula to the Yenisei River, and Forest Nenets, spoken by 1,000 to 1,500 people in the area around the Agan, Pur, Lyamin and Nadym rivers.
Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The reconstructed language is thought to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and then expanded across northern Eurasia, gradually diverging into a dialect continuum and then a language family in the process. The location of the area or Urheimat is not known, and various strongly differing proposals have been advocated, but the vicinity of the Ural Mountains is generally accepted as the most likely.
Khanty, previously known as Ostyak, is a Uralic language family composed of multiple dialect continuua, varyingly considered a language or a collection of distinct languages, spoken in the Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Okrugs. There were thought to be around 7,500 speakers of Northern Khanty and 2,000 speakers of Eastern Khanty in 2010, with Southern Khanty being extinct since the early 20th century. The number of speakers reported in the 2020 census was 13,900.
Selkup is the language of the Selkups, belonging to the Samoyedic group of the Uralic language family. It is spoken by some 1,570 people in the region between the Ob and Yenisei Rivers. The language name Selkup comes from the Russian селькуп, based on the native name used in the Taz dialect, шӧльӄумыт әты šöľqumyt əty, lit. 'forest-man language'. Different dialects use different names.
Proto-Samoyedic, or Proto-Samoyed, is the reconstructed ancestral language of the Samoyedic languages: Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, Selkup, as well as extinct Kamas and Mator. Samoyedic is one of the principal branches of the Uralic language family, and its ancestor is Proto-Uralic. It has been suggested that Proto-Samoyedic greatly influenced the development of Tocharian, an Indo-European language.
The Ob-Ugric languages are a commonly proposed branch of the Uralic languages, grouping together the Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi (Vogul) languages. Both languages are split into numerous and highly divergent dialects, more accurately referred to as languages. The Ob-Ugric languages and Hungarian comprise the proposed Ugric branch of the Uralic language family.
The Permians are the peoples who speak the Permic languages, a branch of the Uralic language family, and include Komis, Udmurts, and Besermyans.
The Komi-Yazva language is a Permic language closely related to Komi-Zyrian and Permyak, and spoken mostly in Krasnovishersky District of Perm Krai in Russia, in the basin of the Yazva (Yodz) River. It has no official status. It is the most divergent of all the Komi varieties. About two thousand speakers densely live in Krasnovishersky District.
Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate refers to substratum loanwords from unidentified non-Indo-European and non-Uralic languages that are found in various Finno-Ugric languages, most notably Sami. The presence of Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate in Sami languages was demonstrated by Ante Aikio. Janne Saarikivi points out that similar substrate words are present in Finnic languages as well, but in much smaller numbers.
The Komi language, a Uralic language spoken in the north-eastern part of European Russia, has been written in several different alphabets. Currently, Komi writing uses letters from the Cyrillic script. There have been five distinct stages in the history of Komi writing:
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