Morfologia nominale khanty e ungherese a confronto

Abstract

The aim of this study is to compare the nominal morphology of Hungarian with that of Khanty, an endangered language spoken in western Siberia, considered the language most closely related to Hungarian by traditional taxonomy. Khanty is not a uniform language, but rather a continuum of linguistic varieties that can be classified into three main dialect groups: northern, southern, and eastern. These differ in their degree of vulnerability, as well as presenting notable differences in phonology, morphology, and syntax. In the field of nominal morphology, greater attention was paid to case systems, which exhibit simplification in the north and increased complexity in the east: while the inventories of northern dialects include only three cases, this number rises to eleven in eastern dialects. Hungarian, with its 18 cases, remains the richest Uralic language in this respect. However, both languages devote a large part of their inventories to locative cases. As for number suffixes, the Khanty dialects are richer, distinguishing three grammatical numbers, whereas Hungarian distinguishes only two. This also makes the paradigm of possessive suffixes more complex.