PARTICIPIAL CONSTRUCTIONS WITH THE MEANING OF SIMULTANEITY IN THE KAZYM KHANTY

The article deals with participial temporal constructions with the meaning of simultaneity in the Kazym dialect of Northern Khanty. The richness and variety of the inventory of these constructions have been documented in a number of works. However, the existing descriptions do not clearly show their functioning and distribution. Therefore, this study aimed to describe the semantics of simultaneity constructions in more detail and to identify their characteristic features. Data for the study were collected during a field study in the village of Kazym in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Russia, by asking native speakers to complete stimulus contexts, the first part of which consisted of a dependent clause of each construction with a varying predicate. The questionnaire was based on a sample of 50 verbs of different aspect classes. Five constructions were selected for the study: one casemarked participle (locative case) and four postpositional participial constructions with the postpositions pŏrajən, măr(ən), kŭtən, and saxət/sati/sa. The constructions were analyzed based on three aspectual parameters: Telicity, duration, and homogeneity of events. It was found that none of the constructions, with the exception of the locative construction, is compatible with telic background events. In this regard, the pŏrajən construction favors longterm background events, the kŭtən construction heterogeneous background events, the saxət/sati/sa construction short or medium-length background events and telic main events. A closer examination of the received contexts revealed that the pŏrajən construction is not semantically unspecified as described in the literature but expresses a specific meaning of simultaneity with an event that characterizes a period of time. The kŭtən construction, in turn, postulates a heterogeneous background through an initially heterogeneous event, while in combination with homogeneous events, it implies a deliberate interruption of the background event by the subject. The măr(ən) and kŭtən constructions have virtually no restrictions in combination with short-term events, but they are appropriate only in the case of “stretching” these events in time or simultaneity on a smaller scale.

Uralic languages, Khanty, semantics, aspect, taxis, participle, polypredication, simultaneity