The Category of Case in Vakh Khanty: A Study of Recent LingvoDoc-Based Field Data

Introduction. In Khanty dialects, the category of grammatical case shows its largely heterogeneous character and varies in terms of quantity and quality. As for Eastern Khanty, linguists hold different views on the composition of this category and its representatives, which results from a discrepancy in interpreting statuses of some case indicators. Goals. The article seeks to systematize available data on case indicators identified in Vakh Khanty and presented in scholarly studies of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries, compare them to field data obtained in the twenty first century and digitized on the LingvoDoc platform for independent research. Methods. The analysis of published data on Vakh Khanty has been carried out via the descriptive/comparative and structural research methods. Field data collection techniques for Vakh Khanty included direct observations of native speakers’ speech, a survey, interviews on various topics, audio recordings, and transcriptions of the latter. Results. Our review of the scholarly literature from the past centuries on the Vakh Khanty dialect shows a variety of opinions about the number of attested case markers and their functional specifics, an inconsistency of approaches to terming some of them, and a variance of the morphemic form designations. Analysis of the contemporary field data with the LingvoDoc platform’s functional tools and comparison of the results against some previously described data do confirm a stability of the Vakh Khanty dialect case system, identify the source of terminological synonymy in the nominal paradigm, and develop a classification of case markers based on their functional features. The functional parameter makes it possible to distinguish between a case marker with a predominantly grammatical orientation and a group of case markers whose profile is associated with the expression of semantic relations. In the group of semantic cases, further division into subgroups is also possible, due to the type of semantic specialization of individual case markers. Conclusions. Semantic cases fall into a subgroup of cases with spatial semantics, a subgroup with the semantics of compatibility, and a subgroup that combines cases with oblique (indirect) semantics. The distribution of case formants into subgroups is complicated by certain syncretism of semantics in a large number of case morphemes, which ultimately leads to some blurring of the subgroups’ boundaries and a variance in the terminological nomination of case morphemes.

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