Khanty

Spoken in Western Siberia, Khanty (also: Khanti, Xanti) forms the eastern half of the Ob-Ugric languages. In several ways it appears more distant from Hungarian than Mansi does, possibly due to influence from neighboring Samoyedic languages. It has usually been treated as a single language divided in many dialects, tho a division into a small family of 3 languages (Eastern Khanty, Southern Khanty, Northern Khanty) may be more appropriate. The dialectal developments tend to be shared with adjacent Mansi or Selkup dialects.

The historical phonology of Khanty has been problematic in Uralistics. Among the Uralic languages Eastern Khanty is particularly notorious for several "ablaut" vowel alternations (probably from Proto-Khanty, though only small traces of this are found in Southern and Northern).

Consonants

Consonants common to all Khanty dialects are the plain stops /p t k/, the nasals /m n ń ŋ/, the plain sibilant /s/, and the resonants /w r j/.

Affricates

• *ć is reflected as *ś [ɕ] in Western Khanty (as in Core Mansi), *ť [tʲ] in Eastern Khanty.
• *č remains in East, but is deaffricated to *š in North (as in all of Mansi), as well as / V_# in South. It is further fronted to merge with /s/ in the Obdorsk dialect. The phonetic values are characteristically somewhat retroflexed [ʈʂ], [ʂ] rathern than neutral postalveolar [ṯʃ], [ʃ].

Velars

• As in Mansi, original medial *w *k *x all have become *ɣ in *ə-stems. Velars occurring after a coronal (*ɬk *ɬɣ *rɣ *rk), it is metathesized (again only in *ə-stems).
• *ɣ remains only in East, merging into /w/ in West.
• Eastern /ɣ/ also results from lenition of postvocalic /k/ in back-vocalic words.
• Next to original back vowels, *k yields *x (probably via → *q → *χ) in Western Khanty. (This is phonemicized by the fronting of *ɯɯ and further by the Northern backing of *ææ.
• Central East Khanty (Tremjugan-Jugan) has innovated labialized velars, /kʷ ŋʷ ɣʷ/, via various cheshirization changes.

Laterals

• Original PU *s and *š have developed into *ɬ unconditionally, while *ś has depalatalized to *s (common Ugric-Samoyedic developments).
• *ɬ has assimilated to *s if the word contains another *s as well (*sükśɜ → #ɬüɣs → *söɣəs "autumn", *sopśə → #ɬåps → *saapəs "net needle"; Ugr. #ɬås → *soˑs- "to dry"). (*ć has no effect in #saŋśɜ- → *ɬɯɯnć- "to stand"; #śosra → *ćorəs "1000" could be a later loan)
• In all dialects but that of Tremjugan (where initial *ɬ → /j/), *ɬ merges with *l (including that from *ð). The core dialects' reflex is /t/ (as do Mansi and Samoyedic); Central East and Kazym retain /ɬ/; the Far East and Obdorsk 'lects have /l/ (as do Mansi and Smy.)
• Original *ðʲ has become /j/ (as in Samoyedic), possibly thru an intermediate *ĺ (as in Mansi and Permic). Regardless an apparent separate *ĺ also emerges, from who knows where. This is treated the same as *l, modulo palatalization.

Retroflexes

Retroflex *ɭ *ɳ sometimes appear for PU *l *n. The conditioning is not entirely clear but at least the presence of the pre-existing retroflex *č triggers this (*nč → *ɳč). Of note is that *ɭ does not fricate; rather, in the dialects where *l → ɬ/t, this becomes a new /l/. *ɳ is retained in all Eastern dialects as well as in the Kazym and Berzovo dialects fo the Northern group.

Vowels

Khanty dialects generally have a distinction between full and overshort vowels. This correlates with the long-short distinction of Mansi, and is transcribed here as geminate vs. single.

Long back vowels develop in Southern Khanty differently near to velar consonant, which is mark'd by <Vˠ>. Some dialects trigger labialization in following velars, markd by <Vʷ>.

Several paradigmatic vowel alternations (generally in height or length, such as *ɑɑ ~ *uu, or *e ~ *ee) occur in some varieties, that are generally thought to result from umlaut at a stage when there was a richer system of non-initial syllable vowels.

	East		South	North			vs. Mansi	Notes
	Vax-Vasjugan	Tremjugan-Jugan	Demj-Konda	Nizjam	Kazym	Obdorsk
*uu₁	uu		yy, uuˠ	u		uu	*uu ([oo]?)
*ɯɯ	ɯɯ		ii, eeˠ	i		ii	*ɤɤ, *a
*ii₁	ii		ii				*ii ([ee]?)
*yy	yy	iiʷ						Mainly from ii₁ / _ɣ, sometimes *k_
*oo	oo	o, a	uu, ooˠ	uu	(w)oo	oo	*aa, *a, *å	Živlov: *a
*uu₂	uu							Živlov: *oo
*ɔɔ	ɔɔ	oo
*ɑɑ	ɑɑ	ɒɒ	oo, ɑɑˠ	ɔɔ		ɑɑ	*ɤɤ, *ɑɑ	might have to be *ɤɤ to make space for *a → VVj & West *oo
*ee	ee, øøˠ	aa	ee	ee		ee	*ää, *ä	Živlov: *ä
*ii₂	ii							Živlov: *ii; N&K (j)ee
*øø	øø	aa, ø						Živlov: Split from *ee₁
*ææ	ææ	aa	aa	ɑɑ		aa	*ii	Sammallahti: TJ /ɒɒ/ ? (typo å for ȧ?)
*ɶɶ	œœ	eeʷ						Živlov: Konda & O. /oo/ / _k
*o	o		ɑ	o		ɑ	*a, *å
*ɑ	ɑ						*aa	Živlov: *ï (?! better *ë maybe)
*e	e		e	ɑ		a	*i
*ɵ	ø	ɵ, eʷ	ɵ	u		uu	*ü

There is an interesting anomaly in the treatment of the Proto-Uralic close vowels:

• *i → *ee₁; *e before a cluster (barely any examples of the latter though)
• *u → *oo₁; *o before a cluster
• but: *ü → *ɵ uniformly (never **øø)

What seems to be going here starts unraveling once we compare the Mansi reflexes:

• *i → *ä
• *u → *å
• *ü → *ä, but Southern Mansi ü

In common Ob-Ugric these were apparently lower'd to *e *o *ö. In SMs it seems *ö then re-raised to ü (elsewhere merging to *e and continuing to *ä). (This could be motivated by the typological rarity of having /ø/ but no /y/. New *i and *u did exist, but there was no new *ü.)

(The vowel sometimes call'd *ï in PU yields mostly *ɯɯ or *ɑɑ and is better understood as a mid vowel, *ë [ɤ ~ ʌ])

Isoglosses

This article is one of quite a few pages about Natlangs. Indo-european natlangs: Balto-Slavic Natlangs: Czech * Russian Celtic Natlangs: Revived Middle Cornish * Pictish Germanic Natlangs: North Germanic Natlangs: Norwegian West Germanic Natlangs: Anglo-Saxon * Dutch * English (Old English * Middle English * Modern English * Scots) * German (High German * Low German) Indo-Iranian Natlangs: Pahlavi Italic Natlangs: French * Italian * Latin * Spanish Debated: Cimmerian Uralic Natlangs: Finnish * Khanty * Mansi * Mordvinic * Proto-Uralic Altaic (controversial): Japanese Sino-Tibetan Natlangs: Uto-Aztecan Natlangs: Nahuatl - Isolate Natlangs: Basque * * Hypothetical/debated Natlangs and Natlang families: Danubian * Europic (obsolete)