El. knyga: Grammar of Tundra Nenets

The book is the first substantial description of Tundra Nenets, a highly endangered Uralic language spoken in Western Siberia and the north of European Russia, destined for the international linguistic community. Its purpose is to provide a thorough documentation of all of the major grammatical phenomena in the language. The grammar particularly emphasizes the description of syntax, because this has traditionally been a very neglected area of Nenets studies. Many syntactic aspects have not received a systematic treatment in the existing literature or have not been addressed at all. Since the existing works are not easily available, incomplete, or idiosyncratically presented, Tundra Nenets syntax has played little or no role in the considerations of modern linguists, whether more descriptively or theoretically inclined. The book is largely descriptive: it is not intended to address theoretical questions per se and the description is not meant to be formulated within a particular framework. However, it identifies and discusses issues which are of broad typological and theoretical interest. The description is richly exemplified. Most of the cited examples are the result of fieldwork conducted by the in various locations. They are sentences produced by native speakers either spontaneously or elicited in response to questions posed in Russian. Other examples are excerpts from original texts.

The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality.