Map of pre-contact Yeniseian languages. Arin is in blue.
Arin is an extinct Yeniseian language formerly spoken in Russia by the Arin people along the Yenisei River, predominantly on its left shore, between Yeniseysk and Krasnoyarsk,[2] north of the Minusinsk region. However, it has been suggested that the Arin people had historically occupied a larger geographical range. It became extinct in the 18th century,[2][3] with the death of Arzamas Loskutov,[1] who was an informant for Gerhard Friedrich Müller in 1731.[4]
It is believed that the term Ar or Ara was used by speakers of Arin to refer to themselves.[2]
Geographical distribution
Hydronyms associated with Arin have the suffixes -set, -igai, -lat, -zat, -zet and -sat (meaning "river") and -kul'/-kul (meaning "water").[5] These hydronyms, along with Khanty folklore telling of an eastern people known as the ar-jäx "Ar people", indicate that Arin may have once been spread out as far west as the Ob.[2][6]
Classification
It is classified as belonging to the Arinic branch, being its only attested language.[6] The closest known relative of Arin, Pumpokol, has been suggested to be similar to the language of the ruling elite of the Xiongnu,[7] as well as that of the Jie ruling class of the Later Zhao dynasty.[8]
Phonology
One notable aspect of the Arin phonology is the correspondence of words starting with the word-initial k- and words in other Yeniseian languages that start with a bare vowel. For example, the Arin word kul (meaning 'water') corresponds to the Ket word uˑl’ and the Kott word ûl.[9]
The sound [ʌ], transcribed as ö, is only attested in the words ögga 'six', qoa-ögga 'sixteen', ögťuːŋ 'sixty', and utqʼöːnoŋ 'ear', and potentially also in pon’a (also recorded as pun) 'duck'.
Consonants in parentheses are sparsely attested or unattested.
[ʔ] is only assumed from other Yeniseian languages and is only a prosodic device of tone.
There are 11 palatal-nonpalatal consonant oppositions.[5]
Lexicon
Etymological analysis suggests that speakers of the Arin language, as with other members of the Yeniseian people, were bilingual in Siberian Turkic languages; for example, the Arin word teminkur (meaning "ore") has been suggested to stem from the Old Turkic compound word *tämir qān (meaning "iron blood").[10] There are over 400 lexica for the Arin language, recorded in the 18th century.[4]
^ abcdWerner, Heinrich (2005). Die Jenissej-Sprachen des 18. Jahrhunderts. Veröffentlichungen der Societas Uralo-Altaica. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN978-3-447-05239-9.
^Khabtagaeva, Bayarma (2015). "On the Yeniseian Arin word teminkur 'ore'". Words and Dictionaries: A Festschrift for Professor Stanisław Stachowski on the Occasion of His 85th Birthday: 149–154. Retrieved 13 July 2024.
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