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The present-day
territory settled by the Khanty lies immediately north-east of Ural
range, generally following the Ob river south-east until the
Vasyugan
tributary. General density of population in the
Khanty spoken area is
approximately 1 pers. per 10 km2. Traditional settlement
patterns imply extended family/clan villages (5-10 pers.) located along
the river and lake banks, with distances between the villages ranging
between 5 to 50 km.
By the time of early
Russian contacts in late XIII century language communities generally
resided in their current locations, the
Khanty together with the Mansi
may have numbered approximately 13,000. It is possible that certain
elements of the ethnographic and linguistic characteristics of the
present-day Khanty, which now have typical taiga appearance, retain many
elements of southern proto-cultures of nomadic steppe horse-breeders
(Helimski 1994).
Based on available
information dating back to early XIV century the population numbers
changed unevenly, thus Khanty, Evenk, Nenets, Tatar populations were
approximately comparable to current populations, whereas such groups as
Ket, Selkup, Mansi, Chulym, Enets, Dolgan decreased considerably.
Naturally current population numbers do not reflect the numbers of the
respective languages speakers. The majority of indigenous ethnic
communities are linguistically assimilated Russian monolinguals, with
the remaining minority native language speakers being to varying extent
bilingual. Early Russian colonial policies were conservationist with
minimal Russian language contact and assimilative pressures, with the
exposure to Russian growing considerably in the end of the XIX century
and increasing radically in 1930-1960’s as a result of the soviet
collectivization and forced migration (exile) policies. In 1960s-1980’s,
most of the area was under heavy assimilative pressure entailed by
policies of social engineering, mandatory secondary schooling (Russian
media boarding schools) and particularly by the mineral resource
exploration programs resulting in considerable influx of non-native
population from European Russia, Ukraine and middle-Asian regions.
Prior to the Russian
contact, native groups in the area are assumed to had been in contact
with Turkic languages (Tatar), particularly in the south, as the area
was under administrative control of Siberian Tatar Khan. Based on
available folk data, language/culture contact with Tatars and among
other local ethnic groups was fairly limited, with inter-ethnic
relations generally described as hostile.
The
language of the Khanty (a.k.a. Ostyak) forms, together with Mansi, the
Ob'-Ugric subgroup of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language
family. Though often considered to be a single language, Khanty is
actually a group of dialect clusters (western and eastern) (Decsy,
1965;
Jääsalmi-Krüger, 2000).
In
the northern tundra ecosystem, Khanty are traditional rein-deer herders
and fishers, while in the southern taiga swamp ecosystem they are forest
hunter-fisher-gatherers. The occupational divide (tundra rein-deer
breeders vs. taiga hunter-fishers) roughly coincides with big dialectal
clustering: western (north-west tundra) vs. eastern (south-east
forests). Based on settlement and occupation patterns, language
varieties are traditionally described as river dialects, with major
Ob-river tributaries marking major river dialects:
Vasyugan, Vakh, Agan,
Tromagan, Yugan, Sosva, Kazym, etc.
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The
dialects of interest in this study are closely related river dialects of
Vasyugan Khanty, Alexandrovo and Vakh
Khanty, and
Yugan Khanty. These dialects are
particularly interesting as they represent a reportedly more archaic and
richer system, in morphosyntactic terms (Gulya
1970,
Honti 1987,
Kulonen 1989).
The
Eastern Khanty population is distributed in a string of villages along
the
Yugan
and Vakh rivers the tributaries of the Ob in the Tyumen Region, as well as the
Vasyugan river tributary and
the
middle flows of Ob river itself
in the Kargasok and Alexandrovo districts of Tomsk region respectively. They constitute about 3% of the total
Khanty population. Historically and presently
in the Tomsk Region they have always been a
minority and have lived remotely from other Khanty
groups, such as those of the Tyumen region, where there are still
majority-Khanty settlements to be found.
We
have collaborated with the
speakers of these
dialects
in
Kargasok District
of Tomsk
(villages Novyj Vasyugan,
Myldgino, NovoYugino)
and
Aleksandrovskij District (villages Aleksandrovskoe, Svetlaja Protoka,
Lukashkin Yar, Novonikolskoe, Nazino) of
Tomsk
region, as well as in the Surgutskij Distrikt of
Tyumen
Region (villages Ugut, and a
string of clan-settlements along Bol'shoj (Major) and Malyj (Minor)
Yugan rivers).
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