Proto-Sami is the hypothetical,
reconstructed common ancestor of the
Sami languages
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
. It is a descendant of the
Proto-Uralic language
Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give differentia ...
.
Homeland and expansion
Although the current Sami languages are spoken much further to the north and west, Proto-Sami was likely spoken in the area of modern-day Southwestern Finland around the first few centuries CE. Local (in
Sápmi
(, smj, Sábme / Sámeednam, sma, Saepmie, sju, Sábmie, , , sjd, Са̄мь е̄ммьне, Saam' jiemm'n'e) is the cultural region traditionally inhabited by the Sámi people. Sápmi is in Northern and Eastern Europe and includes the ...
) ancestors of the modern
Sami people
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
likely still spoke non-Uralic,
"Paleoeuropean" languages at this point (see
Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate
Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate refers to substratum loanwords from unidentified non-Indo-European and non-Uralic languages that are found in various Finno-Ugric languages, most notably Sami. The presence of Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate in Sami languages ...
). This situation can be traced in
placenames
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...
as well as through the analysis of loanwords from Germanic, Baltic and Finnic. Evidence also can be found for the existence of language varieties closely related to but likely distinct from Sami proper having been spoken further east, with a limit around
Lake Beloye.
Separation of the main branches (West Sami and East Sami) is also likely to have occurred in southern Finland, with these later independently spreading north into Sápmi. The exact routes of this are not clear: it is possible Western Sami entered Scandinavia across
Kvarken
Kvarken ( sv, Kvarken, Norra Kvarken (as opposed to South Kvarken); ) is the narrow region of the Gulf of Bothnia separating the Bothnian Bay (the inner part of the gulf) from the Bothnian Sea. The distance from the Swedish mainland to the Finn ...
rather than via land. Concurrently,
Finnic languages
The Finnic (''Fennic'') or more precisely Balto-Finnic (Balto-Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Baltic Fennic) languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 mi ...
that would eventually end up becoming modern-day Finnish and Karelian were being adopted in the southern end of the Proto-Sami area, likely in connection with the introduction of agriculture, a process that continued until the 19th century, leading to the extirpation of original Sami languages in
Karelia
Karelia ( Karelian and fi, Karjala, ; rus, Каре́лия, links=y, r=Karélija, p=kɐˈrʲelʲɪjə, historically ''Korjela''; sv, Karelen), the land of the Karelian people, is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for ...
and all but northernmost Finland.
Phonology
Consonants
The Proto-Sami consonant inventory is mostly faithfully retained from Proto-Uralic, and is considerably smaller than what is typically found in modern Sami languages. There were 16 contrastive consonants, most of which could however occur both short and
geminate
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
:
Stop and affricate consonants were split in three main allophones with respect to
phonation
The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defini ...
:
* Plain voiceless , , etc, occurred word-initially, adjacent to other voiceless consonants, and in the strong grade of single intervocalic consonants
* Lax voiceless , , etc, occurred between voiced sounds
*
Preaspirated In phonetics, preaspiration (sometimes spelled pre-aspiration) is a period of Voice (phonetics), voicelessness or Aspiration (phonetics), aspiration preceding the closure of a voiceless obstruent, basically equivalent to an -like sound preceding the ...
, , etc, occurred in geminates
The
spirant
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
also had two allophones, voiceless occurring word-initially and syllable-finally, and voiced elsewhere.
Consonant gradation
A detailed system of
allophony
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
is reconstructible, known as
consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation (mostly lenition but also assimilation) found in some Uralic languages, more specifically in the Finnic, Samic and Samoyedic branches. It originally arose as an allophonic alternation bet ...
. Gradation applied to all intervocalic single consonants as well as all consonant clusters. This is unlike gradation in the related
Proto-Finnic
Proto-Finnic or Proto-Baltic-Finnic is the common ancestor of the Finnic languages, which include the national languages Finnish and Estonian. Proto-Finnic is not attested in any texts, but has been reconstructed by linguists. Proto-Finnic is i ...
and
its descendants, where it applied only to a subset. The conditioning factor was the same, however: the weak grade occurred if the following syllable was
closed
Closed may refer to:
Mathematics
* Closure (mathematics), a set, along with operations, for which applying those operations on members always results in a member of the set
* Closed set, a set which contains all its limit points
* Closed interval, ...
, the strong grade if it was
open
Open or OPEN may refer to:
Music
* Open (band), Australian pop/rock band
* The Open (band), English indie rock band
* ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969
* ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999
* ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001
* ''Open'' (YF ...
. This difference was originally probably realized as
length
Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Interna ...
:
* A single consonant was short in the weak grade, e.g. , half-long in the strong grade
* A geminate consonant was long in the weak grade, overlong in the strong grade
* A consonant cluster had a short 1st member in the weak grade, e.g. , a half-long one in the strong grade,
Gradation only applied after a stressed syllable; after an unstressed syllable all medial consonants appeared in the weak grade.
In sources on Proto-Sami reconstruction, gradation is often assumed but not indicated graphically. In this article, when it is relevant and necessary to show the distinction, the weak grade is denoted with an inverted breve below the consonant(s): ''s'' : ''s̯'', ''č'' : ''č̯'', ''tt'' : ''t̯t̯'', ''lk'' : ''l̯k̯''.
After the phonematization of gradation due to loss of word-final sounds, Sami varieties could be left with as many as four different contrastive degrees of consonant length. This has only been attested in some dialects of
Ume Sami
''Prunus mume'' is an East Asian and Southeast Asian tree species classified in the ''Armeniaca'' section of the genus ''Prunus'' subgenus ''Prunus''. Its common names include Chinese plum, Japanese plum, and Japanese apricot. The flower, long ...
. Most other Sami varieties phonemically merged the weak grade of geminates with the strong grade of single consonants, leaving only three lengths. In some Sami languages, other sound developments have left only two or three degrees occurring elsewhere.
Vowels
An asymmetric system of four short and five long vowel segments can be reconstructed.
* The four
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s only occurred in stressed syllables, in
complementary distribution
In linguistics, complementary distribution, as distinct from contrastive distribution and free variation, is the relationship between two different elements of the same kind in which one element is found in one set of environments and the other ele ...
with the two long vowels occurring in unstressed syllables.
* did not generally occur in the last syllable of a word.
Prosody
Stress was not phonemic in Proto-Sami. The first syllable of a word invariably received primary stress. Non-initial syllables of a word received secondary stress, according to a
trochaic
In English poetic metre and modern linguistics, a trochee () is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. But in Latin and Ancient Greek poetic metre, a trochee is a heavy syllable followed by a light one (al ...
pattern of alternating secondarily-stressed and unstressed syllables. Odd-numbered syllables (counting from the start) were stressed, while even-numbered syllables were unstressed. The last syllable of a word was never stressed. Thus, a word could end in either a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (if the last syllable was even-numbered) or a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (if the last syllable was odd-numbered). This gave the following pattern, which could be extended indefinitely (P = primary stress, S = secondary stress, _ = no stress):
* P
* P _
* P _ _
* P _ S _
* P _ S _ _
* P _ S _ S _
* etc.
Because the four diphthongs could only occur in stressed syllables, and consonant gradation only occurred after a stressed syllable, this stress pattern led to alternations between vowels in different forms of the same word. These alternations survive in many Sami languages in the form of distinct inflectional classes, with words with a stressed second-last syllable following the so-called "even" or "two-syllable" inflection, and words with an unstressed second-last syllable following the "odd" or "three-syllable" inflection. Weakening and simplification of non-final consonants after unstressed syllables contributed further to the alternation, leading to differences that are sometimes quite striking. For example:
In compounds, which consisted of a combination of several root words, each word retained the stress pattern that it had in isolation, so that that stress remained lexically significant (i.e. could theoretically distinguish compounds from non-compounds). The first syllable of the first part of a compound had the strongest stress, with progressively weaker secondary stress for the first syllables of the remaining parts.
Grammar
Nominals
Nominal
Nominal may refer to:
Linguistics and grammar
* Nominal (linguistics), one of the parts of speech
* Nominal, the adjectival form of "noun", as in "nominal agreement" (= "noun agreement")
* Nominal sentence, a sentence without a finite verb
* Nou ...
s, i.e.
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s,
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
s,
numerals
A numeral is a figure, symbol, or group of figures or symbols denoting a number. It may refer to:
* Numeral system used in mathematics
* Numeral (linguistics), a part of speech denoting numbers (e.g. ''one'' and ''first'' in English)
* Numerical d ...
and
pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
s were systematically inflected for two
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
s and ten
cases. The
personal pronouns
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
and
possessive suffix
In linguistics, a possessive affix (from la, affixum possessivum) is an affix (usually suffix or prefix) attached to a noun to indicate its possessor, much in the manner of possessive adjectives.
Possessive affixes are found in many languages o ...
es also distinguished the
dual number.
Cases
The cases included the core cases
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
,
accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
and
genitive
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
; the local cases
inessive
In grammar, the inessive case (abbreviated ; from la, inesse "to be in or at") is a locative grammatical case. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is in Finnish, in Estonian, () in Moksha, in Basque, in ...
,
elative,
illative
In grammar, the illative case (; abbreviated ; from la, illatus "brought in") is a grammatical case used in the Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Hungarian languages. It is one of the locative cases, and has the basic meaning of "int ...
; as well as
essive
In grammar, the essive case, or similaris case, (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case.O'Grady, William, John Archibald, Mark Aronoff, and Janie Rees-Miller. "Morphology: The Analysis of Word Structure." Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. 6th ...
,
partitive In linguistics, the partitive is a word, phrase, or case that indicates partialness. Nominal partitives are syntactic constructions, such as "some of the children", and may be classified semantically as either set partitives or entity partitives ba ...
,
comitative
In grammar, the comitative case (; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case that denotes accompaniment. In English, the preposition "with", in the sense of "in company with" or "together with", plays a substantially similar role (other uses of "with", l ...
and
abessive
In linguistics, abessive (abbreviated or ), caritive and privative (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case expressing the lack or absence of the marked noun. In English, the corresponding function is expressed by the preposition '' without'' or ...
.
The case system shows some parallel developments with the Finnic languages. Like Finnic, the original Uralic locative ''*-na'' was repurposed as an essive, the ablative case ''*-ta'' became the partitive, and new locative cases were formed from these by infixing ''*-s-''. Sami lacks any equivalent to the Finnic "external" cases beginning with ''*-l-'', however. Moreover, the earliest stages of Samic appear to have used these cases only in the singular, as several of the singular cases do not have a formational counterpart in the plural:
* The accusative plural developed out of the original ablative/partitive plural form, with plural infix ''-j-'' + partitive ''-ta''.
* The inessive plural is the original essive plural form, with plural infix ''-j-'' + locative ''-na''.
* The illative plural was formed in different ways in the various languages, so that no single form can be reconstructed for Proto-Samic.
* The elative plural was likely formed relatively late as well, as it shows a three-consonant cluster, formed analogically by adding the plural ''-j-'' to the singular form.
* The comitative plural was in origin a periphrastic construction consisting of the genitive plural with the noun ''*kuojmē'' "companion".
Given the discrepancies in the plural locative cases, it is likely that this part of the case system was still partially in development during the late Proto-Sami period, and developed in subtly different ways in the various descendants. In most Sami languages, the case system has been simplified:
* The partitive has been lost in most western languages.
* In several languages the genitive and accusative singular have coincided, and in Northern Sami this led to an analogical merger in the plural. Southern and Pite Sami still keep the two cases separate.
* A sound change *sn > *st that occurred in the history of several mostly eastern Sami languages caused a merging of the inessive and elative singular, creating a single "locative" case. Several languages merged the plural cases analogically, but some languages chose the former inessive plural form, while others chose the elative plural.
Possession
Verb inflection
* The
conditional mood The conditional mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood used in conditional sentences to express a proposition whose validity is dependent on some condition, possibly counterfactual.
It may refer to a distinct verb form that expresses the condit ...
had the mood marker ''*-kćē-'' (cognate to the
Estonian
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also ...
conditional marker ''-ks-''), to which past tense endings were attached. In Western Sami, a new conditional mood was innovated, consisting of the connegative form of the verb joined to a past-tense form of the copula ''*leatēk''.
* The
potential mood
In linguistics, irrealis moods (abbreviated ) are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contrasts with the realis moods.
Every ...
had the mood marker ''*-ńćë-'' (cognate to the
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
conditional marker ''-isi-''). It received present-tense endings.
The following non-finite forms were also present:
* Infinitive ''*-tēk'', identical with the Finnic ending ''*-dak''.
* Verbal noun ''*-mē'', identical with the Finnic verbal noun suffix ''*-ma''.
* Present participle ''*-jē'', originally an agent noun suffix, cognate to the Finnic agent noun suffix ''*-ja''.
* Past participle ''*-më'' or extended ''*-mëńćë''. The extended form is identical with the Finnish verbal noun/"fourth infinitive" suffix ''*-minen'' ~ ''*-mice-''.
Lexicon
The vocabulary reconstructible for Proto-Sami has been catalogued by Lehtiranta (1989), who records approximately 1500 word roots, for which either a pre-Sami ancestry is assured, or whose distribution across the Sami languages reaches at least from Lule Sami to Skolt Sami. Within this sample, loanwords from the Finnic and Scandinavian languages already constitute major subsets, numbering slightly over 150 and 100, respectively.
Development
From Proto-Uralic
* followed by > followed by .
* > , a change shared with the
Finnic and
Mordvinic languages
The Mordvinic languages, also known as the Mordvin, Mordovian or Mordvinian languages (russian: мордовские языки, ''mordovskiye yazyki''),
are a subgroup of the Uralic languages, comprising the closely related Erzya language and Mok ...
. This change
counterfeeds the previous one.
* > .
* Loss of
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
(if it existed). In non-initial syllables, front and back harmonic allophones collapsed into one: > and > .
* > , a development also shared with Finnic and Mordvinic.
* >
* Vowels are lengthened before .
* > before a vowel. is lost elsewhere.
* >
* >
* >
This approximate point of Pre-Sami marks the introduction of the oldest Western Indo-European loanwords from Baltic and Germanic. Loans were also acquired from its southern relative Finnic, substituting the early Finnic sound with Sami . Likely contemporary to these were the oldest loanwords adapted from extinct Paleo-European
substrate languages
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
during the northwestward expansion of Pre-Sami. Prime suspects for words of this origin include replacements of Uralic core vocabulary, or words that display consonant clusters that cannot derive from either PU or any known Indo-European source. A number of the later type can be found in the Finnic languages as well.
Examples:
* PU > preS > PS 'uncle'
* PU > preS > PS 'glue'
* PU > preS > PS 'tree stump'
* PU > preS > PS 'to sell'
* Baltic → preS > PS 'frost'
* Germanic 'red' → preS > PS 'iron'
* Germanic → preS > PS 'guest'
* Finnic → preS > PS 'rear'
* substrate? → preS > PS 'rock', in place of Uralic
* substrate? → preS or > PS "wood", in place of Uralic or
* substrate? → preS > PS 'perch' (cf. Finnish ''ahven'')
* substrate? → preS > PS 'feather' (cf. Finnish ''höyhen'')
Later consonant changes mostly involved the genesis of the consonant gradation system, but also the simplification of various consonant clusters, chiefly in loanwords.
* Geminate fricatives were introduced in certain loanwords.
* was denasalized before a
heterorganic obstruent
An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...
.
** PU → PS 'bow'
** PU → PS 'cavity'
Vowel shift
A fairly late but major development within Sami was a complete upheaval of the vowel system, which has been compared in scope to the
Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language that took place primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English. Through ...
of English.
The previous changes left a system consisting of in the first syllable in Pre-Sami, and probably at least long . In unstressed syllables, only were distinguished. The source of is unclear, although it is frequently also found in Finnic.
The table below shows the main correspondences:
The processes that added up to this shift can be outlined as follows:
# Lowering: > , including unstressed .
# Raising: > before a following . There are also irregular examples with > (for example ''*kolmi'' 'three' > ''*kʊlmi'' > Proto-Sami ''*kolmë'' > Northern Sami ''golbma'').
# All non-close vowels are lengthened: > . If earlier long non-close vowels existed, they were merged with their short counterparts by this time.
At this point, the vowel system consisted of only two short vowels in initial syllables, alongside the full complement of long vowels . In non-initial syllables, the vowels were . After this, several
metaphonic changes then occurred that rearranged the distribution of long vowels in stressed syllables.
* > before and . This may indicate that second-syllable was a relatively open vowel such as .
* > before .
* > also elsewhere.
suggests the following four phases:
# Lowering of mid vowels before and .
# Raising of open vowels before , merging with the un-lowered mid vowels.
# Raising of remaining .
# Backing of remaining .
The inventory of long vowels in stressed syllables now featured seven members: . However, in native vocabulary remained in complementary distribution: the closed-mid vowel only occurred before following , the open-mid vowel only before following , .
Further changes then shifted the sound values of the unstressed syllables that had conditioned the above shift:
# > , regardless of following vowels.
# > , unless followed by in a third or later syllable.
# > before .
Lastly, a number of unconditional shifts adjusted the sound values of the vowel phonemes.
# > , in initial syllables. Word initially, > .
# > . There likely was an intermediate for the first of these.
# > .
To what extent the two last changes should be dated to Proto-Sami proper is unclear. Although all Sami languages show these changes in at least some words, in
Southern Sami
Southern may refer to:
Businesses
* China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China
* Southern Airways, defunct US airline
* Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US
* Southern Airways Express, M ...
and
Ume Sami
''Prunus mume'' is an East Asian and Southeast Asian tree species classified in the ''Armeniaca'' section of the genus ''Prunus'' subgenus ''Prunus''. Its common names include Chinese plum, Japanese plum, and Japanese apricot. The flower, long ...
earlier , , , are regularly reflected as ''ij'', ''i'', ''u'', ''uv'' in stressed
open syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
s. It is possible that these are
archaism
In language, an archaism (from the grc, ἀρχαϊκός, ''archaïkós'', 'old-fashioned, antiquated', ultimately , ''archaîos'', 'from the beginning, ancient') is a word, a sense of a word, or a style of speech or writing that belongs to a hi ...
s, and shortening and lowering occurred only after the initial division of Proto-Sami into dialects.
The effects of the vowel shift can be illustrated by the following comparison between Northern Sami, and
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
, known for retaining vowel values very close to Proto-Uralic. All word pairs correspond to each other regularly:
Towards the modern Sami languages
The main division among the Sami languages is the split between eastern and western Sami.
Changes that appear across the Eastern-Western divide are:
* Denasalisation of clusters of nasal plus homorganic consonant to geminate voiced or partially voiced stops (all except Akkala, Kildin and Ter Sami). This appears to have originally been a Western Sami innovation that then spread to Inari and Skolt Sami, as it was still productive in those languages after the borrowing of certain words that escaped the process in Western Sami. For example, Finnish ''anteeksi'' was borrowed into Northern Sami as ''ándagassii'' after the change, thus with a newly-introduced nasal, while Inari Sami has ''addâgâs'', borrowed before the change and thus lacking the nasal.
* Preaspiration of single stops and affricates (all except Akkala, Kildin and Ter Sami).
* Development of the rare phoneme ''*θ'' to ''*t'' word-initially. Southern Sami and Ume Sami have ''*h'' instead.
* Deaffrication of ''*c'' and ''*č'' before another consonant. This change occurred in a large area in the middle of the Sami area, with the outliers Southern, Akkala, Kildin, Ter and partly also Skolt Sami preserving the original affricates.
Western Sami
Innovations common to the Western Sami languages:
* Pre-stopped or pre-glottalised nasals develop from original geminate nasals (not in Sea Sami).
* Vocalisation of ''*š'' to ''*j'' before a stop (not in Sea Sami).
* Metathesis and fortition of ''*ŋv'' to ''*vk''.
* Assimilation of ''*ŋm'' to ''*mm'', which then becomes pre-stopped/pre-glottalised.
* Merging of clusters of stop plus homorganic nasal with single nasals.
The Southern West Sami languages consist of
Southern Sami
Southern may refer to:
Businesses
* China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China
* Southern Airways, defunct US airline
* Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US
* Southern Airways Express, M ...
and
Ume Sami
''Prunus mume'' is an East Asian and Southeast Asian tree species classified in the ''Armeniaca'' section of the genus ''Prunus'' subgenus ''Prunus''. Its common names include Chinese plum, Japanese plum, and Japanese apricot. The flower, long ...
, and have a number of further innovations:
* Lengthening of short syllables, either by lengthening stressed to /ij uv/ in open syllables, or geminating single consonants after other short vowels.
* Stressed are raised to /i u/ in open syllables (in Ume Sami only if the next vowel is not ).
* Reduction of consonant gradation. It is only partly present in Ume Sami, and entirely lost in Southern Sami.
The Northern West Sami languages consist of
Pite Sami Pite may refer to:
* Piteå, town in Sweden known as Pite in local dialect
* Pite (food), Albanian foodstuff
*Pite River, Swedish river
* Pité (born 1994), Portuguese footballer
People with the surname
* Arthur Beresford Pite
Arthur Beresfo ...
,
Lule Sami Lule may refer to:
* Lule people, an indigenous people of northern Argentina
* Lule language, a possibly extinct language of Argentina
* Lule Sami language, a language spoken in Sweden and Norway
* Luleå, also known as Lule, a town in Sweden
* Lul ...
and Northern Sami. They have one important common innovation:
* Pre-stopped or pre-glottalised nasals develop also from strong-grade single nasals (not in Sea Sami).
Pite Sami and Lule Sami form their own smaller subgroup of shared innovations, which might be termed Northwestern West Sami:
* 2nd syllable is assimilated to /o/ after 1st syllable /o/.
* The distinction between single and geminate stops ( etc.) is neutralized after the liquids /l/, /r/.
Northern Sami by itself has its own unique changes:
* Change of *p to *k in clusters before a stop or sibilant.
* Merging of accusative and genitive cases.
* Merging of the inessive into the elative to form a common locative case, with the ending used depending on dialect.
* Loss of the past tense of the negative verb, in favour of a construction using the present tense of the negative verb with the past participle (like Finnish).
Eastern Sami
The Eastern Sami languages have the following innovations:
* Contraction of syllables before ''*nč''.
* Development of ''ŋ'' to ''v'' before another labial sonorant.
* Merging of clusters of stop plus homorganic nasal with geminate nasals.
The Mainland East Sami languages,
Inari Sami
Inari may refer to:
Shinto
* Inari Ōkami, a Shinto spirit
** Mount Inari in Japan, site of Fushimi Inari-taisha, the main Shinto shrine to Inari
** Inari Shrine, shrines to the Shinto god Inari
* Inari-zushi, a type of sushi
Places
* Inari, ...
,
Skolt Sami and
Akkala Sami, share further innovations:
* Gemination of even in the weak grade.
* Merging of unstressed with .
Skolt and Akkala Sami moreover share:
* Loss of final unstressed vowels.
* Merging of with .
* Development of stressed to /e o/ under certain conditions.
Peninsular East (Kola) Sami, consisting of
Kildin Sami Kildin may refer to:
* Kildin Island
* Kildin class destroyer
* Kildin Sami
* Ostrov (air base)
Ostrov (Russian: ''Веретье'' ("Veret"); also Ostrov-5, Gorokhovka) is a Russian Air Force air base and
Ter Sami
Ter or TER may refer to:
Places
* River Ter, in Essex, England
* Ter (river), in Catalonia
* Ter (department), a region in France
* Torre (river), (Slovene: ''Ter''), a river in Italy
* Ter, Ljubno, a settlement in the Municipality of Ljubno ob S ...
, share:
* Loss of after a consonant between unstressed syllables.
Overview
Reflexes in parentheses are retentions found in certain subdialects. In particular, in the coastal dialects of
North Sami
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.
Etymology
The word ''north'' is ...
(known as Sea Sami), several archaisms have been attested, including a lack of pre-stopping of geminate nasals, a lack of -vocalization, and a reflex of in certain positions. These likely indicate an earlier Eastern Sami
substratum
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
.
Umlaut
In the history of Proto-Sami, some sound changes were triggered or prevented by the nature of the vowel in the next syllable. Such changes continued to occur in the modern Sami languages, but differently in each. Due to the similarity with
Germanic umlaut
The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to (raising) when the following syllable conta ...
, these phenomena are termed "umlaut" as well.
The following gives a comparative overview of each possible Proto-Sami vowel in the first syllable, with the outcomes that are found in each language for each second-syllable vowel.
=Long open
=
=Long open-mid
=
* In Ume Sami, ''eä'' appears before a quantity 3 consonant, ''iä'' or ''ie'' before a quantity 1 or 2 consonant.
* In Pite Sami, ''ä'' appears before a quantity 3 consonant, ''ie'' before a quantity 1 or 2 consonant.
* In Lule Sami, ''ä'' and ''oa'' appear before a quantity 3 consonant, ''e'' and ''å̄'' before a quantity 1 or 2 consonant, if a short vowel follows.
* In Skolt Sami, ''iẹʹ'' and ''uẹʹ'' appear before a quantity 2 consonant, ''eäʹ'' and ''uäʹ'' otherwise.
=Long close-mid
=
* In Ume Sami, ''eä'' appears before a quantity 3 consonant, ''iä'' before a quantity 1 or 2 consonant. Some dialects have a pattern more like Pite Sami, with ''ua'' or ''uä'' before a quantity 3 consonant, and ''uo'' or ''uö'' before a quantity 1 or 2 consonant.
* In Pite Sami, ''ä'' and ''ua'' or ''uä'' appear before a quantity 3 consonant, ''ie'' and ''uo'' before a quantity 1 or 2 consonant.
* In Lule Sami, original ''*ie'' does not undergo umlaut by regular sound change, but almost all ''e''-stems have acquired umlaut by analogy with original ''*ea'', as the two vowels fall together before original ''*ē''.
=Short mid
=
=Short close
=
* In Kildin Sami, is written after the letter , in all other cases.
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Álgu: etymological database of the Sami languages{{Uralic languages
Sami
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
Sámi languages