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Pumpokol
Gebèng-ai
Native to	Russia
Region	Yenisey
Ethnicity	Pumpokols
Extinct	1740
Language family	Dené–Yeniseian? Yeniseian Pumpokolic Pumpokol
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xpm
Linguist List	xpm
Glottolog	pump1237
The historical, pre-contact range of Pumpokol.

Pumpokol (Pumpokol: gebeŋ-aj) is one of the Yeniseian languages, formerly spoken by the Pumpokol people (Gebéŋ). It has been extinct since the 18th century. It shares many features with the ancient Xiongnu and Jie languages, and according to Alexander Vovin, Edward Vajda, and Étienne de la Vaissière, is closely related to them. It is poorly attested, the only available lexicon amounting to about 65 words, and some of them have been identified as being Yugh, not Pumpokol.

Classification

It has traditionally been viewed as being grouped with Arin in an Arin-Pumpokol subfamily of Southern Yeniseian, but Vajda 2024 challenges this, stating that "Arin, Pumpokol and Kott-Assan display no shared innovations to suport them as an opposite "'Southern Yeniseian' branch" of Yeniseian, reflecting only their geographical position rather than a genealogical grouping. According to O. Tailleur, it should be considered a dialect of the Ket language, as most materials labeled 'Pumpokol' are in reality of Ketic affiliation, not Pumpokol. Furthermore, the term 'Pumpokol' was originally geographic, referring to the name of a town and a former district (volost), originating from Khanty: pum-poxəl "grassy village". Pumpokols and Yughs frequently mixed with each other in the Pumpokol volost. This may be the reason for the mislabeling of these words.

Phonology

Pumpokol is notable among the Yeniseian languages in that the phoneme /s/ is often replaced by /t/. This idiosyncrasy of Pumpokol seems to be shared with the language of the Jie, suggesting that Jie is more closely related to Pumpokol than other Yeniseian languages. For example the Jie word kot 'catch' seems to be a cognate with the Ket word qos, having the same sound change.

Moreover, this aforementioned characteristic of Pumpokol has been used by Vajda to demonstrate that Yeniseian-derived hydronyms in northern Mongolia (the southernmost known extent of Yeniseian influence), -tat, -dat, -tet, -det, -tom, -dɨt are exclusively Pumpokolic. Since the Jie, as a tribe of the Xiongnu, are likely to have come from the same area, rather than further north, this finding lends credence to the possibility that Jie is a Pumpokolic language.

Vowels

The reconstructed vowels of Pumpokol are as follows, based off of G. F. Müller's materials:

Consonants

According to G. F. Müller's notes, the consonants of Pumpokol are as follows:

1. [ʔ] only occurs as a prosodic device of tone, as in other Yeniseian languages.
2. Pumpokol word-initial [h] only sometimes corresponds to Arin [k], and is not present in other Yeniseian languages.

The phonemes ⟨č⟩, ⟨dʼ⟩, and ⟨dž⟩ are allophones of ⟨č⟩, ⟨k⟩ and ⟨g⟩ are allophones of ⟨k⟩, and ⟨x⟩, ⟨q⟩ and ⟨xʼ⟩ are allophones of ⟨χ⟩. Thus, the phonemes in brackets are not really phonologically relevant.

Sibilant phonemes are absent in words of native Yeniseian origin.

Vocabulary

Selected Pumpokol words are presented here, sourced from Werner 2005.

Numerals

References

1. ^ Werner, Heinrich (2005). Die Jenissej-Sprachen des 18. Jahrhunderts. Veröffentlichungen der Societas Uralo-Altaica. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 978-3-447-05239-9.
2. "The ASJP Database - Wordlist Pumpokol". asjp.clld.org. Retrieved 2024-08-04.
3. ^ Vajda, Edward (2024-02-19), Vajda, Edward (ed.), "8 The Yeniseian language family", The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia, De Gruyter, pp. 365–480, doi:10.1515/9783110556216-008, ISBN 978-3-11-055621-6, retrieved 2024-06-26
4. Fortescue, Michael D.; Vajda, Edward J. (2022). Mid-holocene language connections between Asia and North America. Brill's studies in the indigenous languages of the Americas. Leiden ; Boston: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-43681-7.
5. Vovin, Alexander (2000). "Did the Xiong-nu speak a Yeniseian language?". Central Asiatic Journal. 44 (1): 87–104. JSTOR 41928223.
6. ^ Vovin, Alexander; Vajda, Edward; de la Vaissière, Etienne (2016). "Who Were the *Kjet (羯) and What Language Did They Speak?". Journal Asiatique. 304 (1): 125–144. doi:10.2143/JA.304.1.3146838.
7. ^ Georg, Stefan; Georg, Stefan (2007). Introduction, phonology, morphology. A descriptive grammar of Ket (Yenisei-Ostyak) / Stefan Georg. Folkestone: Global Oriental. ISBN 978-1-901903-58-4.
8. Batashev, Mikhail S. (June 2013). "Ethnic History of Indigenous Peoples of the Yeniseysky Uyezd in the 17 Century and Their Fortunes". Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences.
9. "Пумпокольский язык | Библиотека сибирского краеведения". bsk.nios.ru. Retrieved 2024-10-27.
10. Pallas, Peter Simon (1786). Linguarum totius orbis vocabularia comparativa (in Russian). Schnoor.
11. Pallas, Peter Simon (1789). Linguarum Totius Orbis Vocabularia Comparativa, Pars 2.

External links

• Pumpokol basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

v t e Paleo-Siberian languages
Chukotko-Kamchatkan	Chukotkan Alyutor Chukchi Kerek Koryak Kamchatkan (Western) Itelmen Eastern Kamchadal Southern Kamchadal
Yeniseian	Northern Ket Yugh Southern Arin Assan Kott Pumpokol
Yukaghir	Chuvan Tundra Yukaghir Omok Southern Yukaghir
Nivkh	Nivkh
Others	Ainu Hokkaido Kuril Sakhalin Eskaleut Yuit Naukan Sirenik
Italics indicate extinct languages

• Yeniseian languages
• Extinct languages of Asia
• Languages extinct in the 18th century