Narrative strategies as an evidence for language contact: Case study of Taz Selkup and Nganasan

The paper investigates narrative strategies of folklore texts of the northernmost, Middle-Taz dialect of the Selkup language, which are compared with the narrative strategies of geographically close idioms. It is shown that Middle-Taz Selkup exibits narrative strategies isomorphic to those of Nganasan. This fact distinguishes it not only from the central and southern dialects of Selkup, but even from the southern part of the northern dialectal cluster represented by the Upper-Taz dialect. Middle-Taz Selkup and Nganasan (and to a some extent also the Vakh dialect of Khanty) represent a rare three-fold distinction of narrative strategies (based on the use of various verbal forms) correlated with the opposition of three genres — a) personal narratives, b) historical and family legends, and c) fairy tales. The rarity of such a model favors its contact, rather than independent emergence in Nganasan and Middle-Taz Selkup (even in the absence of synchronic contacts between them).