Khanty dialects

This chapter deals with the Khanty dialects and their differences in phonology, morphology, syntax, and information structure. The main concern is morphosyntactic functions and alternative sentence structures. All the Khanty dialects share the syntactic functions of dative shift and passive. However, in the structures of the different dialects, different morphological elements, especially case suffixes, are used. This is mainly because the case inventories are so different, starting with a system of three inflectional cases in the northern dialects and ending with a system of eleven inflectional cases in the eastern ones. In addition to promoting the Recipient/Beneficiary in the sentence, the dative shift demotes the primary object, which is marked with different adverbial cases in different dialects. The passive is used both personally and impersonally. The eastern dialects also show sentences, both transitive and intransitive, with a subject in the Locative case. However, here the question is not about ergativity, as has been suggested in some earlier descriptions of the easternmost dialects.