Nedjalkov V.P., Otaina G.A. A Syntax of the Nivkh Language. The Amur dialect

Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013. — 396 p.This publication is a translation from Russian of the Syntaksis nivxskogo jazyka (The
Amur dialect) (Syntax of the Nivkh Language (Amurskij dialekt). (In Nedjalkov, V.P. &
Otaina, G.A. 2012. Ocherki po sintaksisu nivkhskogo jazyka. Edited by E. Geniušienė.
18–
237. Moscow: Znak). The latter is in its turn a posthumous edition of a pre-final
unpublished draft under the same title found in the linguistic archives of Vladimir
P. Nedjalkov. The typescript dated 1988–1990 needed the authors’ editing and they
certainly planned it, but the events in Russia in the early 1990s and the untimely death
of Galina A. Otaina in 1995 prevented this as well as the publication.
Shortage of works on Nivkh grammar available in English gave us an idea of translating
this book into English. This publication on the syntax of the Nivkh language
may fill in an existing gap to a certain degree. Werner Abraham (University of Vienna)
supported this idea and thus encouraged us to undertake this project.
It should be stressed that the original manuscript is an unedited draft, with
occasional inconsistencies, vague statements and faulty typing. The Russian publication
required thorough checking of the Nivkh material (often misspelt), renumbering
the examples and sections, adding the Table of Contents and References, and a number
of other editorial corrections.
This foreword is followed by the Foreword from the Russian edition of the book
which the reader is advised to read first as it contains the basic information about the
work. This foreword is meant to supplement the latter one and inform the prospective
reader of the additional editorial changes made in the English version.
In this version, the authors’ text is preserved intact, the translation being as close
to the Russian original as possible. In the course of translating from Russian, the translator
had to curb her impulses to sometimes edit the style, when the text begged for
improvement, and, occasionally, complete some statements for clarity (in her belief
that the authors would have done so if they had had a chance to write and edit the final
draft). Finally the editors checked the entire translation carefully with the purpose
of weeding out the changes that might have slipped in when the translator had lost
vigilance.
The authors’ terminology is preserved without updating.
The English translations of the Nivkh sentential examples are in fact translations
of the authors’ Russian translations, (only sometimes slightly changed with regard
to the glossing. Hence the occasional differences between the translations and
morpheme-by-morpheme glossing.