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Kott language

Extinct Yeniseian language of Siberia

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Kott
Kot, Kottish[1]
kottuen
Native to	Russia
Ethnicity	Kott, Asan
Extinct	1850s
Language family	Dené–Yeniseian? Yeniseian Kottic Kott
Early form	Old Kott
Dialects	Kott A Kott B Kyshtym[2] Assan (status unclear)[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-3	zko
Linguist List	zko.html
Glottolog	kott1239
Map of pre-contact Yeniseian languages.

The Kott (Kot) language (Russian: Коттский язык) is an extinct Yeniseian language that was formerly spoken in central Siberia by the banks of the Mana River, a tributary of the Yenisei river. It became extinct in the 1850s. Kott was closely related to Ket, still spoken farther north along the Yenisei river. Assan, a close relative, is sometimes considered a dialect of Kott.^[3]

Kott was spoken to the southeast of Krasnoyarsk, in the Biryusa and Kan river basins. However, hydronyms indicate a much wider area in the past, ranging from the Uda and Chuna rivers in the east to the Tom in the west.^[4]

The term kott may be derived from Buryat qota 'town', applied to neighbouring non-pastoral peoples, including the last few Kotts.^[5]

One of the earliest written records of Kott is in 1791, with the publication of Peter Simon Pallas's Сравнительный словарь всѣхъ языковъ и нарѣчій, по азбучному порядку расположенный, a comparative dictionary of variuos world languages and dialects. In 1858, Matthias Castrén published the grammar and dictionary (Versuch einer jenissei-ostjakischen und kottischen Sprachlehre), which included material on the Kott and Ket (Yenisei-Ostyak) languages, recording two different dialects of Kott.^[2] There also exists two books written by Heinrich Werner [ru; de] about the Kott language, namely Коттский язык (Kottskij jazyk), which includes a 110-page Russian-Kott glossary,^[6] and Abriß der kottischen Grammatik.^[3]

In multisyllabic words, vowel length is phonemic.

1. [ɨ] is only attested in a few words dated to the 18th century, and can be considered an allophone of [i].^[3]

Vajda 2024 gives a different vowel system for Kott, based off of Castrén 1858.^[5]

Kott had been influenced by Turkic languages, and had borrowed some words from Turkic languages. For example Kott baktîr- ‘to praise’ comes from Proto-Turkic *paktïr (based on phonetics, likely loaned from KumandinorShor), or Kott kolá ‘copper, brass’ comes from Proto-Turkic *kola (of which the source is not phonetically identifiable).^[7] At the time of its extinction, it was also loaning words from Russian.

Kott has special end markings to indicate that the noun being described is a hydronym which are -šet/čet.^[3][2]

Kott typically uses SVO word order, and is agglutinative.

Kott has 7 cases. The dative, ablative and locative cases developed from possesed nouns, similarly to Ket and Yugh.

• Kott basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

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