Pumpokol language

Pumpokol is one of the Yeniseian languages, formerly spoken by the Pumpokol people. 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, and some of the vocabulary has 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 challenges this, stating that "Arin, Pumpokol and Kott-Assan display no shared innovations to support 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, originating from "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 is often replaced by. 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, -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 on G. F. Müller's materials:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

Consonants

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

only occurs as a prosodic device of tone, as in other Yeniseian languages.
Pumpokol word-initial only sometimes corresponds to Arin, and is not present in other Yeniseian languages.

The phonemes,, and are allophones of, and are allophones of, and, and are allophones of. 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.

Word	Meaning	Comment
ab	father
am	mother
ak	to lie down
hóxon	forest, tree
eg	egg	cf. Ket ɛˀj
fala	son
falla	boy, son
hixem	Sun
xaj	mountain
kut	horse
meža	measure	Russian loan
píkola	daughter, girl
hukút	house, village	Literally "together-tent"