ABSTRACT
Geographically occupying the eastern periphery of the language family, Samoyedic is conventionally classified as one of the two principle branches of Uralic. Mter the breakup of proto-Uralic linguistic unity, the speakers of pre-proto-Samoyedic gradually came to be concentrated in the region located between the middle courses of the Ob' and Yenisei Rivers in southwest Siberia. Unlike the Finno-Ugric branch, which shows a high degree of internal diversity, Samoyedic has no surviving early sub-branches, the historically known Samoyedic languages forming a coherent group of relatively closely related idioms. In terms of absolute dating, protoSamoyedic seems to have dissolved as recently as the last centuries BeE. Consecutive waves of ethnic and linguistic expansion then spread the various forms of Samoyedic both northwards, along the Ob' and Yenisei basins, and southwards, in the direction of the Altai and Sayan Mountains. It is reasonable to assume that in the course of this expansion several unidentified nonSamoyedic languages spoken earlier in the same regions became xtinct due to linguistic assimilation. Most of the modem Samoyedic-speaking ethnic groups are therefore composed of two major ethnohistorical components: a local component corresponding to the earlier indigenous population, and an immigrant component responsible for the Samoyedic language.
