The article presents research outcomes of the strategies and ways used to encode predicative possession in the Northern dialects of Khanty: in Priural (Obdorsk), Kazym, Tegi and Shuryshkar dialects of Khanty. This description also enables us to highlight major functional peculiarities of the habeo-verb in Khanty. Data for analysis – 96 texts totalling in 7290 sentences – have been elicited mainly from the text corpus of Western Khanty dialects. According to the tendency of the division of the Khanty dialects into three groups [Honti 1984] – the analysed dialects belong to the northern group. Tegi spoken only in the Tegi settlement is sometimes considered as a variant of the Beryozovsk dialect or as a transitional one between Kazym and Shuryshkar. The present study of possessive constructions in the analysed dialects is conducted within the methodology of the functional theory of grammar [Heine 1997, Stassen 2009].
The most common strategy of encoding predicative possession in the analyse dialects is a transitive one based on the verb priur. sob. tăj-, pol. täj-, kaz. tăj- ‘have’, that is used to express the main conceptual features of possession (abstract, physical/temporal alienable, inalienable, inanimate). Schematically, this construction can be represented as (PR) – PE – tăj-/täj-S.PM. As an element of the possessive predicative construction, the verb tăjtƗ/täjtƗ ‘have’ may be marked only by the suffixes of the subjective conjugation. Besides, this verb forms combinations with other parts of speech (e.g. nouns, converbs) to help convey other semantics. As a part of such word combinations, the verb can be used in the forms of both the subjective and objective conjugation and passive voice conveying a more concrete meaning of holding, keeping, thinking, wearing, etc.
An intransitive strategy of encoding predicative possession is based on the locative/existential sentence with the verb sob. u(l)-, pol. o(l)-, kaz. wǫ(ł)- ‘be’. Following L. Stassen (2009), it is defined as an adnominal possessive construction wherein the possession is indexed on the possessed. This intransitive construction is evidenced to be able to encode both existential or/and spatial relations. Negative possession is encoded differently in the transitive and intransitive strategies. While the “standard” syntactical negation, expressed by the negative particle sob. ăn, pol. ǟn, kaz. ăn, xǫn ‘no, not’, is used in the transitive strategy, a special negative existential verb – sob. ăntam, pol. äntam, kaz. ăntǫm ‘not be’ – is common in negative intransitive constructions.