Vowels

The number of vowel phonemes in Tundra Nenets is 10, which have 17 distinct allophones governed by palatality, which dominates whole sequences of vowels and consonants.^[6] Vowel frontness is not segmentally contrastive.

Monophthong vowels are present in the chart below. Phonemes are marked in bold, with their palatal (on the left) and non-palatal (on the right) allophones marked underneath using the International Phonetic Alphabet.

There is also a vowel ⟨æ⟩, which is interchangeably realized as [æ͡e̘] or [æː]. This and the long close vowels only occur in word-initial syllables.

Consonants

The number of consonant phonemes in Tundra Nenets is 27.^[8] All labial and coronal consonants other than the semivowels /w/ and /j/ have plain and palatalized counterparts.

All consonants can be found word-internally between vowels, but their occurrence in other positions is strongly limited.^[10]

• Only the 16 consonants shown on darker gray background may occur word-initially.
• Syllable-finally, most consonant contrasts are not found, and only six consonants occur: /b/, /ʔ/, /m/, /n ~ ŋ/, /l/, /r/.

Syllable structure

Tundra Nenets has a (C)V(C) syllable structure, and the minimal word is CV. Thus, there are no word initial or word final consonant clusters, nor are there any three-consonant clusters. Moreover, syllables with zero onset typically cannot occur word-initially, but in Western dialects, the word-initial ŋ is lost, giving some vowel-initial words. For example, the Eastern dialect ŋəno 'boat' becomes əno in the Western dialect.^[2]: 27 Word-internally, zero onset syllables only occur when ə or ° follow another vowel. For example, such vowel clusters can occur when forming the finite stem: me° 'he takes (3SG)' gives meə-s'° 'he took (3SG.PST).'^{[2]: 27–28}

Stress

Tundra Nenets displays bisyllabic trochaic feet that are aligned to the left. Primary stress falls on the initial syllable. Secondary stress falls on subsequent odd syllables and on even-position syllables preceding a syllable with °, excluding the final syllable,^[2]: 28 as illustrated in the following examples where ´ indicates primary stress on a vowel and ` indicates secondary stress on the preceding vowel:

Derivational affixes

Tundra Nenets contains a few nominal derivational affixes that can be used to denote a cause, express an instrument, or refer to a location of action. For example, the noun xərwa-bco 'wish' can be derived from the verb xərwa- 'to want'.^[2]: 31 There are also several mixed categories of nouns that have a syntactic distribution of a different word-class, yet share other properties with nouns. For example, the proprietive suffix -sawey° can be used to derive nouns with the meaning 'with X, having X', as in yī-sawey° 'intelligent' (from yī 'mind').^[2]: 32

Tundra Nenets has two verbal aspectual classes, perfective and imperfective. There are several derivational aspectual suffixes which can change the aspectual class of a verb. For example, imperfectivizing suffixes can be used to express durative, frequentative, multiplicative, and iterative meanings, such as in tola-bə 'to keep counting' (from tola- 'to count').^[2]: 45 There are also denominal verbs with the meaning 'to use as X, to have as X', which are formed from the accusative plural stem, such as in səb'i-q' 'to use as a hat' (from səwa 'hat').^[2]: 46

Inflectional affixes

Nouns are inflected for number (singular, dual, plural), case (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, ablative, prolative), and possessive, which can indicate the person and number of the possessor.^[2]: 9 For example, the following noun is inflected for similative case and third person plural number.

Verbs are inflected for agreement, tense, and mood. Present tense is unmarked, but Tundra Nenets distinguishes inflectionally the past, future, habitual, and future-in-the-past tenses. There are sixteen moods, which include the imperative, hortative, optative, conjunctive, necessitative, interrogative, probabilitative, obligative, potential, and inferential.^[2]: 9 For example, the verb below is inflected for subjunctive mood, first person singular agreement, and past tense.

Clitics

Clitics undergo the same phonological processes and stress assignment as affixes. They can attach to an affirmative finite verb, a negative auxiliary, or a non-verbal final predicate, and follow any other inflection,^[2]: 116 as shown with the following exclamative clitic:^[2]: 117

Particles

Particles are primarily used for discourse. Common particles include yekar°q 'it is unknown', ŋod'°q 'hardly', tǣr'i 'just, very', and məs'iq 'maybe, perhaps.'^[2]: 53 An example is given below:

Compounding

There are some lexical noun-noun compounds in Tundra Nenets. As shown in the following example, the first element in the compound can always be modified and take a number.^[2]: 167

Suppletion

A few irregular verbs show suppletion. The most frequent suppletive verbs are xǣ- ‘to go, to depart’, ŋǣ- ‘to be’, to- ‘to come’, ta- ‘to bring, to give’ and the negative auxiliary nʹi-. Some common suppletive forms for these verbs are given in the table below.^[2]: 25

Basic word order

Tundra Nenets is predominantly a head-final SOV language.^[2]: 9 Verb finality is the primary constraint on word order.^[2]: 213 Below are examples of the basic word order for a transitive and intransitive sentence.

However, although most simple sentences have SOV order, a more general trend is for the informationally new element to be immediately preverbal and to be preceded by the informationally old element. So, it is possible to have sentences where the direct object precedes the subject,^[2]: 214 as illustrated below:

Possessee + possessor

The possessor precedes the thing being possessed.^[2]: 142

Adjective (comparative) + standard

Comparative adjectives follow their standards, which take the ablative case.^[2]: 174

Determiner + noun phrase

The determiner precedes the noun phrase.^{[2]: 141–142}

Vowels

The palatalized and plain vowel allophones are distinguished in the original orthography^{[3]: 36–37}

The Cyrillic orthography does not distinguish the reduced vowel from a, nor the long ī and ū from their short counterparts i and u. ǣ is not found in a palatalized environment, and thus does not show up in the chart. The schwa, [ə], has no direct counterpart in the Cyrillic orthography and is in most cases not written. However, it may sometimes appear as ⟨а⟩, ⟨я⟩, ⟨ы⟩, ⟨ӗ⟩ or ⟨ŏ⟩. For example, xad°, ('snowstorm') is written as хад, and nix° ('power') is written as ныхы.^{[3]: 34–35}

Consonants

The consonants in the Cyrillic orthography can be seen in the chart below. Note that palatalized consonants are not included.^[3]: 38

The letter ⟨ˮ⟩ marks a "plain" glottal stop, while ⟨ʼ⟩ marks a glottal stop derived from a word-final n. As in Russian, the consonants are palatalized using the soft sign, ⟨ь⟩. For example, the palatalized consonant m' is represented with ⟨мь⟩ in Cyrillic unless it is followed by a palatalizing vowel, such as ⟨ё⟩, so that m'o is written as ⟨мё⟩.^[3]: 38

Sample text

(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)