In the past, multilingualism was common in the region, and Kolyma Yukaghir, Yakut, Even, and Chukchi all served as languages of intercultural communication, depending on the ethnicity of the addressee.
Both Yukaghir languages have residual vowel harmony and a complex phonotactics of consonants, rich agglutinative morphology and are strictly head-final.
Yukaghir has a split intransitive alignment system based on discourse-pragmatic features.
[9] Most forms of declension in the language come about by means of suffixing, with only a handful of prefixes expressing certain types of grammatical aspect.
[12] The language exhibits strong dialectal and even idiolectal variation as well as a heavy influence from Russian and Yakut; generational differences in use are also quite distinct.
[14] Kolyma Yukaghir nouns inflect for number, case and possession according to the following paradigm:[15] The corresponding markers are suffixed to the stem.
[20] With the singular exception of the word uø (“child”), which becomes uø-r-pe, these plural forms are highly regular.
[27][28] For example, in clauses in which the subject is in first or second person and the direct object is in third person, both occur in unmarked Nominative case, as in:[29] Nominative case represents the subject of an intransitive verb or otherwise the agent of a clause, depending upon the context of focus.
[32] Instrumental case, using the -le suffix implies that the referent is facilitated or acted upon, roughly equivalent to “by means of X” in English.
[38] Comitative case, marked by the suffix -n’e, is used to link constituents or to indicate a secondary actor in a joint or reciprocal event; in this way it is somewhat similar to “X and X” phrases in English.
[43] Unlike in English and most other European languages, the difference between these two parts of speech is somewhat indistinct and various markers can nominalize a verb stem.
Of note, Kolyma Yukaghir does not feature adjectives as a distinct part of speech; attributive markers are added to verb stems which in turn modify nouns.
[44] Verbs inflect to express focus, negation/affirmation, person, aspect and tense[45] according to the following paradigm:[46] Transitive and intransitive verb stems take separate sets of affixes corresponding to the categories in the paradigm above.
Chief among these is clause chaining, which is describing sequences of related events or forming conditional verb constructions, as in:[67] There are three grammatical persons in Kolyma Yukaghir.
[72] In the modern form of the language, the free possessive is commonly replicated using the Russian loanword sam (“self”) as a suffix.
[74] Attributive and qualitative forms The lines distinguishing individual parts of speech other than verbs and nouns in Kolyma Yukaghir are not as clearly defined as in European languages.
[79] In the following examples, the postposition jolā is translated as either “behind” or “after” depending on the presence of a locative (in this case, prolative) marker:[80] In the 1980s, Uluro Ado [ru] (Gavril Kurilov) developed a writing system for the language, based on the Russian alphabet and the Yakut alphabet.
[81] пэmountainаан-дә-пә-гәтunder-3-PL-ABLйарқәiceпоҗольә-гәтshining-ABLпойньаа-сьии-лwhite-DEL-ANтудеhe.GENоозии-гәләwater-ACCЙарқәдәнYarqadan[a]емейmotherойstreamмиидәalongчурууҗәquietlyқон-таа-сьии-ну-м.go-TR-DEL-IMPF-TR.3SGпэ аан-дә-пә-гәт йарқә поҗольә-гәт пойньаа-сьии-л туде оозии-гәлә Йарқәдән емей ой миидә чурууҗә қон-таа-сьии-ну-м.mountain under-3-PL-ABL ice shining-ABL white-DEL-AN he.GEN water-ACC Yarqadan[a] mother stream along quietly go-TR-DEL-IMPF-TR.3SG"From the bottom of the mountains, from the whiteness of the ice our mother Yarqadan quietly carries its shining water downstream."