Grammars and Sketches of the World's Languages – serie

The Soviet authorities denied the Besermans the right to self-identify. For decades, their language was dismissed as merely a dialect of Udmurt, a closely related language spoken by a different ethnic group. Only in 2021 was Beserman officially recognized as a separate language—by then, some fifteen years had already passed since intergenerational transmission had come to an end.This grammar demonstrates why such recognition matters. Drawing on many years of fieldwork within the Beserman community, it offers a comprehensive portrait of the language: its phonology, morphology, syntax, vocabulary, information structure, and pragmatics. More than 3,700 carefully selected examples bring these features to life and show that Beserman is, beyond doubt, a language worthy of study in its own right.