«Букварь для вотяцких детей Сарапульского уезда»: морфологические особенности
“Primer Book for Votyak children of the Sarapul districtˮ: Morphological Features

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the morphological features of the “Primer book for Votyak children of the Sarapul districtˮ (1882). The significance of the study lies in the fact that although written records are one of the main sources for studying language history, most of Udmurt written records have not been examined yet. The paper describes the main grammatical categories of the noun (number, possession, case) and the verb (voice, mood, tense), as well as those of the non-conjugated verb forms (infinitive, participle, adverbial participle). The analysis of morphological characteristics is based on the previously identified graphic and phonetic features of the written source and employs a comparative method: the linguistic data were compared with the data from the literary language and modern Udmurt dialects. Furthermore, whenever possible, the issues of the origin of morphological markers are raised in order to identify the innovative or archaic nature of the characteristics which are reflected in the written record at the morphological level. As a result, the analysis has revealed a number of features in the formation of the plural forms of nouns, the elative case, the reflexive voice from the verbs of the first conjugation and adverbial participles. At the same time, as the analysis shows, all these features are still present in the modern dialects of the Southern Udmurt dialect zone. This confirms the assumption put forward earlier and based on the analysis of the phonetic system of the written record that the primer may have been based on a dialect located in the modern territory of the northern part of Malopurginsky district of the Udmurt Republic.

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