Definite Declension Paradigms in the Erzya Dialects of the Novaja Malykla District in the Ul'janovsk Oblast Cover Image

Парадигма определенного склонения в эрзянских говорах сел Новомалыклинского района Ульяновской области
Definite Declension Paradigms in the Erzya Dialects of the Novaja Malykla District in the Ul'janovsk Oblast

Author(s): Nina Agafonova, Ivan Ryabov
Subject(s): Finno-Ugrian studies
Published by: Teaduste Akadeemia Kirjastus
Keywords: Erzya language; dialects; definite morpheme; case inflection;

Summary/Abstract: The fact that the Erzyans in the Novaja Malykla district of Ul'janovsk Oblast have lived in isolation from the majority of the Erzya people has helped them to retain many archaic parent-language phenomena as well as develop some innovations in the lexical, phonetic and grammatical systems of the dialects. The article provides a detailed description of the paradigms of the definite declension singular in the dialects under study. The dialect materials for the study have been collected by the authors during linguistic expeditions. They show differences from the respective paradigms of the literary language as well as from many other Erzya dialects. It was found that the definite morpheme in the singular paradigm is the morpheme -ś/-ź. The formal structure of the definite declension singular is identical to the structure of the respective plural forms: base + definite morpheme -ś/-ź + case suffix. The order of morphemes in the dialects under study is the most consistent as compared to the respective word forms of the Erzya literary language and other Erzya dialects. The archaic phenomena testify to the survival of some proto-Mordvin suffixes in spoken Erzya.

  • Issue Year: LIII/2017
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 161-178
  • Page Count: 18
  • Language: Russian