Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation, [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Introduction: researchers of the Mari languages have repeatedly addressed the issue of the origin of declension types in the Mari language. G. Bereczki proposed a hypothesis that the second declension type with a base that contains an unstressed vowel -e, -o, or -ö, is archaic, while the least numerous third declension type with a base that contains a stressed -a or -e, is innovative. The data from the first dictionaries and books, created in the XVIII–XIX centuries, show that this hypothesis is erroneous.
Objective: to establish the process of changes in the types of declension and the place of stress over 300 years.
Research materials: dictionary and books created in different dialects of the Mari languages in the XVIII–XIX centuries.
Results and novelty of the research: the novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time 296 lexemes of names of the II and III declension and the place of stress in them in 5 monuments were considered. It was revealed that in the first dictionaries of nouns that today belong to the II declension, 300 years ago the type of declension was quite often different from the modern one: at the beginning of the XVIII century, only 28% of modern nouns of the II declension type belonged to it, and 72% had the III (a-) type of declension. Towards the end of the XVIII century in the dictionary of P. S.
Pallas, only 39% of modern words of the II declension had the III (a-) type of declension. In the XIX century this percentage is gradually getting even smaller. The analysis shows the inaccuracy of G. Bereczki’s hypothesis that the III type declension is an innovation. The place of stress in the names of the II and III declension, on the contrary, has practically not changed over the past 300 years and in all dialects it was the same in 89% as in the modern Meadow Mari language.
Key words: Mari dialects, archival materials, graphic and phonetic features, stress, declension type
Acknowledgments: the work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 20-18-00403.
For citation: Normanskaya Yu. V. Interrelation between stress and types of declension in the history of the Mari languages // Vestnik ugrovedenia = Bulletin of Ugric Studies. 2024; 14 (4/59): 678–686.