CHANGES IN MARI NUMERAL PHRASES UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF MARI-RUSSIAN LANGUAGE CONTACTS

Abstract

This article presents the results of a study of the Mari numeral phrases in terms of the influence of the Russian language. The aim of this work is to trace the role of Russian borrowings in the formation of Mari numeral phrases, primarily in the expression of their components, and to reveal other changes that have arisen under the influence of similar phrases and structures of the Russian language. The study was conducted on the basis of the lexical card index of the MarNIIYALI (Mari Scientific Research Institute of Language, Literature and History), which is based on written sources of the meadow-eastern literary norm, namely, its electronic part in the amount of about one thousand author's sheets. During the collection and analysis of material, elements and techniques of the following research methods were applied: descriptive and analytical (observation with the identification of the studied facts in sources, their generalization, interpretation and classification, description), comparative (regular comparison of Mari models with Russian ones for identity and non-identity), comparative-historical (in other cases, indications of the origin of the words), quantitative (counting models of various groups containing Russianisms). According to the results of the research, Russian borrowings may play a role of a head word (3 units in 4 models) and a dependent component (mainly substantive case forms and postpositional constructions, numerals, as well as some pronouns and adverbs of degree in 14 models). 3 models with cardinal numbers as a head very rarely can be represented by phrases with Russianisms in both components. As a result the syntactic units in some models and the models of numeral phrases themselves were replenished, the last ones by 3 units. Also the shifts in the forms of grammatical number of dependent nouns in some models appeared.