IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CATEGORY OF THE TENSE OF THE VERB IN THE NORTHERN DIALECTS OF THE UDMURT LANGUAGE

Abstract

This paper explores the functioning of tense forms of verb in the Northern dialects of the Udmurt language, which have insufficient coverage in scientific literature. The relevance of the study is due to the need for a comprehensive research of the category of the tense in the context of territorial varieties of Udmurt language. The empirical base of the research is the language materials of the author’s dialectological expeditions to the areas of Northern Udmurt. The paper highlights specific features of the Northern Udmurt dialects on the one hand and features with limited diffusion in certain microsystems of studied dialects on the other. Consistent comparison of the language facts of Northern Udmurt dialects with similar phenomena in other dialects of Udmurt is made. The study demonstrates that in the studied dialects the verb tenses in their substantial and structural characteristics largely coincide with the system of the Udmurt literary language. Dialectal peculiarities are revealed in derivation, paradigms of conjugation, distribution and semantics of the use of separate tense forms. Distinctive features of the morphological character are observed in terms of the expression of individual forms of the present tense, which is due to the phonetic laws existing in the Northern dialects. Certain intra-dialect peculiarities are revealed in the forms of inflection (for example, the paradigm of modal perfection in a positive aspect varying in the Northern dialects). The paper deals with quantitative composition and peculiarities of derivation of analytical past tense forms in the Northern dialects of the Udmurt language. The main attention is paid to the most widely spread analytical forms of past tenses. Structural and semantic features of functioning of considered forms in Northern dialects are noted. The study has identified dialectal differences in the accentuation in verb forms with the suffixes -my,-dy,-zy.