MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF “THE LIFE OF ST. THEODOREˮ (1913) WRITTEN IN THE UDMURT LANGUAGE

Abstract

The article examines the morphological features of the translation of “The Life of St. Theodoreˮ (1913) into the Elabuga dialect of the Udmurt language. 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, a number of features in the formalization of plural indicators, adverbial participles, some case and tense forms are revealed, which make the language of the written record different from the modern literary Udmurt language and some of its dialects. At the same time, all of these features are preserved in modern South Udmurt dialects, which does not contradict the hypothesis put forward earlier and based on the analysis of the phonetic system of the source text, according to which the dialect basis of “The Life of St. Theodoreˮ is one of the Central-Southern dialects.