MORPHOLOGY OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS IN THE LOWER CHEPTSA DIALECT OF THE UDMURT LANGUAGE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the description of the peculiarities of the pronominal deixis in the Lower Cheptsa dialect which is a part of the Northern Udmurt dialect. The relevance of the study is due to the need for a comprehensive research of system of pronouns in the context of territorial varieties of Udmurt language. The Lower Cheptsa dialect developed isolatedly from the basic area of distribution of the Udmurt dialects, as a result of which a number of features were formed in its language system. The paper considers the morphological structure and usage of personal pronouns. The author focuses on specific characteristics distinguishing the studied dialect from other Northern Udmurt subdialects. The study demonstrates that in the Lower Cheptsa dialect the nominative forms of personal pronouns largely coincide with the corresponding such pronouns of other Udmurt dialects. The researcher also highlights characteristic phenomena in the inflectional system of personal pronouns, reveals some features in the number of cases, analyzes the functioning of a series of secondary spatial cases with marker -n′- , and focuses on specific phenomena in the form of some cases. In particular, distinctive features of a morphonological nature are observed in the design of accusative forms of the 1 and 2 person plural pronouns, in special ways of forming instrumental forms of the 1 and 2 person pronouns in the singular and plural. Linguistic data are analyzed and interpreted in the context of the Udmurt language dialectic landscape. The data presented show that according to the main features of inflection of personal pronouns the Lower Cheptsa dialect bears closest similarities to the Middle Cheptsa subdialects of the Northern Udmurt dialect. The research is based on the materials collected by the author during several expeditions to the Lower Cheptsa Udmurts from 2014 to 2017.