Nominal Morphology of the Tver Karelian Translation of “Gospel of Mark”

Abstract

The article presents the results of an analysis of the nominal inflectional system of a two-centuries-old account of the Tver Karelian written language – the Gospel of Mark "Маркешта Святой Іôванӷели" translated into the Kozlovo subdialect of the Karelian language in 1820. This study is of high relevance due to the absence of papers describing the morphological system features of the language of this account, which is a key element in the study of the Karelian language history and dialectology. As part of the work, the materials from the translated text were compared to the data gathered during the linguistic expedition to the Kozlovо area of the Tver Karelian settlement in the summer of 2020, as well as to the data from the handwritten grammar of the Tver Karelian language by A. A. Belyakov (1948) and the grammar of the new scripted variant of the Tver Karelian language, based on dialectal material for the same group of subdialects as the translation of the Gospel. In addition, the revealed features are compared to the materials of other Karelian supradialects and dialects, both contemporary and presented in late 19th century descriptions. The article examines two grammatical categories of nominals: the number and the case. The analysis of the material led to the conclusion that the language of the manuscript is archaic, and also revealed a number of phenomena that were not presented in modern Tver Karelian subdialects and helped to identify the innovative features of relatively recent origin in the subdialects.