Modern Dialects Research Articles

Лексическая система пинежских говоров

This article presents the findings of the Lexical System of Pinega Dialects project implemented by a team of authors at the Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
 The study of Russian dialects remains a topical issue. New dialect dictionaries continue to appear, presenting the vocabularies of Russian dialects recorded in the past and present but not yet lexicographically described.
 Modern dialects are an important source of language history information. Furthermore, different dialects may reflect language evolution in different ways. This description of dialects of the Pinega area adds to our understanding of Linguistics and dialect studies in particular. These dialects are an intriguing research target due to their peripheral geographical location and language contacts with Finno-Ugric languages.
 The release of Pinega Dialect Dictionary will help clarify certain issues and aid compiling other similar dictionaries.

“I PITY MY BUTTERFLY-SOUL” (TO THE ORIGIN AND WRITTEN HISTORY OF AN UDMURT EXPRESSION AND WORDS THAT MAKE IT UP)

The article makes an attempt to trace the written sources and personal records of folklore texts and decipher the expression “I pity my butterfly-soul”, found in a dozen four-line songs, which in very close versions were recorded at the end of the 19th — beginning of the 21st centuries in the area of residence of the Kazan Udmurts (i. e. the modern-day Kukmor and Shoshmin dialectal areas of the Udmurt language). Ethnographers noted two names for ‘soul’ among the Udmurts: lul ‘souls of a living person’ and urt ‘souls of the deceased’ — in most modern dialects and modern printed sources, predominantly only the word lul (< Fug.) has survived to the present time, having a very wide range of meanings, overgrown with many derivatives and acting as part of a large circle of phraseological phrases. The soul urt (< Op.), often left a person’s body during sleep, even during their lifetime, in the form of various living creatures (mice, weasels, flies and most often butterflies), and the act of its returning after its wanderings, perhaps, gave rise to the expression “butterflysouls” (*bubyli-urt), which, due to the gradual withdrawal of the word urt from living speech, was transformed into the construction bubyli-lul using the widespread word lul, meaning ‘soul’ in all cases of its manifestation. The very expression of Bugyli lulme zhal’aśko (in variations) ‘I pity my butterfly-soul’ in the quatrain of the Kazan Udmurts, which, according to my information, was rarely or never performed as a song, presumably arose and remained in popular memory to designate the material hypostasis of the soul, sometimes appearing in this world, and, possibly, as a reminder of the frailty of man's earthly existence.

DIALECT PHRASEOGRAPHY IN THE CONTEXT OF LINGUISTIC STUDIES: HISTORY AND MODERNITY

The article is devoted to one of the rather young, but already formed and currently the most popular areas of modern linguistics – dialect phraseography. Against the backdrop of undying interest in sustainable turns of folk speech and their fixation, a review of publications devoted to general and particular problems of dialect phraseography, their analysis and systematization in close connection with the origins of the development and formation of dialect phraseography as an important scientific direction in linguistics seems to be extremely relevant. The purpose of the article is to review publications on dialect phraseography, review the most significant phraseological dialect dictionaries of the Russian language, highlight dialect phraseography in synchrony and diachrony. The object of the study are the most significant publications devoted to the phraseography of folk speech, dialect phraseological dictionaries of the Russian language and dictionaries of Russian folk speech, which have become the basis of modern dialect phraseography; the subject is the dynamics of the formation and development of dialect and regional phraseography in the context of linguistic research. The work uses both general scientific methods – induction, deduction, analysis, synthesis, and proper linguistic ones – mainly a descriptive method.Conclusions and prospects of the study. Based on the given data, the author traces the inextricable connection of dialect phraseography with the theoretical and applied foundations of general literary normative phraseology and phraseography, lexicographic description of folk speech, paremiography, identifies and characterizes a number of stages in the formation and development of Russian dialect phraseography, focuses on the problems facing modern phraseographers.

Modality in Arabic: The Multiple Functions of the (Non)-Indicative Markers -ūn and b-

This paper explores the non-indicative modal meanings that the classical indicative plural inflection -ūn and the preverbal particle b- express in different varieties of Arabic. Moreover, it argues that these two forms allow the speaker to introduce a marked stance in specific grammatical contexts, where the choice of -ūn or b- clearly introduces a modal reading to the proposition. Taking a comparative approach to examine modality in Arabic, I build on examples taken from Classical Arabic (CLA), premodern non-standard written (NSW) documents, and modern dialects to analyze the modal behavior of -ūn and b-. Analysis of the data reveals the following: (1) preverbal b- is used to create rhetorical contrast, and (2) either -ūn or b- can overtly signal authoritative expectations (and orders) and/or intention. These results suggest an interesting connection between the modal roles played by -ūn and b- across Arabic varieties and demonstrate the importance of NSW texts in tracing the historical development of modality in Arabic.

A history of the Basque prosodic systems

AbstractThis paper presents new proposals for the reconstruction of Proto-Basque accentuation, as well as the development and chronology of the main accentual systems of the modern dialects, grounded in phonetic, historical and typological evidence. It is the first attempt to reconstruct Basque accentuation from a pre-Roman stage to the dialectalization that followed Common Basque. We suggest that Old Proto-Basque had prosodic prominence in the root, i.e., [(C)V.'CVC]. This system evolved into phrase-level prominence in Modern Proto-Basque, giving rise to unaccentedness in non-phrase final positions, with marked stress only introduced later, through Latin loanwords (2nd–3rd century CE). This would become the common system, which still persists in the west. Not long after the dialectification, word-level systems developed in non-western areas, first as peninitial and then as penultimate stress (in eastern dialects). Finally, we propose that the Goizueta prosodic system can be derived from the Central system, which is an alternative view toHualde (in press).

Locality domains on Lenition. Spirantization (Gorgia) and Voicing in Tuscan dialects1

This article investigates the diachronic and synchronic relation between Tuscan lenition (Voicing) and spirantization (Gorgia) of voiceless Latin stops, both processes are postvocalic/lenition processes. Firstly, we set out to examine the conditions peculiar to Romance lenition (Voicing) of Latin voiceless stops from Medieval Tuscan to modern dialects. Secondly, Tuscan lenition/Voicing is compared to the local later Florentine–Senese spirantization/aspiration. Lenition is variously intertwined with the Tuscan Gorgia/spirantization. Both are positional phenomena in relation to fortition / lenition segmental scales, positional and prosodic parameters, melodic factors within words and across word boundaries. The article provides a structural description of the strong/weak consonants and their relations to the more complex objects in which they are integrated (the syllable and the foot), in order to state locality conditions/domain on lenition and locality in phonology.

Роль исторических и диалектных данных в интерпретации явлений современного словообразования

The author proposes the idea that it is necessary to draw on historical and dialectal data in the analysis of the modern word-formation phenomena. The comparison of the modern Russian literary language facts with those of the written language history and the modern dialect speech allows to estimate, with maximum objectivity, the linguistic status of the derivative units, models, subsystems, as well as to reconstruct the whole picture of their usage in the national language and to better understand the directions of linguistic dynamics and the derivational potential of the language. This approach is illustrated by the formation of the adjectives ending with -ovskij in the Russian language. The question of the word-formation structure of such adjectives is debatable in the modern derivatology. The affixal part of the adjectives ending with -ovskij is defined in different ways: 1) as a suffixal sequence including two different formants, 2) as a suffix -sk-, complicated with the interfix -ov-, 3) as a derived suffixal morph with accumulation. The picture of structural and semantic connections of the above-mentioned adjectives in the modern Russian literary language is complicated, heterogeneous and does not give precedence to any of these three interpretations. The analysis of the adjectives ending with -ovskij in the complex of the modern Russian literary language data, its history and the modern territorial dialects, gives ground to the following interpretation of -ovskij complex. At the modern stage of the Russian language development the sequence -ov/sk(ij) is a morphemic complex, that has developed on the basis of the ancient suffixal duplication model of the relative and possessive suffixes -ov(y’j) + -sk(ij). The morphemic complex -ov/sk(ij) is functioning in the modern Russian language as a single polysemantic segmented bisuffixal formant, which has not formed, up to now, a unified morpheme – a complex suffix. A morphemic complex, as opposed to a complex suffix, is easily divided into components and provides a basis to re-derivation processes.

Долгие гласные в якутских книгах середины XIX в.: ошибки или отражение тонких просодических противопоставлений, которые ранее не привлекали внимание ученых?

Introduction. The first two Yakut-language books — Acts and Epistles of the Apostles (1858) and D. Khitrov’s Brief Grammar of the Yakut Language (1858) — contain occasional macrons (acute accents) over short vowels usually employed to mark extended vowel length. Goals. This study aims to identify rules to have determined the use of this diacritic and reveal if there be any phonetic reality behind it traceable in modern Yakut dialects. Materials and methods. The first stage of analysis shows that in the examined books the diacritic appears only above various forms of monosyllabic stems. Therefore, a complete list of all forms of Turkic monosyllabic stems has been compiled, and each lexeme statistically counted and analyzed for frequency use — with and without such diacritic. These collected data were compared to those on the pronunciation analysis of non-initial forms of monosyllabic lexemes in modern Yakut dialects obtained through the experimental phonetic software package Praat. Results. The work discovers that in non-initial forms of monosyllabic words some speakers of modern Yakut dialects tend to increase length and intensity of the vowel in the first syllable as compared to vowel sounds in the second one usually stressed in standard Yakut. This emphasis is as sporadic as is attested by the earliest books examined. Parameters for this increase in length and intensity of first-syllable vowels vary across dialects. In modern Yakut dialects (and in the editions), ы, э, аа, уу in the first syllable of non-initial forms of monosyllabic words are most frequently marked prosodically. Conclusions. This rather unexpected set of vowels (ы and э are usually quite short) and the increase in length and intensity of the first-syllable vowel confirmed by the data collected from four independent sources (two books and two modern dialects) show that the insights into earliest Yakut-language books make it possible to identify a previously undescribed prosodic feature of Yakut dialects which deserves further comprehensive study.

The Dialectics of Modernity and Tradition: Eliot and Adorno on Individualism and the Differentiation of Spheres

The Dialectics of Modernity and Tradition: Eliot and Adorno on Individualism and the Differentiation of Spheres

Dialectics of Tradition and Modernization in the Constitutional Development of Russia

The Soviet project reflects the cultural, historical, economic, and ethnonational resources of non-Western modernization. The Marxist Party of the USSR controlled power by building an ideological and political-managerial vertical that connected Soviets, party, trade union, and other public associations, the press, enterprises, settlements, the army, schools, families, all generations of society, and art. “Perestroika” destroyed the ideological and political “core” of the soviet system (repeal of Article 6 of the Constitution). The separation of powers replaced the system of the Soviets. The Russian state has lost its political ideology, significantly weakened its security agencies and army, and lost a significant part of its economic potential. China and Vietnam took into account the costs of Soviet reforms, drew the appropriate conclusions and took a different political path, which Russian researchers have yet to study. Later, after 2000, new political reforms began in Russia, which made it possible to move on to the creation of the ideological and political "core" of the new state. Under Vladimir Putin, the institute of the presidency really formed such a political “core” that would help to gradually move along the path of consolidating the political system and society, solve national security issues, and revive the economy and the system of educating young people. Amendments to the Constitution Russia in 2020 summed up a certain result of the formation of a strong state.

The historical development of imperfect indicative and conditional inflection in Pyrenean Romance*

AbstractEven historical developments which appear opaque due to limited empirical data may prove tractable when sources of diverse types are combined. For systems of three‐way inflectional contrast among imperfect indicative forms in a geographically coherent cluster of Catalan, Aragonese and Gascon varieties (e.g. first‐conjugation [kanˈtaβam] ‘we sang’; third‐conjugation [peɾˈðeβam] ‘we lost’; fourth‐conjugation [paˈtiβam] ‘we suffered’ in the Catalan variety of Castigaleu), two principal accounts have been proposed: an ‘etymological’ hypothesis in which three‐way imperfect contrasts represent a conservative feature continuing Latin forms, and an ‘analogical’ hypothesis in which thematic labials in non‐first‐conjugation imperfects are ascribed to analogical innovation. By examining historical texts, modern dialect data and areal patterns in order to develop a unified analysis of the Pyrenean systems, this study demonstrates that the modern systems result from analogical innovation, and further establishes the directionality and relative chronology of the analogical changes involved.

Justification of points and scenarios for the development of rural and settlement communities in Ukraine (on the example of Luhansk region)

Purpose. The aim of the article is to determine, using the example of the Luhansk region, modern trends in the life of rural and settlement communities in Ukraine and to substantiate the starting points and scenarios for their socio-economic development.
 Methodology / approach. The methodology of cognition and presentation of material consists in modern dialectics using a set of specific methods. In particular, the method of systemic-structural analysis is used to reveal the systemic content of the reform of local self-government and determine its role in ensuring sustainable development of Ukraine. The factor analysis method was used to identify the factors of community development. Economic-and-mathematical methods are applied in the systematization of the empirical material collected by the authors of the modern development of communities in Ukraine and the Luhansk region.
 Results. On the example of the Luhansk region, the content of the determining factors in the development of rural and settlement communities of the country has been identified and disclosed. The priority scientific and practical tasks of identifying points and justifying scenarios for sustainable socio-economic development of rural and settlement communities in Ukraine have been established.
 Originality / scientific novelty. For the first time, the multidirectional factors of the modern development of rural and settlement communities in Ukraine, in particular the Luhansk region, have been systematized; general trends in the development of the country’s communities have been identified, highlighting both their positive and negative manifestations.
 Practical value / implications. The practical value lies in the substantiation of the initial applied base for the development of long-term plans for the development of rural and settlement communities. The materials of the article will be used in the context of providing consulting assistance to the heads of local self-government bodies and activists of the united territorial communities of the Luhansk region in order to develop an effective and transparent management system, its orientation towards achieving the goals of sustainable socio-economic development of rural areas.

A contact-induced strategy of femininisation

Abstract Middle Dutch and Middle High German possess a femininizing suffix ‑erse, of which reflexes survive in some modern dialects. Its Old Germanic preform arose from the grafting of Latin ‑issa onto the masculine suffix *‑ārja‑ in Dutch and German dialects closest to the Gallo-Romance area in the Early Middle Ages. The main aim of the present contribution is to provide hitherto underexposed details on the Dutch linguistic area, to show that the mainstream historical explanation for ‑erse in Dutch historical linguistics must be given up, and to provide a unified and more detailed account for the rise of this suffix formation in the medieval contact zone between Gallo-Romance and Germanic.

Social transformation paradigm: paradoxes between traditionalism and modernism in Pakistan and India

The social transformation is the process of planned changes at large scale in a given society. In other words a shift in the social consciousness at individual, collective, regional and global levels is considered social transformation through which new dimensions come ahead and help in resolving social problems. The social transformation in Indian and Pakistani society reflects a conflict between traditionalism and the modernism. The social alteration in the value system a divergence seems to have been developed between the social groups that has generated a conflict between the modern issues of self-existence and traditional values. For this paper makes consideration of the main traits of social alteration that create the conflict among the traditionalists and the modernists in India and Pakistan. Furthermore, the impact of the highly developed countries of the world, the role of mass media of communication, migration, cultural diffusion, the literacy and finally the socio-political awareness among the people to help develop secularism are considered key tools to look towards modernity that is challenging the traditional paradigms of society. This relationship forms the dialectics of traditionalism and modernity and in that sense what is paradox is that traditionalism and modernity are not mutually restricted but complementary to each other and demonstrate through elements of social changes. The process of modernization in India and Pakistan is proceeding by inventing new traditions, which is combined with economic status, caste system, ethnicity, subcultures. It also emphasizes on the impact of the transformation in the different sections of Indian and Pakistani society and level of social stability through the time. Our objective in the present article is to examine social change in India and Pakistan with the ideological perspective of modernization. Key words: India, Pakistan, society, social transformation, traditionalism, modernism.

Fixed Expressions with Zoonymic Words in Terms of Phraseography
 (Based on the Dictionary of Smolensk Dialects)

The article is devoted to the characteristics of fixed expressions in the Dictionary of Smolensk Dialects as the basis of a dialect phraseological dictionary. In modern dialectology and dialect lexicography, attention is mostly paid to the description of dialect phraseological material. Within the framework of dialect phraseography, general and regional dictionaries of dialect phraseology are being developed. The basis of these dictionaries, as a rule, is made up of distionaries of Russian folk dialects, in which the phraseological connections of the
 heading units are reflected in one way or another. However, for a complete understanding of the composition, character, properties of fixed expressions, it is necessary to comprehensively consider them in the genre of the phraseological dictionary itself.
 Fixed expressions occupy a noticeable part in the Dictionary of Smolensk Dialects both in the number of recorded units and in thematic, structural, and semantic diversity. In the article, the properties of the phraseological material presented in the Dictionary are considered on the example of fixed expressions
 with zoonymic vocabulary. The article analyzes lexical, grammatical, semantic inguocultural characteristics of fixed expressions, that are important for their
 phraseographic description. In the future, the analysis of the material devoted to various dialects will make it possible to find out how productive certain models of fixed expressions
 with zoonymic vocabulary in different dialects are, what zoomorphic images in different dialects express this or that characteristic of an object, whether their evaluative semantics coincide, what phraseological units with zoomorphisms
 have become a part of the national phraseological fund, and which have remained as a separate dialect and why, etc.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Dialectics of modernity: antinomy as a factor in the development of culture, personality, methodology

Dialectics of modernity: antinomy as a factor in the development of culture, personality, methodology

Complexity Theory in sociological theorizing and metamodern culture — the contours of mutual legitimation

The focus of the article is on two large-scale transformation processes that are currently taking place in the Western scientific and socio-cultural spaces. On the one hand, it is the emergence on the cultural horizon of a new macrocultural era, called Metamodern, on the other hand — the transformation in the paradigm field of Western science and the emergence of a paradigm of complexity (complexity theory). The statement is argued, that they are the different manifestations of the general large-scale socio-cultural and scientific tectonics and can serve as contours for mutual legitimacy and justification. The metamodern project captures the emergence of a new worldview in Western culture, which is characterized by a new sincerity, openness, holism in contrast to postmodern alienation, irony and sсepticism. In terms of experiencing the I-World relationship, the logic of cultural progress from Tradition to Metamodern can be described as a movement from complete immersion of the Self in the World (Tradition), through confrontation and struggle between the Self and the World (Modern), chaos of the I (multiple identity) and the World (current modernity) in the postmodern era, to a new dialectical combination of the I and the World in the Metamodern era. Complexity Theory in its sociological theoretical proposals can offer a parallel view on the process of changing cultural epochs, but through the prism of transforming the dominant mechanism of change and maintenance of social order, emphasizing the existence of two such mechanisms — organizational one and self-organizational one. The logic of changes in this dominance leads us from Tradition (self-organization), through Modern (organization), and Postmodern (chaos, no domination, the mutual distancing) to Metamodern — dialectics, tense unity of organization and self-organization. In socio-cultural terms, it looks like a dialectic of modernity (rationality, purposefulness, result, organization) and tradition (myth, game, process, self-organization), and at the level of basic experience of the world as a dialectic of acute experience of one's self combined with the experience of its unity with the world. It is at this point that the metamodern project and the paradigm of complexity in its sociological interpretation do meet. Here, they can give each other legitimizing support.

The Forms of Irish Modernism

Reading James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman through Roberto Schwarz's notion of misplaced ideas, this essay demonstrates how these key works of Irish modernism formally mediate the experience of incongruity generated by Ireland's semiperipheral status. This experience is most visible when the characters grapple with the various discourses that do and do not describe their everyday realities. Thematizing questions of scale—and internalizing the dialectic of tradition and modernity out of which they emerge—the forms of Irish modernism reflect on the world economic system that conditions them.

“PRIMER BOOK FOR VOTYAK CHILDREN OF THE SARAPUL DISTRICTˮ: GRAPHIC, SPELLING, AND PHONETIC FEATURES

The article describes the vowel and consonant features of the “Primer book for Votyak children of the Sarapul districtˮ (1913). It is practically impossible to consider the phonetic isoglosses of this written record without taking into account its graphic and spelling system; therefore, the article also pays special attention to the graphics and orthography of the source material. The phonetic features are described by comparing the vowel and consonant system of the primer with the vowel and consonant system of the modern Udmurt literary language, adding, whenever available, correspondences from the dialect dictionary by Y. Wichmann [Wichmann 1987], the materials for which were collected at the end of the 19th century. Furthermore, corresponding modern forms from the audio dictionaries based on 2013 field data are also indicated. Such a comparison makes it possible to try to determine the archaic or innovative nature of each identified feature. The analysis shows that most of the phonetic features of the primer, both innovative and archaic, are characteristic of modern dialects of the Southern dialect zone. It follows that this record was most likely written in one of the dialects located on the border of the Middle and Central-Southern dialects of the Udmurt language, i. e. its present-day counterpart would be the dialect of the northern part of the Malopurginsky district of the Udmurt Republic. However, it turns out to be difficult to locate it more precisely at the moment as, unfortunately, this area is described by dialectologists rather poorly today.