Adnominal Person in the Morphological System of Erzya SUOMALAIS-UGRILAISEN SEURAN TOIMITUKSIA MÉMOIRES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ FINNO-OUGRIENNE ❋ 261 ❋ Jack Rueter Adnominal Person in the Morphological System of Erzya SOCIÉTÉ FINNO-OUGRIENNE HELSINKI 2010 Jack Rueter: Adnominal Person in the Morphological System of Erzya Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia 261 Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne Layout Jack Rueter Copyright © 2010 Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura — Société Finno-Ougrienne — Finno-Ugrian Society & Jack Rueter Orders — Tilaukset Tiedekirja Kirkkokatu 14 FI-00170 Helsinki www.tiedekirja.fi [email protected] FAX +358 9 635 017 ISBN Print 978-952-5667-23-3 ISBN Online 978-952-5667-24-0 ISSN 0355-0230 Vammalan Kirjapaino Oy Sastamala 2010 Abstract This dissertation is a synchronic description of adnominal person in the highly synthetic morphological system of Erzya as attested in extensive Erzya-language written-text cor- pora consisting of nearly 140 publications with over 4.5 million words and over 285,000 unique lexical items. Insight for this description have been obtained from several source grammars in German, Russian, Erzya, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, as well as bounteous dis- cussions in the understanding of the language with native speakers and grammarians 1993–2010. Introductory information includes the discussion of the status of Erzya as a lan- guage, the enumeration of phonemes generally used in the transliteration of texts and an in-depth description of adnominal morphology. The reader is then made aware of typological and Erzya-specifi c work in the study of adnominal-type person. Methods of description draw upon the prerequisite information required in the de- velopment of a two-level morphological analyzer, as can be obtained in the typological description of allomorphic variation in the target language. Indication of original author or dialect background is considered important in the attestation of linguistic phenomena, such that variation might be plotted for a synchronic description of the language. The phonological description includes the establishment of a 6-vowel, 29-conso- nant phoneme system for use in the transliteration of annotated texts, i.e. two phonemes more than are generally recognized, and numerous rules governing allophonic variation in the language. Erzya adnominal morphology is demonstrated to have a three-way split in stem types and a three-layer system of non-derivative affi xation. The adnominal-affi xation layers are broken into (a) declension (the categories of case, number and deictic mark- ing); (b) nominal conjugation (non-verb grammatical and oblique-case items can be conjugated), and (c) clitic marking. Each layer is given statistical detail with regard to concatenability. Finally, individual subsections are dedicated to the matters of: possessive declen- sion compatibility in the distinction of sublexica; genitive and dative-case paradigmatic defectivity in the possessive declension, where it is demonstrated to be parametrically diverse, and secondary declension, a proposed typology “modifi ers without nouns”, as compatible with adnominal person. Acknowledgements Research and documentation of a language has many requirements, which are best met with the help of others. In addition to the previous work done by grammarians, teachers, speakers, writers and lexicographers in the language of study, there are the individu- als: mentors, teachers, acquaintances, etc. who have all had an undeniable impact on the formulation and articulation of the various stages in the process, as well as the end result. I wish to express my warm thanks to the people who helped me achieve my goal: Pirkko Suihkonen who originally got me involve in work with text corpora, and has seen to it that I continue and improve my skills by keeping involved; Kimmo Koskenniemi, Miikka Silfverberg, Trond Trosterud and Tommi Pirinen for our discussions and work with fi nite-state technology; Dmitry Tsygankin, Aleksandr Feoktistov, Alho Alhoniemi, Nina Adushkina, Nina Agafonova, Mikhail Mosin and Mikhail Bryzhinski for the end- less hours consumed in contemplation of Erzya morphology, possession and the lan- guage in general; Seppo Kittilä for discussions over early morning coffee, lent books and thoughts on possession; The external examiners, Niina Nujanzina-Aasmäe and Daniel M. Abondolo who helped me improve the quality of this dissertation by offering well- merited suggestions, and Anna Kurvinen for ideas on how to improve the layout of this book. And I would like to express a special thanks to my professor, Fred Karlsson, for his support in all phases of the writing. I am deeply indebted to the Finno-Ugrian Society, in Helsinki, for their support in my studies and work with the language, as well as the publication of this treatise in one of their series. I would like to thank the Finnish Academy of Sciences, who through the Eino Jutikkala Fund, made my work possible for the entire year of 2009. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Rector of the University of Helsin- ki for the Dissertation Completion Grant, which made my work possible March—May 2010. Finally, I would like to thank my family, especially my wife, Olga, whose native- language and linguistics background in combination with unlimited support and under- standing have allowed me the freedom to complete this treatise of the Erzya language. Contents Abstract V Acknowledgements VI List of Hierarchies and Tables IX Abbreviations XV 0. Purpose 1 0.1. General outline 2 1. Introduction 3 1.1. Introduction to Erzya 3 1.2. Introduction to person 27 1.3. Research in the Erzya category of adnominal person 35 1.3.1. Background 35 1.3.2. The category of adnominal person in contemporary grammars of Erzya 38 2. Methodology and Corpora 45 2.1. Corpora 46 2.2. Phonological phenomena of modern Erzya 48 2.3. Morpho-semantic evaluation of stems and affi xes 49 2.4. Compatibility of case and adnominal-person morphology 49 2.5. The semi-automatic parser 51 2.6. Sublexicon-case alignments and variation in adnominal person 54 2.7. Defectivity in the genitive slot of the possessive declension 54 2.8. Secondary declension 55 3. Phonology 57 3.1. Phonemes in Erzya transliteration 57 3.2. Phonetic phenomena behind allomorphic variation 62 3.2.1. Vowel harmony 62 3.2.2. Palatal harmony 64 3.2.3. Devoicing 66 3.2.4. Voicing 67 3.2.5. Loss of affi x-initial V 67 3.2.6. Stem-fi nal vowel loss 68 VIII ADNOMINAL PERSON IN THE MORPHOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF ERZYA 4. Morphology 69 4.1. Nominal-type word-stem morphology 69 4.2. Affi xes 74 4.2.1. Case 74 4.2.1.1. Core cases 75 4.2.1.2. Local cases 84 4.2.1.3. Attributive Cases 94 4.2.2. Number 104 4.2.3. Deictic markers 108 4.2.3.1. Possessor-index markers 109 4.2.3.1.1. First person 112 4.2.3.1.2. Second person 116 4.2.3.1.3. Third person 118 4.2.3.2. Defi nite markers 127 4.2.4. Nominal conjugation markers 129 4.2.5. The clitic -Gak 132 4.3. Adnominal-type person in parts of speech 134 4.3.1. Possessive declension compatibility for distinguishing parts of speech 136 4.3.2. Attested parts of speech and sublexica 149 4.3.3. Drawing conclusions 157 4.4. Paradigm defectivity in Erzya possessor indexing 164 4.4.1. Background 164 4.4.2. A dialect attesting [±NUMBER] and [±KIN] parameters 166 4.4.3. Distinct common-noun referents indefi nite genitive forms in literature 168 4.4.4. Orkino 169 4.4.5. Recent grammatical presentation of the possessive declension 171 4.5. Adnominal syntax and secondary declension 174 4.5.1. Background 174 4.5.2. Compatibility of ZERO marking and adnominal-person 188 4.5.3. Compatibility of possessive-declension modifi ers with ZERO marking strategy 191 4.5.4. Personal and refl exive/intensive pronouns and secondary declension 193 5. Conclusions 207 Erzya Source Literature (Corpora) 213 Reference Bibliography 225 List of Hierarchies and Tables Hierarchies Hierarchy 1.1 The inalienability hierarchy 33 Hierarchy 1.2 Saliency hierarchies of accessibility 34 Hierarchy 1.3 The accessibility marking scale 34 Tables Table 1.1 Statistics on headword entries in Mordwinisches Wörterbuch I–IV 7 Table 1.2 Major consonant allophones in the Erzya language 15 Table 1.3 Major vowel allophones in the Erzya language 16 Table 1.4 Indefi nite declension table for complex NP heads kudo ‘house; home’ 17 Table 1.5 Nominative-case forms for the Erzya kudo ‘home; house; room’ and t́ev ‘task; thing’ as a possessum 18 Table 1.6 Varied parts of speech with adnominal cross-referential person marking 18 Table 1.7 Indefi nite declension cases attested in modifi er vs. complement position 22 Table 1.8 Indicative present paradigm of the Erzya verb palams ‘to kiss’ 23 Table 1.9 Single-word elliptic question with object pronoun in subject function 28 Table 1.10 Single-word elliptic answer with object pronoun in subject function 29 Table 1.11 Dependent vs. independent possessive pronoun 29 Table 1.12 The indicative present conjugation of the verb to be as attested in some languages of Europe 30 Table 1.13 Adnominal possessive constructions as attested in some languages of Europe ‘my house, our house, etc.’ 31 Table 1.14 Possessor indices in Erzya as can be derived from Gabelentz (1839: 253–257) 36 Table 1.15 Possessor indices in Erzya deriving from Paasonen (1953: 04-05) 37 X ADNOMINAL PERSON IN THE MORPHOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF ERZYA Table 1.16 Neutral personal pronoun paradigm in the fi ve most frequent cases 39 Table 1.17 Cross-referential adnominal person markers in the nominative 39 Table 1.18 Kin terms as possessa of singular possessors in