folia uralica debreceniensia 19. - Finnugor Nyelvtudományi Tanszék

MORFÉMA-ALTERNÁCIÓK A MOKSA HATÁROZATLAN NÉVRAGOZÁSBAN
Morpheme alternations in the Moksha-Mordvin
indefinite declension II.
With the help of N. V. Butylov, I prepared an outline of the Moksha-
Mordvin indefinite declension in the above paper. I utilized the newer
Moksha (-language) grammar as well (MK 2000), which was a great help in
providing exact information about the present-day orthographical practice. In
the majority of the issues, however, it was M. Ye. Yevsev’ev’s paper (1934/
1963) that served as a basis for clarification. The first part of my study was
published in the previous issue of the journal (FUD 18: 99–116).
Sándor Maticsák differentiates between five distinctive features that determine
the linking rules of the Erzya case endings (Maticsák 2003: 143). I used
his system to describe the relationship between the stem and the case endings
in Moksha. The order of discussion is somewhat modified here, however,
since I applied a different kind of classification for the case endings. On the
other hand, it is obvious that Moksha phonetics differs from Erzya phonetics,
and therefore it was necessary to add some further features to the system. In
addition, I studied the linking rules of the plural nominative in both of the
dialects.
I differentiated between eight distinctive features in Moksha, instead of
the five features applicable in Erzya, but one of these is only relevant in
Erzya, therefore, only seven of the features were needed for the description
of the Erzya morpheme alternations. Items ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ in the Moksha description
correspond to item ‘a’ in the Erzya description, ‘d’ corresponds to
the Erzya ‘b’, ‘f’ and ‘g’ to the Erzya ‘d’, and ‘g’ to the Erzya ‘e’. The eighth,
‘e’, item of the Moksha description is a feature only relevant in Erzya (item
‘c’ in the Erzya description), and not in Moksha.
The relationship between the stem and the case endings is discussed in the
following order, general suffixes: 1) nominative, 2) genitive(-accusative), dative(-allative),
and locative suffixes: 3) lative, ablative, 4) illative, inessive,
elative (cf. FUD 18: 100–113); 5) prolative, abessive, translative, comparative,
causative, 6) plural nominative.
In summary, we can establish that based on the distinctive features, the
following stem-types (nominative) can be distinguished:
I. Stem-final vowel: 1) full: V[-red] (a, ä, o, e, i), 2) reduced: V[+red] (ä)
II. Stem-final consonant or consonant-cluster: 1) hard [-pal] or soft [+pal],
2) voiceless [-voiced] or voiced [+voiced], 3) obstruent or sonorant, plosive,
fricative, affricate [-son], and liquid or nasal [+son].
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