Insights into the Baltic and Finnic Languages Contacts, Comparisons, and Change (Potsdam Linguistic Investigations, Volume 36), 2022
Uldis Balodis analyses the variation of case forms of nominals in the Lutsi South Estonian langua... more Uldis Balodis analyses the variation of case forms of nominals in the Lutsi South Estonian language island in Latvia in his article “The Distribution of Inessive Case Endings in Lutsi”. The Lutsi language variety was spoken in villages near the city of Ludza and its development is characterised by intense language contact with Latvian and Latgalian as well as Russian, Belarusian, Polish, and Yiddish. Today its speakers have passed on, but written material has been preserved from the 19th and 20th centuries. The origin of the Lutsi people is unclear; they likely emigrated in several waves from various dialect areas of southern Estonia. This article examines one linguistic phenomenon – the variation in the inessive case ending in nominals – in different Lutsi villages. It draws on material from two collections of texts, one of which is from 1893 and consists primarily of folk songs and the other from 1925 to 1971, containing narratives of various sorts told by language informants. The research results are a step forward in a study which aims to identify the subdialects of Lutsi and the origin of the Lutsi people from different dialect areas in Estonia.
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word and its original form is reconstructed as *jäŋe (Kallio 1997)
or *jäŋi (Aikio 2002, Zhivlov 2015). There are also similar ‘ice’-
words in some Indo-European languages (see Kroonen 2013: 273).
Petri Kallio (1997: 127) has mentioned this word as a possible Finno-
Ugric borrowing in Celto-Germanic (*ie̯ǵ- ‘ice’; Kallio referring
to personal communication with Jorma Koivulehto). The similarity
between Finno-Ugric and Indo-European ice-words has been a matter
of discussion for a long time. Some scholars have treated them
as Indo-European loanwords in Finno-Ugric languages (e.g. Agostini
1999: 108), others as Finno-Ugric borrowings in (Western)
Indo-European languages (e.g. Mikhailova 2007: 10). Greenberg
(2002: 99) has connected PIE *yeg- ‘ice’ with similar words in Uralic
and also (Proto-)Altaic; Kümmel (2012: 305) has even presented
a common root *jæɠ for PIU (i.e., Proto-Indo-Uralic). However, if
we look more specifically at the Finno-Ugric and Indo-European languages,
we can better observe correspondences between some western
Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages, especially between
(Celto-)Germanic and Finnic. Among Finnic languages, Southern
Finnic ‘ice’-words in particular deserve more careful study.
Books by Uldis Balodis
word and its original form is reconstructed as *jäŋe (Kallio 1997)
or *jäŋi (Aikio 2002, Zhivlov 2015). There are also similar ‘ice’-
words in some Indo-European languages (see Kroonen 2013: 273).
Petri Kallio (1997: 127) has mentioned this word as a possible Finno-
Ugric borrowing in Celto-Germanic (*ie̯ǵ- ‘ice’; Kallio referring
to personal communication with Jorma Koivulehto). The similarity
between Finno-Ugric and Indo-European ice-words has been a matter
of discussion for a long time. Some scholars have treated them
as Indo-European loanwords in Finno-Ugric languages (e.g. Agostini
1999: 108), others as Finno-Ugric borrowings in (Western)
Indo-European languages (e.g. Mikhailova 2007: 10). Greenberg
(2002: 99) has connected PIE *yeg- ‘ice’ with similar words in Uralic
and also (Proto-)Altaic; Kümmel (2012: 305) has even presented
a common root *jæɠ for PIU (i.e., Proto-Indo-Uralic). However, if
we look more specifically at the Finno-Ugric and Indo-European languages,
we can better observe correspondences between some western
Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages, especially between
(Celto-)Germanic and Finnic. Among Finnic languages, Southern
Finnic ‘ice’-words in particular deserve more careful study.