Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Based on 16 dialect corpora of Russian the paper shows that there are four types of Russian dialects in respect of nu particle’s frequency: peripheral southern (Smolensk, Bryansk, Oskol) with nu more than twice more frequent than average Russian; northern (Arkhangel’sk) with nu three times less frequent than average; nonperipheral southern (Kaluga, Ryazan’) and western middle-Russian (Tver’, Pskov) similar to all-Russian. Futhermore, a negative correlation exists in relative frequency of initial particle nu and postpositive -to in Russian dialects: the more frequent is nu, the less frequent is -to; with the extreme points in south-west and north-east of Russian dialect landscape. In addition, in the south-western dialects dak particle tends to fill initial position in a phrase, while in the north-eastern idioms it may be placed finally as well as initially in an utterance. Thus, the south-western dialects prefer initial particles and free particles in initial position, whereas the north-eastern ones, on the contrary, are oriented towards the postpositive use of particles. The distribution revealed is conditioned by the specific intonational patterns inherent in different idioms: in the north-eastern dialects the final part of reactive utterances is associated with tonal movements whilst in the south-western ones — the initial part of it.
Author: Sergey V. Knyazev
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4410956334