Proprietive and privative affixes in some Uralic languages: On markedness and (non)inflectional status

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Abstract

This paper studies the morphosyntactic properties of bound proprietive and privative markers in some Uralic languages using corpus data and grammatical descriptions. Such affixes attach to substantive bases and form derivatives with the meaning of ‘possessing X’ and ‘deprived of X’, respectively. The paper considers the material of Tundra Nenets, Moksha, Hill Mari, Mansi, Khanty, Udmurt and Finnish. Firstly, morphosyntactic properties of proprietive and privative affixes are compared across different languages and in a given language system. It is shown that, although they have no less restrictions on the derivational base than proprietive ones, privative markers are fewer in number and often coincide with adverbial caritive markers. It is argued that privative is marked in relation to proprietive. Then the status of the affixes as inflectional or derivational markers is discussed. Most of the considered proprietive and privative affixes cannot be analyzed as either. Affixes that combine the functions of attributivizers and (comitative or caritive) adverbial markers preserve more of the internal nominal syntax of the base, but to the lesser extent than the core cases in a given language. Thus, the data testify that the studied attributive markers deviate more from the inflectional prototype than the corresponding adverbial markers.

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About the authors

Xenia M. Lapshina

HSE University

Author for correspondence.
Email: xenilapshina@gmail.com
Russian Federation, Moscow

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