The peculiar replacement of the basic GO verb in Mari and Chuvash
June 30th, 2009One of the peculiar parallel developments in Mari and Chuvash is that they both employ a different verb in basic go expressions than the rest of their respective language families.
For the Uralic family, the central verb of source- and path-oriented motion in the proto-language was *mene-, based on comparison of Khanty, Hungarian, and North Saami. Söder (2001) gives the following examples:
- Khanty: Ма манлам юш хувам ‘I walk along the road’ (Söder 2001: 47).
- Hungarian: Péter a Laci házába megy ‘Peter walks into Laci’s house’ (Söder 2001: 80).
- North Saami: Ándde ja Biera manaiga biillain ‘Ándde and Biera went away by car’ (Söder 2001: 61)
The root has etymological counterparts in all Uralic languages besides Mordvin. Mari has also inherited this root from the proto-language, in the form mijaš. However, in elicitating basic motion verbs from a native speaker using a tool developed by Wilkins (1993), this verb does not appear. Instead, the central verb of motion appears to be kajaš:
Pojan-vlak telə̑m jugə̑ško kajat. ‘Rich people go south in winter.’
Kevə̑tə̑š kajet. ‘You will go to the store.’
The situation in the Turkic languages is similar. A Proto-Turkic root reconstructed as *bar- is found in nearly all Turkic languages (Tenišev 1961: 233). Chuvash has also inherited this root, in the form pyr-, but it does not appear when eliciting basic motion verbs from a native speaker with the tool developed by Wilkins (1993). Instead, the basic verb of motion is kaj-:
Văl kuntan bibliotekăna kajat’ ‘He goes from here to the library.’
Văl xĕveltuxăśalla kajat’ ‘He goes east.’
Chuvash kaj- is generally believed to be inherited from Proto-Turkic, as the motion verb *kajt- ‘return’ found throughout the rest of the Turkic family probably combines this root with a derivational suffix. Mari thus borrowed its verb kajaš from Chuvash.
As noted above, in both languages the original central motion roots are retained, but their meanings have changed. Mari mijaš, as far as I can tell, emphasizes completed motion, while Chuvash pyr- seems exclusively path-oriented or without a deitic centre (I guess). Linking the restructuring of both languages to language contact is an intriguing possibility. Further study is necessary to determine the source and motivations of this restructuring.
References
- Söder, Torbjörn (2001). “Walk This Way”: Verbs of Motion in Three Finno-Ugric Languages. Studia Uralica Upsaliensia 33. Uppsala: Acta Universtitatis Upsaliensis.
- Tenišev, E. R. (1961). “Глаголы движения в тюркских языках”. In: Историческое развитие лексики тюркских языков. Москва: Издательство академии наук СССР, 232–293.
- Wilkins, David P (1993). “Preliminary ‘come’ and ‘go’ Questionnaire”. In: Cognition and Space Kit (version 1.0). Ed. by E. Danziger. Nijmegen: Cognitive Anthropology Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, pp. 29–46.