HÄÄBUVA KESKLÜÜDI MURDE JÄLGEDEL SUVEL 2012
In the footsteps of vanishing Central Lude in summer 2012

Summary/Abstract: Lude (or Ludic) is one of the most endangered and least documented Finnic languages. The article presents the results of a research expedition to the Central Lude area, carried out in June 2012 by a group of linguists from the University of Tartu. Although the discussion is intended chiefly for a linguistic audience, our search for causes of the rapid decline of Central Lude addresses a number of issues relevant to neighbouring fields, such as history, ethnology, and the sociology of language. The extinction of Central Lude is a process closely related to Soviet and post-Soviet realities. Its structural dimensions can at least partly be construed as an outcome of a set of extra-linguistic (geographical, economic, demographic, and historical) factors. The article provides an overview of the contemporary structure of Central Lude. Considering evidence from all subdialects – Viidan, Priäžä, Pühäjärvi, Lid’žmi, and Kaškan – we arrive at the conclusion that the Central Lude dialect area is highly heterogeneous. This is due to the close connections between the Viidan subdialect and the North Lude dialects, especially with the subdialect of Nuomoila, and extensive dialect levelling between the Priäžä subdialect and the neighbouring Olonets dialects. Special attention is paid to the contacts of the Central Lude dialect with the dominant languages of the area. Apart from the enormous structural impact of Russian, contemporary Central Lude exhibits characteristics typical of language decay, such as an increase in analogical generalization and a co-occurrence of synthetic and analytic structures used in the expression of the same meaning. The paper also presents a collection of transcribed texts from the major Central Lude subdialects.

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