South Estonian Written Standard and Actual Spoken Language: Variation of the Past Participle Markers
South Estonian Written Standard and Actual Spoken Language: Variation of the Past Participle Markers

Summary/Abstract: The present article gives an overview of the past participle markers in spoken Võru; the variation of these markers exemplifies the (dis)similarities of the written standard and local spoken varieties. In regard to the active past participle -nuq/-nüq is standardised for the written norm, though today -nu/-nü prevails in spoken language. For the passive past participle -t/-d is the singular marker and -tuq/-tüq/-duq/-düq marks the plural in the Võru written standard. Notwithstanding, the spoken variant suggests that nowadays there is no clear distinction between the singular and plural. Whereby, the present article aims to determine the validity of the historical number agreement in spoken language collected from the 1960s to the 1990s. The analysis is based on the texts (recorded between the 1960s and 1980s) available in the corpus of the Estonian dialects. The results are compared with the studies based on the 1990s recordings. The article demonstrates that the actual spoken language has lost some older South Estonian traits that have been standardised in the written variant.

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