Старочувашский памятник с различением датива и аккузатива
A pre-standard Chuvash text with a dative-accusative distinction

Summary/Abstract: This paper introduces the linguistic evidence extracted from the first translation of the Gospel of Matthew into Chuvash, which was published in Kazan in 1820. On the basis of a detailed analysis of dialect-specific features, and especially phonological and morphological innovations, the attested variety should be classified among the Kărmăš—Xĕrlĕ Čutay varieties of Viryal Chuvash. Such a conclusion is consistent with the available extra-linguistic evidence regarding the dialect affiliation of this early Bible translation. Many of the archaic features found in the first translation of the Gospel of Matthew into Chuvash were previously documented in other pre-Standard Chuvash texts from the 18th—19th centuries. One salient feature that distinguishes the Gospel translation from the other contemporary sources is that the attested variety retains the old distinction between the dative and accusative case markers (after a limited number of lexical and grammatical morphemes). Modern Chuvash makes use of the syncretic dative-accusative case suffix -(n)A, dial. -(j)A, which developed through the merger of reflexes of Proto-Turkic dative and accusative case markers, owing to phonological and paradigmatic factors. The loss of the dative-accusative distinction is usually considered an early phenomenon in the history of Chuvash because there is no trace of such a distinction in the modern Chuvash dialects. However, the fact that at least one of the Viryal Chuvash varieties featured the dative-accusative distinction as late as the 19th century provides evidence for a recent origin of the case syncretism in Chuvash. This makes the first translation of the Gospel of Matthew into Chuvash a key source on the development of the Chuvash case system prior to the emergence of the dative-accusative syncretism.

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