Spoken Võro in Real Time. Variation of the Inessiv Ending
Spoken Võro in Real Time. Variation of the Inessiv Ending

Summary/Abstract: This article gives an overview of the variation in inessive case endings of Spoken Võro according to a real-time analysis of language use in two villages of the Vastseliina parish. Local people use two variants (-h and -n) to mark the inessive. The variation is of interest because linguistic history tells us only the h-suffix has been found in the villages under study; however in the Võro ­literary language -n has become standardised for the inessive. Therefore, this article aims to determine a possible language change in real time by comparing ­analyses of data collected in 1991 and 2006. A comparison of the surveys suggests that, in the case of the inessive endings, there is an ongoing language change in Spoken Võro in which the n-formatives are gaining greater prominence over the h-suffixes.

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