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The Subject of Argument Clauses with the Participle -em in Tatyshly Udmurt // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2024. Issue 2 (44). P. 9-20

This article presents a study of subjects in participle -(e)m constructions (in the context of their use as sentential arguments) in the Tatyshly dialect of the Udmurt language. The research material was collected during linguistic expeditions of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (Lomonosov MSU) in the Tatyshly region of the Republic of Bashkortostan in 2022–2023. One of the main aspects of this research is the syntactic status of unmarked subjects. In E. Georgieva’s research, such subjects in Udmurt and other languages are interpreted as incorporated nominal stems. Based on a number of features exhibited by unmarked subjects in argument participial constructions in Tatyshy Udmurt, I conclude that the incorporation approach does not apply to my data. In particular, unmarked subjects can be modified by adjectives, numerals, and demonstratives. Furthermore, the article emphasizes the correlation between the properties of unmarked subjects and the syntactic position of the sentential argument. I suggest that when the sentential argument occupies the subject or direct object position, its unmarked subject remains caseless and represents a small nominal. In other cases, the unmarked subject of the sentential argument is a complete noun phrase and is in the nominative case. First, when the sentential argument takes the subject or direct object positions, personal pronouns, proper nouns, and animate nouns denoting people cannot be unmarked subjects; however, this is allowed for other sentential arguments. Secondly, with sentential arguments not occupying the subject or direct object positions, the unmarked subject can take on nominal morphology. Thirdly, unmarked subjects in sentential arguments that occupy the subject or direct object positions are restricted in their ability to move away from the participle, unlike unmarked subjects in other sentential actants.

Keywords: sentential argument, unmarked subject, Udmurt language, Tatyshly dialect, small nominal