Native Words of Finno-Ugric Origin VS. Borrowings in the Top 100 Most Frequent Verbs in the Mari Language
DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2025-1-35-49
This article deals with the etymology of the most common verbs in the Mari (meadow) language. Since there are no ready-made lists of this kind in scientific and pedagogical sources, it was necessary to compile one. This task was accomplished with the help of corpora data. The list of the 100 most frequent verb stems in Mari was compiled based on the most extensive online corpus of the standard Mari language – “Mari Meadow Texts” on the Korp platform in two versions: 1) the full corpus (57.38 million tokens) and 2) its two sub-corpora – fiction and non-fiction (7.1 million tokens). These lists are 90% similar. The etymologies of Mari verbs were compiled according to the best etymological dictionaries by K. Rédei, G. Bereczki, and M. Räsänen. For the 100 most frequent verbs, the ratio of indigenous Finno-Ugric vocabulary to loanwords from Chuvash, Tatar, and Russian was determined. The vocabulary of Uralic and Finno-Ugric origin make up the largest share – from 56–59% (for roots and stems) to 69–70% (for tokens). Original Mari words and words with unclear etymology – 14–22%, loanwords from Turkic languages – 15–22%. There are more Chuvash borrowings than Tatar. Among the loanwords from Turkic, mental verbs predominate, indicating the Turkic world’s significant cultural and humanitarian influence on the Finno-Ugrics (Mari). Among the 100 most frequent verbs in the Mari language, there is only one verb of Russian origin - šotlaš ‘to count.’ However, it is possible that this word entered the Mari language via Chuvash, as Chuvash has šutla ‘to count.’ This study’s results confirm that verbs in a language are more resistant to borrowing than nouns. The compiled top 100 most frequent Mari verbs can be used for linguistic research and teaching and learning the Mari language.
Keywords: verbs, frequency, frequency dictionary, corpora studies, Mari language, Finno-Ugric languages, Turkic languages, loanwords, semantics of borrowings, etymology, Ural-Volga region
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Issue: 1, 2025
Series of issue: Issue 1
Rubric: LINGUISTICS
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