Case syncretism of nouns (Northern Mansi)

SyncCoreCase: Nouns show case marking, and syncretism occurs only in core cases.


(1) lēŋǝn pākw suńsiγli-te.
squirrel Siberian pine_cone look-prs.3sg
‘The squirrel is looking at the cone of the Siberian pine.' (S. D.)

(2) lēŋǝn tawe suńsiγli-te.
squirrel he/she.acc look-prs.3sg
‘The squirrel is looking at him/her.’ (S. D.)


In Northern Mansi, the case paradigm of nouns and pronouns are substantially different (Kálmán 1976, Riese 2001). Only the nominative and the ablative cases are present in both paradigms.



case

noun (‘pot’)

personal pronoun (‘he/she/it’)

Nominative

pūt

taw

Locative

pūt-t

-

Lative

pūt-n

-

Ablative

pūt-nǝl

tawe-nǝl

Translative

pūt-yγ

-

Instrumental

pūt-ǝl

-

Accusative

-

tawe

Dative

-

tawe-n

Comitative-instrumental

-

tawe-tǝl

[based on Kálmán (1976)]


The cases which are missing from the nominal or the pronominal paradigm can be expressed by postpositions. Case syncretism may only be supposed concerning the accusative case, where the morphologically unmarked noun (1) is opposed to the morphologically marked pronoun (2).

Author: 

Szilvia Németh