Verbs of Falling in the Tatyshly Udmurt Language

The article deals with verbs of falling (cf. in English: fall, drop, plummet, plunge, nosedive) in the Tatyshly subdialect of the Udmurt language (southern variant, peripheral-southern dialect). This domain has not yet been systematically studied based on Udmurt language material. The study relies on the frame-based approach to lexical typology, which proposes to describe semantics through collocation analyses of lexemes. The results are compared with the conclusions of the typological project and several language-specific articles on verbs of falling. The data were collected mainly by surveying native speakers (translation from Russian into Udmurt, evaluation and interpretation of sentences in Udmurt). Data from the Udmurt dictionaries and corpora are also considered. We analyze the main semantic oppositions in the domain of verbs of falling in the Tatyshly subdialect of the Udmurt language. First, it is the opposition between falling from above and changing from a vertical to a horizontal position. Second, a special verb for falling involves a subject’s destruction (typical of many languages). Third, there are a number of lexemes describing the movement of liquids and granular substances. We discuss their semantic properties, their connection to the falling of multiple subjects, and the constraints on their use in the latter contexts. Verbs of substance motion refer mainly to the falling of multiple small subjects, while larger subjects require dominant verbs of falling. Fourth, a special lexical item denotes the falling of a subject (either animate or, what is typologically curious, inanimate) onto its front. Finally, we discuss contiguity between the domain of falling and other domains (destruction, rotation, and other types of motion). The semantic reasons for colexification are formulated.

lexical typology, semantics, polysemy, verbs of falling, verbs of movement, Udmurt language