The Origin of Stress in the Verbal Paradigm of Contemporary Northwestern Mari

The Origin of Stress in the Verbal Paradigm of Contemporary Northwestern Mari

Normanskaja Ju.V. (ИЯз РАН, Москва, Россия; ISP RAS, Moscow, Russia)

Abstract

The article examines the problem of paradigmatic stress in the Mari languages from both historical and contemporary perspectives. The stress placement rules in present-day Meadow and Hill Mari are well known. However, Northwestern Mari remains insufficiently studied from this point of view. Previous research has demonstrated that the first Hill Mari grammar by A. Albinsky (1837) and the manuscript of the Gospel in Northwestern Mari (1821) showed paradigmatic stress conditioned by conjugation type. The stress patterns differed between first- and second-conjugation verbs in the third-person forms of the present tense and the non-witnessed past tense. The second part of the article analyzes contemporary data collected during a 2025 field expedition in eight Yaransk and Sharanga dialects of Northwestern Mari. An experimental phonetic analysis carried out using Praat demonstrated that in the Yaransk dialects stress in the verbal paradigm of the present tense is quantitative and still correlates with conjugation type. In the first- and second-person plural present-tense forms, first-conjugation verbs show maximal duration on the stem vowel, whereas in second-conjugation verbs maximal duration falls on the affix vowel. Thus, the Northwestern Mari dialects demonstrate a stable preservation of two accentual paradigms in the verb. These data are consistent with evidence from Mordvinic, Samoyedic, Permic, and Mansi languages and support the reconstruction of Proto-Uralic mobile stress. Of particular importance is the fact that modern speakers of Northwestern Mari continue to preserve these accentual paradigms in spontaneous speech despite the absence of a codified grammar, writing system, or lexicographic tradition.

Keywords

Hill Mari; Northwestern Mari; stress; experimental phonetics; field linguistics.

Edition

Proceedings of the Institute for System Programming, vol. 38, issue 3, part 4, 2026, pp. 119-130

ISSN 2220-6426 (Online), ISSN 2079-8156 (Print).

DOI: 10.15514/ISPRAS-2026-38(3)-50

For citation

Normanskaja Ju.V. The Origin of Stress in the Verbal Paradigm of Contemporary Northwestern Mari. Proceedings of the Institute for System Programming, vol. 38, issue 3, part 4, 2026, pp. 119-130 DOI: 10.15514/ISPRAS-2026-38(3)-50.

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