The Erzya language (, , ), also Erzian or historically Arisa, is spoken by approximately 300,000 people in the northern, eastern and north-western parts of the Republic of Mordovia and adjacent regions of

Nizhny Novgorod Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət, t=Lower Newtown; colloquially shortened to Nizhny) is a city and the administrative centre of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast an ...

, Chuvashia,

Penza Penza (, ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Penza Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Sura (river), Sura River, southeast of Moscow. As of the 2010 Russian census, 2010 Census, Penza had ...

Samara Samara, formerly known as Kuybyshev (1935–1991), is the largest city and administrative centre of Samara Oblast in Russia. The city is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Samara (Volga), Samara rivers, with a population of over 1.14 ...

Saratov Saratov ( , ; , ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River. Saratov had a population of 901,361, making it the List of cities and tow ...

, Orenburg,

Ulyanovsk Ulyanovsk,, , known as Simbirsk until 1924, is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Volga River east of Moscow. Ulyanovsk has been the only Russian UNESCO Ci ...

Tatarstan Tatarstan, officially the Republic of Tatarstan, sometimes also called Tataria, is a Republics of Russia, republic of Russia located in Eastern Europe. It is a part of the Volga Federal District; and its capital city, capital and largest city i ...

and

Bashkortostan Bashkortostan, officially the Republic of Bashkortostan, sometimes also called Bashkiria, is a republic of Russia between the Volga river and the Ural Mountains in Eastern Europe. The republic borders Perm Krai to the north, Sverdlovsk Oblast ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. A

diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of birth, place of origin. The word is used in reference to people who identify with a specific geographic location, but currently resi ...

can also be found in

Armenia Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia (country), Georgia to the north and Azerbaijan to ...

and

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

, as well as in

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

and other states of

Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...

. Erzya is currently written using

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

with no modifications to the variant used by the Russian language. In Mordovia, Erzya is co-official with

Moksha ''Moksha'' (; , '), also called ''vimoksha'', ''vimukti'', and ''mukti'', is a term in Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism for various forms of emancipation, liberation, '' nirvana'', or release. In its soteriological and eschatologic ...

and Russian. The language belongs to the Mordvinic branch of the

Uralic languages The Uralic languages ( ), sometimes called the Uralian languages ( ), are spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers ab ...

. Erzya is a language that is closely related to

but has distinct phonetics, morphology and vocabulary.

Phonology

Consonants

The following table lists the consonant phonemes of Erzya together with their

equivalents. Palatalization is widespread in Erzya, but is contrastive only for the alveolar consonants. The labial and velar consonants have palatalized

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...

s before the front vowels , . The pairs – , – and – also often alternate depending on a following or preceding back vs. front vowel. E.g. the 1st person singular possessive suffix has

allomorph In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or in other words, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variatio ...

s such as and . The palatalized consonants can natively occur also in a back vowel environment, e.g. the genitive suffix , providing

minimal pair In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate t ...

s such as 'my house' – '(a) house's'. Non-palatalized , , in a front vowel environment are limited to recent Russian loans such as 'whale'. Note on romanized transcription: in Uralic studies, the members of the palatalized series are usually spelled as , , , , , , , , while the postalveolar sounds are spelled , , (see

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet Finno-Ugric transcription (FUT) or the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nesto ...

). and are loan phonemes from Russian. There is a phonemic contrast between and , despite that they share the standard spelling ⟨н⟩.

Minimal pair In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate t ...

s include: * "along the path", in which the alveolar of the stem is retained before the prolative case ending , vs. , the connegative form of the verb "to break" * "good", subject or object complement in translative, vs. "direction; area". See Rueter 2010: 58. Mordovians in Russia

Vowels

Erzya has a simple five-vowel system. The front vowels and have centralized variants and immediately following a plain alveolar consonant, e.g. "they", "blue".

Vowel harmony

As in many other

, Erzya has

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...

. Most roots contain either

front vowel A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction th ...

s (, ) or

back vowel A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be c ...

s (, ). In addition, all suffixes with mid vowels have two forms: the form to be used is determined by the final syllable of the stem. The low vowel (), found in the comparative case () "the size of" and the prolative () "spatial multipoint used with verbs of motion as well as position" is a back vowel and not subject to vowel harmony. The rules of vowel harmony are as follows: # If the final syllable of the word stem contains a front vowel, the front form of the suffix is used: () "village", () "in a village" # If the final syllable of the word stem contains a back vowel, and it is followed by plain (non-palatalized) consonants, the back form of the suffix is used: () "house", () "in a house" However, if the back vowel is followed by a palatalized consonant or palatal glide, vowel harmony is violated and the "front" form of the suffix is used: () "with willow", () "with butter". Likewise, if a front-vowel stem is followed by a low back vowel suffix, subsequent syllables will contain back harmony: () "throughout its villages" Thus the seeming violations of vowel harmony attested in stems, e.g. () "axe", () "thread (string)", are actually due to the palatalized consonants and . One exception to front-vowel harmony is observed in palatalized non-final , e.g. () "with asphalt".

Writing

Cyrillic alphabet

The modern Erzya alphabet is the same as for Russian: : The letters ф, х, щ and ъ are only used in loanwords from Russian. The pre-1929 version of the Erzya alphabet included the additional letter Cyrillic ligature En Ge (Ҥ ҥ) in some publications, (cf. Evsevyev 1928). In combination with the alveolar consonants т, д, ц, с, з, н, л, and р, vowel letters are employed to distinguish between plain and palatalized articulations in a similar way as in Russian: а, э, ы, о, у follow plain alveolars, while я, е, и, ё, ю follow palatalized alveolars, e.g. та /ta/, тэ /te/, ты /ti/, то /to/, ту /tu/ vs. тя /tʲa/, те /tʲe/, ти /tʲi/, тё /tʲo/, тю /tʲu/. If no vowel follows, palatalization is indicated by ь, e.g. ть /tʲ/. Following non-alveolar consonants, only а, е, и, о, у occur, e.g. па /pa/, пе /pe/, пи /pi/, по /po/, пу /pu/.

Latin alphabet

A Latin alphabet was officially approved by the government of Nizhne-Volzhskiy Kray in 1932, but it was never used: ::::a в c ç d ә e f g y i j k l m n o p r s ş t u v x z ƶ ь One of the modern Latin alphabet proposals: ::::a b c č ć d d́/ď e f g h i j k l ĺ/ľ m n ń o p r ŕ s š ś t t́/ť u v z ž ź

Morphology

Like all other

, Erzya is an

agglutinative language An agglutinative language is a type of language that primarily forms words by stringing together morphemes (word parts)—each typically representing a single grammatical meaning—without significant modification to their forms ( agglutinations) ...

which expresses grammatical relations by means of

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

es.

Nouns

Nouns are inflected for

case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type Containers * Case (goods), a package of relate ...

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

definiteness In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases that distinguishes between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those that are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical ...

and possessor. Erzya distinguishes twelve cases (here illustrated with the noun "ground, earth"). Number is systematically distinguished only with definite nouns; for indefinite nouns and nouns with a possessive suffix, only the nominative case has a distinct plural. Plural possessors follow the pattern of second person singular possessors.

Verbs

Erzya verbs are inflected for tense and mood, and are further conjugated for person of subject and object. Traditionally, three stem types are distinguished: ''a''-stems, ''o''-stems and ''e''-stems. ''A''-stems always retain the stem vowel ''a'' in the non-third-person present-tense forms, and in the third-person first past-tense forms (e.g. "kissed"). With many ''o''-stems and ''e''-stems, the stem vowel is dropped in these forms (e.g. ''o''-stem "watched", ''e''-stem "swallowed"), but there also ''o''- and ''e''-stem verbs which retain the vowel ( "slept", "cooked"). Rueter (2010) therefore divides verb stems into vowel-retaining stems and vowel-dropping stems. In indicative mood, three tenses are distinguished: present/future, first past, second (=habitual) past. The third-person singular form in the present tense is also used as present participle. The second past tense is formed by adding the past-tense copula to the present participle. The other mood categories are: *conditional ( + present suffixes) *conjunctive ((V) + past suffixes) *conditional-conjunctive ((V) + past suffixes) *desiderative ( + past suffixes) *optative ( + present suffixes) *imperative ()

Vocabulary

Sample text

Bibliography

*A.I. Bryzhinskiy, O.V. Pashutina, Ye.I. Chernov. Писатели Мордовии Биобиблиографический справочник. Saransk: Mordovskoye Knizhnoye Izdatelystvo, 2001. . *Vasilij D'omin. Сюконян тенк... Эрзянь писательде ёвтнемат. Saransk, 2005. . *Ksenija Djordjevic & Jean-Leo Leonard. Parlons Mordve. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006, . *Makar E. Evsev'ev. Основы мордовской грамматика, Эрзянь грамматика. С приложением образцов мокшанских склонений и спряжений. Москва: Центральное издательство народов СССР, 1928. *Jack Rueter. Adnominal Person in the Morphological System of Erzya. Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia 261. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura, 2010, rint nline *D.V. Tsygankin. Память запечатленная в слове: Словарь географических названий республики Мордовия. Saransk, 2005. .

References

External links

* *Finno-Ugric Electronic Library by the Finno-Ugric Information Center in

Syktyvkar Syktyvkar (, , ; , ) is the capital city of the Komi Republic in Russia, as well as its largest city. It is also the administrative center of the Syktyvkar Urban Okrug. Until 1930, it was known as Ust-Sysolsk after the Sysola, Sysola River. Ety ...

Komi Republic The Komi Republic (; ), sometimes simply referred to as Komi, is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia situated in the northeast of European Russia. Its capital city, capital is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Syktyvka ...

(interface in Russian and English, texts in Mari, Komi, Udmurt, Erzya and

languages)
Erzjanj Mastor
nbsp;– The society for preserving the Erzya language (in Erzya and Russian) * https://web.archive.org/web/20061029185215/http://www.info-rm.com/er/index.php News in the Erzya and Moksha Mordvinian languages

Эрзянский язык
Erzya – Finnish/English/German/Russian dictionary
(robust finite-state, open-source)

Erzya studies reference bibliography under construction.
Russian-Moksha-Erzya Dictionary

{{DEFAULTSORT:Erzya Language Erzya language, Indigenous languages of European Russia