On 13 December at 14:15 Denys Teptiuk will defend his doctoral thesis „Quotative indexes in Finno-Ugric (Komi, Udmurt, Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian)”.
Supervisors:
Professor Gerson Klumpp (PhD)
Associate Professor Anne Tamm (PhD, Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary
Opponent:
PhD Petar Kehayov (Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies).
Summary
This dissertation concentrates on the category of quotative index and its contemporary use in the five Finno-Ugric languages: Finnish and Estonian in North-West Europe, Komi and Udmurt in Russia, and Hungarian in Central Europe. Although brief descriptions of quotative indexes are found in previous studies, this topic has received relatively little attention both language-wise, as well as in Finno-Ugric linguistics in general.
Previous studies (e.g. Buchstaller & Van Alphen 2012) have shown that even typologically different languages tend to share similar markers or more complex grammatical constructions. Despite the geographic distance between the five languages, the same semantic classes are used as quotative indexes in the languages. It goes without surprise that in the five languages one can find speech (say) and epistemic (think) verbs, nouns encoding the source of reported discourse (my friend, a notification), conjunctions (that) and demonstratives (so). A more exact correspondence can be observed between the closely related languages. Thus, in Finnish and Estonian not only the same type of elements can be observed, but they are also used in identical structures. In Komi and Udmurt, a correspondence can be observed in the use of the indigenous quotative particles and the choice of demonstratives. Only the choice of non-reportative elements and Russian influence make the arsenal of Udmurt quotatives broader compared to Komi. Hungarian, in turn, as a distantly related language, shows similarity with the other languages only to a certain extent, which can be explained by the lack of the contact between the languages and independent developments in Hungarian.
In addition, correspondences can also be observed between typologically different languages, e.g. both Finnish and Estonian, and English use as quotative indexes combinations of be-verb with the similative markers: mina olin nagu et vs. mä olin niinku et vs. I was like. Corresponding markers are also found in Udmurt, which uses both indigenous (kad’) and Russian (t’ipa) similative markers with the like-meaning as quotative markers.