1. Malé poměry, velké změny: Language variation and change in North Saami
Laura A. Janda
Lene Antonsen Jussi Ylikoski

2. North Sámi… A Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language About 20,000 speakers
In contiguous regions of northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland
Unique in Europe as a minority language in contact with majority languages from two different language families: Indo-European and Finno-Ugric (Ylikoski 2009: )
For several decades in 20th century, children were forcibly removed from their families and forced to live at residential schools

3. 5 = North Sámi

4. An ongoing language change: NPx is being replaced by ReflN
Two examples from Elle Márjá Vars’ novel Kátjá
NPx (possessive suffix, HIGH morphological complexity):
(1a) Kátjá... ollii latnjasis
Kátjá.nom reach.ind.pret.3s room.ill.sg.px.3s
‘Kátjá... got to her room’
ReflN (analytic construction with reflexive genitive pronoun):
(1b) Kátjá... ollii iežas latnjii
Kátjá.nom reach.ind.pret.3s refl.gen.3s room.ill.sg

5. WALS Feature 57a: Possessive affixes
North Saami

6. ReflN is not itself morphologically complex

7. Gen/Acc reflexive pronoun is something one needs for other purposes...
This pronoun does its expected jobs
aside from expressing possession
Pronominal use of reflexive pronoun:
Son ii orron
3s.nom neg.ind.prs seem.ind.prt.conneg
dovdame iežas speadjalis...
recognize.aktio.essive refl.acc.3s mirror.loc.sg
“She didn’t seem to recognize herself in the mirror...”

8. by contrast, is morphologically complex
NPx,
by contrast, is morphologically complex

9. NPx requires a large quantity of unique morphology
[N. Saami has 3 types of noun stems: vowel stems, consonant stems, and contracted stems]
NPx expands the paradigm of a noun from 10 forms to 91
see 81 additional forms for guoibmi “partner” on handout with forms involving NPx-unique morphology boldfaced
There are two full sets of 9 possessive suffix forms, one set attaches after vowels and one set attaches after consonants (compare Gen/AccSg with IllSg in handout)
NPx conditions unique changes in case endings: Illsg -i/-ii > -s-/-asa-; LocSg -s/-is > -st-/-isttá-/-istti-; IllPl -ide/-iidda > -idas-/-iiddás-
With NPx certain case endings have additional morphophonemic variants depending on the type of stem: LocSg, Com Sg=LocPl, AccPl=GenPl, IllPl
NPx conditions additional morphophonemic alternation in the stem, e.g. i ∼ á
NPx requires insertion of the possessive suffix inside the Comitative Plural ending

10. Morphological complexity in the face of intense contact
NPx is much more morphologically complex than ReflN
North Saami is under intense pressure from both Germanic (Norwegian and Swedish) and Finnish
Many North Saami speakers have reclaimed the language as adults
Language contact and 2nd language learners can lead to morphological simplification (Trudgill 2002, McWhorter 2007, Bentz & Winter 2013)
In this situation, there may be an advantage for the morphologically simpler form: ReflN

11. North Saami on Trudgill’s (2011) scale
Trudgill (2011) has a 6-point scale
1 = strongest trend toward complexification
6 = strongest trend toward simplification
North Saami receives a “4” due to:
small size
loose network
high level of contact
Expectation: Reduction in paradigmatic redundancy, loss of morphological categories compensated for by an increase in transparent analytical structures (like ReflN)

12. An example of an S-curve (cited by Blythe & Croft 2012)

13. Our S-curve is from this data
The S-curve in our Data
Our S-curve is from this data
Literary texts: 530,000 words, three age groups, two geographic regions
2,272 examples, full analysis by hand
The New Testament (1998): 136,522 words
1,530 examples, full analysis by hand
Newspapers: 10M words from three newspapers ( )
29,964 examples of words with frequency ≥5, partial automatic analysis, a lot of cleaning by hand
Total: 33,633 examples

14. Young
Mid
The S-curve: longitudinal data from literary texts, showing only anaphoric and endophoric use
Old

15. ☛ Is NPx more frequent with high frequency words?
Does frequency explain the distribution?
Expectation: High frequency words are shielded from the change, while low frequency words are vulnerable
☛ Is NPx more frequent with high frequency words?

16. No evidence that high frequency helps to retain NPx News data: Pearson's correlation = -0.14, p = , 95% confidence interval:

17. CART-analysis
“Classification and regression trees and Random forests”:
Optimal sorting of data
Results similar to regression, but appropriate for non-parametric data
Bootstrapping and measurement of variable importance

18. North Saami CART analysis: variables and levels
Dependent variable: PossCon (possessive construction)
NPx (noun with possessive suffix), ReflN (reflexive genitive pronoun)
Independent variables:
Generation (of author)
Old, Mid, Young
PMClass (semantic class of possessum)
Abstraction, Body, Event, Human, Kin, Place, Property, Other
PMCase (case of possessum)
Acc, Com, Ess, Gen, Ill, Loc, Nom
PRCase (case of possessor)
Acc, Gen, Ill, Loc, Nom, Verb
Geography
East, West

24. Is nominative + possessive suffix evolving into a new Vocative case?
In preceeding statistics we excluded Exophoric Reference Nearly all examples of Exophoric use are NPx, and most of those are what we call “Exophoric Vocative”: Gula, mánážan. (KP2: 6) mánážan child.dim.nom.sg.px.1s “Listen, oh my (little) child.” This use of NPx is robust even in the Young generation
Note diminutive suffix
-š > -ž intervocalically

25. Can a possessive form become a vocative?
The claim that a possessive construction could develop into a vocative is not unprecedented
Michael (2013: 157) documents the use of the First Person Singular possessive construction with close kinship terms, as in ina “my mother” in Nanti (spoken in Peruvian Amazonia) as vocatives

26. Features of 1.sg NPx Vocative
Possessums are restricted to kinship terms, names, metaphorical names for people and names or words for animals that are addressed as if they were people
Possessums are nearly always Singular (plural is not attested in our data but known to occur rarely & in connection with religious rituals)
Possessums often have diminutive suffix and are often found in combination with an imperative verb form
All vocatives in our literary data have 1.sg reference; in the Bible we find 1.pl in Áhččá-met [father.NOM.SG-1SG.POSS] ‘Our Father’
Vocative meaning in N. Saami has been described since 1920s and is part of a larger trend toward reinterpretation of NPx in Uralic languages
The development of a Vocative could be further undermining the integrity of the NPx paradigm and thus further disadvantaging NPx vis a vis the ReflN construction
The tendency for inflectional forms to get “recycled” into new roles when paradigms are under pressure due to historical erosion is well documented (Lass 1990, Janda 1996)

27. 4 Ambipositions in North Sámi
1. a. miehtá dálvvi b. dálvvi miehtá
[over winter-G] [winter-G over]
‘during the winter’
2. a. čađa áiggi b. áiggi čađa
[through time-G] [time-G through]
‘through time’
3. a. rastá joga b. joga rastá
  [across river-G] [river-G across]
‘across the river’
4. a. maŋŋel soađi b. soađi maŋŋel
[after war-G] [war-G after]
‘after the war’
Adpositions always govern the GENITIVE case (not true in Finnish and Estonian)

28. Ambipositions: Adpositions that function as both prepositions and postpositions
Typologically rare phenomenon (Hagège 2010 )
Such adpositions are found in Finnish, Estonian, and the Sámi languages
There are more of them in Sámi languages
In Finnish and Estonian there are strong tendencies (e.g., time with preposition, space with postposition)
Distribution in Sámi languages has not previously been studied in detail
See table 1 on handout. It is rare for them to be extensive and systematic, but not uncommon for a language to have a few examples all over the world/the world over

29. Three hypotheses
We expect to find regional variation in use of ambipositions since N. Sámi is in contact with Finnish (predominantly postpositional) in East, and in contact with Norwegian/Swedish (prepositional) in Central and West regions
We expect position to be associated with differences in expression of meaning
We expect that a language with more ambipositions will use position in a more complex way

30. Ambipositions in North Sámi: Material
4 relatively frequent ambipositions:
miehtá ‘over’ (2 dimensions, time and space)
čađa ‘through’ (3 dimensions, time and space)
rastá ‘across’ (1 dimension, space)
maŋŋel/maŋŋil/maŋŋá ‘after’ (1 dimension, time)
2 databases:
Newspapers
Literature

31. Examples from newspapers
: 10M words
Automatic extraction found 7496 sentences with the 4 ambipositions
Goal: Tag by hand ≥100 examples for each position for each adposition
In all, 901 examples were tagged by hand for types of meaning expressed
See table 2

32. Distribution of adpositions in newspaper corpus (10M words)

33. Examples from literature
Examples extracted partly automatically, partly by hand
652 examples of the 4 ambipositions found, all tagged by hand
20 texts, three geographical regions:
West = S. Troms (contact with Norwegian and Swedish)
Central = Kautokeino (contact with Norwegian)
East = Tana (contact with Finnish)
New translation of the New Testament

34. Geographical distribution of literary texts
Tana
Kautokeino
S. Troms
Saami is the only minority language of Europe that is under pressure from majority languages from two different language families: Norwegian/Swedish/Russian (IE, prepositions) and Finnish (F-U, postpositions)
Geographical distribution of literary texts

35. Distribution of adpositions in literature

36. Distribution of adpositions

37. Distribution of adpositions
Х2=118, df=2, p<2.2e-16
Cramer’s V=0.49

38. A -ráigge ‘hole’ in North Saami grammar
A -ráigge ‘hole’ in North Saami grammar? The advent of a prolative case marker by Jussi Ylikoski (2014)
Words ending in -ráigge ‘hole’ have been attested in North Saami for about 200 years (also found in S., Aanaar, and Lule Saami): Biret livkkihii olggos duon din ođđa uksaráigge mii duoppe oidno. ‘Biret went outside through that new door that is visible over there.’ cf. Czech 7. pád: vyšla dveřmi This would make sense since a door is a type of hole, and there are many attestations of -ráigge with nouns that denote holes: Máhtte oinnii Máreha láseráigge. ‘Máhtte saw Máret through the window.’ cf. Czech dívat se oknem Cokka báddegeaži uhca ráigeráigge. ‘Stick the end of the rope through the hole.’

39. But it’s not limited to holes…
In a corpus of over 20M words, we find over 500 examples of -ráigge words, and some of the most common are:
luoddaráigge ‘along the trail’
geaidnoráigge ‘along the road’
johkaráigge ‘along the river’
Deatnoráigge ‘along the Tana river’
eatnoráigge ‘along the main river’
bálggesráigge ‘along the path’
Other examples include:
jiekŋaráigge ‘along the ice’, luhpporáigge ‘along the steep trail’, meahcceráigge ‘through the forest/wilderness’, šalderáigge ‘along the bridge’, šalkaráigge ‘along the trail made of packed snow’, guorbmevávdnageaidnoráigge ‘along the road for trucks’

40. So what are these -ráigge words?
Are they Noun-Noun compounds?
Are they adverbs?
Are they nouns with a postposition?
Are they nouns with a prolative case ending?
Ylikoski uses morphological, syntactic, and semantic arguments to support the hypothesis that -ráigge is a prolative case ending

41. Saami has lost a prolative case that can be reconstructed as
Saami has lost a prolative case that can be reconstructed as *-ko and we see traces in adverbials and adpositions (cf. Czech kudy)
case ending
where
there
beside
between
close by
behind
on the side
under
before
behind
above in
So it is natural for N. Saami to fill in the missing spot with a new prolative

42. Are -ráigge words Noun-Noun compounds?
Ylikoski has several arguments, but here is one: «Eiseválddit leat láhppon, ja go láhppo, de ferte jorggihit iežas luoddaráigge gitta dovdá fas» (Ávvir : 7) ‘The authorities are lost, and when one gets lost, one has to go back along one’s own path until one comes to a place one recognizes.’ ReflN iežas can only refer to the path (luodda) which can be one’s own; it can’t refer to luoddaráigge as if it were a noun since it can’t be *one’s own along the path

43. Are -ráigge words adverbs
Are -ráigge words adverbs? NB: This is the preferred solution in current dictionaries and grammars
One argument is that one cannot add other adverbs to these words: *menddo bálggesráigge ‘too along the path’ *hui láseráigge ‘very through the window’
Another argument is that you can supply attributes, demonstratives, and even relative clauses to these words, which one can’t do with adverbs:
‘that’
‘our’
‘good’
‘path’
‘that goes to the beach’

44. Are -ráigge words nouns with a postposition?
One argument against this hypothesis is that –ráigge does not allow metaphorical extensions, which are typical for postpositions
Here we can compare –ráigge with postposition bokte ‘through, via’
None of these formations are possible: *láhkaráigge ‘through the law’, *bušeahttaráigge ‘through the budget’, *ovttasbargoráigge ‘through collaboration’, *interneahttaráigge ‘through the internet’, *Kristusráigge ‘through Christ’, *sátnejođiheaddjeráigge ‘through the mayor’
But all of the above are possible combinations with postposition bokte ‘through, via’: lága/bušeahta/ovttasbarggu/interneahta/Kristusa/sátnejođiheaddji bokte

45. Are -ráigge words nouns with a prolative case ending?
The paradigm of bálggis ‘path’ with prolative forms

46. However, the prolative is certainly not a prototypical case
It is limited to nouns that designate concrete objects or places that can serve as natural paths, such as paths, rivers, roads, fjords, doors, windows, chimneys, and holes.
In some examples -ráigge does behave like a postposition
Ylikoski cites the famous words of Edward Sapir (1921): “All grammars leak”

47. Filling another “hole” in North Saami grammar: A dual for nouns: -guovttos (Ylikoski 2015)
Both pronouns and verbs have dual forms, but nouns don’t.
Here are the pronouns:
Nom.
Akk./Gen.
Ill.
Lok.
Kom.
Essiiva
1sg
mun mu
munnje
mus
muinna
munin
2sg
don du
dutnje
dus
duinna
dunin
3sg
son su
sutnje
sus
suinna
sunin
1du
moai
munno
munnuide
munnos
munnuin
munnon
2du
doai
dudno
dudnuide
dudnos
dudnuin
dudnon
3du
soai
sudno
sudnuide
sudnos
sudnuin
sudnon
1pl
mii
min
midjiide
mis
minguin
minin
2pl
dii
din
didjiide
dis
dinguin
dinin
3pl
sii
sin
sidjiide
sis
singuin
sinin

48. …and here is a verb, the present tense of viehkat ‘run’
mun
viegan
don
viegat
son
viehká
moai
vihke
doai
viehkabeahtti
soai
viehkaba
mii
viehkat
dii
viehkabehtet
sii
vihket
Dual pronouns and verb forms
refer almost exclusively
to human beings,
usually with definite reference
But North Saami nouns,
at least as presented in grammars, have only
singular and plural forms
Note that some Samoyedic languages have dual number for nouns

49. Number agreement in North Saami
SG: Bárdni lea lohkamin. [Boy.NOM.SG is.3SG reading] ‘The boy is reading’ PL: Bártnit leat lohkamin. [Boy.NOM.PL are.3PL reading] ‘The boys are reading’
DU:  
Bártnit leaba lohkamin.
[Boy.NOM.PL are.3DU reading]
b. Guokte bártni leaba lohkamin.
[ Two.NOM boy.GEN.SG are.3DU reading]
c. Bártniguovttos leaba lohkamin.
[Boy.GEN.SG-two are.3DU reading]
‘The two boys are reading’

50. Why -guovttos looks like a dual for nouns: It can be used in various case forms
NOM subject: Mánáguovttos leaba skuvllas ‘The two children are at school’
GEN possessor: Mánáguoktá váhnemat leaba barggus ‘The parents of the two children are at work’
GEN with postposition: Mánáguoktá duohken lea heasta ‘There is a horse behind the two children’
ACC direct object: In oainne mánáguoktá ‘I don’t see the two children’
LOC possession: Mánáguoktás leat sátnegirjjit ‘The two children have dictionaries’
ILL indirect object: Oahpaheaddji attii mánáguoktái sátnegirjjiid ‘The teacher gave the two children dictionaries’
COM: Maid mii galgat dahkat dáinna mánáguoktáin? ‘What should we do with those two children?’

51. Why -guovttos looks like a dual for nouns: It resists plural
dát amerihkálaš dánsuguovttos ‘the American dancepair’ ??dát englándalaš dánsuguoktát ‘the English dancepairs’ Váhnenguovttos galgaba deaivvadit oahpaheddjiin. ‘The parent-pair should meet with the teacher’ Buot váhnemat galget deaivvadit oahpaheddjiin. ‘All parents should meet with the teacher’ ??Buot váhnenguoktásat galget deaivvadit oahpaheddjiin. ‘All parent-pairs should meet with the teacher’

52. So what is happening in North Sámi:
An analytic possessive construction is overtaking synthetic possessive suffixes
Remaining 1sg possessive suffix use is being reinterpreted as a vocative case
Distribution of adpositions is heavily influenced by contact languages
Prolative case
Dual number for nouns