FUNCTION WORDS AND THEIR USAGE IN NORTH-RUSSIAN DIALECTS: LATEST OBSERVATIONS

The paper considers certain function words, i.e. particles, conjunctions and prepositions, found in one North-Russian dialect. The study is based on records made in expeditions of 2011–2017 to the village Tavren’ga, Arkhangelsk region, Russia. It is due to thorough analysis of these long-duration records that we can now define usage and functioning of quite short and subtle local function words. For instance, there has been discovered the particle lizhe, and its semantic and syntactic properties investigated. The particle is missing from standard Russian and appears to have no regular equivalent in it. Also, some conjunctions (chto) and prepositions (po) are regarded in great detail. Whereas they are treated as common for dialects and standard Russian, yet, in the dialect they reveal numerous differences in functioning, in terms of both semantics and syntax.