THE EXPANSION OF THIRD-PERSON PRONOUNS IN INGRIAN

This article presents a diachronic study of third-person pronouns' expansion in the Soikkola dialect of the Ingrian language (Uralic family, Finnic group). A preliminary analysis revealed that in modern Ingrian all personal subject pronouns tend to be explicitly expressed. This pattern is unusual for other Uralic languages, where pronouns are mostly omitted either in all three grammatical persons, or in first- and second person, in contrast to the third person. To clarify the genesis and to reconstruct the way of the presupposed expansion of pronouns, we compared modern Indrian transcripts with the earliest Ingrian text (19th century tale) and with the mid-twentieth century narratives (P. Ariste’s records). It was found out that in the 19th century Ingrian third-person referential pronominal subjects tended to be elided in the past tense, while first- and second person pronouns were explicitly expressed. The records of the mid-20th century reflected a similar asymmetry of the 1st / 2nd vs. 3rd person in the present tense as well. We can thus claim that Ingrian was indeed affected by a massive expansion of third-person subject pronouns during the 2nd half of the 20th century. The reasons for this phenomenon, apparently, are due to Russian influence through intensively increased contacts after the 1930s.