TWO, ONE, OR HALF AN EYE? ABOUT THE NAMING OF PAIRED OBJECTS IN TATYSHLY UDMURT

The article discusses a strategy to label typically paired objects (eyes, hands, gloves, etc.) widespread in the Finno-Ugric languages, where a modifier with the meaning ‘half’ is used to indicate one object from a pair, and the singular form denotes a pair or several pairs. Relying on elicited Tatyshly Udmurt examples and sentences from the literary and Tatyshly Udmurt corpora, I show that this strategy is falling out of use under the probable influence of geographically close languages, such as Russian, Tatar and Bashkir. It is being replaced by a system in which the singular form is used both to designate a pair or multiple pairs and to pick out one of its elements. Some modifiers can be used to resolve this ambiguity. In sentences without any explicit reference to the number of objects relying on the context only may not be enough, which leads to interpretations that differ from those expected. In contrastive contexts, the use of modifiers in juxtaposed element groups is required.