Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 109. kötet (2013)
Tanulmányok - Simoncsics, Péter: Linguistic gestures: On negation, with special reference to the Permian languages 151
158 SlMONCSICS, PÉTER murt -a should be the proper counterpart of archaic ё- stem, since as a questiontag it has lost its prominent (initial) disposition to labialization and, moreover, there is no final -ё in Udmurt lexemes. So the question-tag follows the overall distributional pattern of Udmurt where a is the most frequent vowel in final position also. (3) The question-tag is attached freely to the verbal or nominal predicate independent of its tense. E.g.: Komi (//) ez-ёsim'it was rusty, wasn’t it?’ (ví) oz-ёsajdmi ’is he coming to his mind, he isn’t?’ Udmurt (xvii) тэпат evél-a [...] ta dise? ’this dress is mine, isn’t it?’ (Wichmann JSFOu 19/161-162; Csúcs 1990: 73) Ani, nuriied bérde-a та? ’Ani, your baby is crying, isn’t (s)he?’ (Asalci Oki: Pun'i ki'T; Csúcs 1990: 112) 3. Linguistic gestures in an areal context: stem-alternations illabial e-, ё-, i- ~ labial o-, u- as seen from a geographical perspective As stated above in addition to Permian, Mari also uses this alternation under similar conditions. The common starting point of the development in Permian and Mari negation is the negative stem with illabial initial *e- reconstructed for Pre-Proto-Permian, i.e. Proto-Finno-Ugric, probably even Proto-Uralic. Let us look at a schematic map of the cognate languages in question (Udmurt, Komi, Mari and Mordvinian): NORTH t Komi U WEST*— Mari Udmurt R —»EAST V 0 L Mari A G A L M В о E rdvini an N D
