Veps language

Classification and history

Veps is the easternmost surviving member of the Finnic languages. Having developed in relative isolation, the language lacks several features found in its relatives, such as consonant gradation and the length contrast in consonants. Original vowel length has mostly been lost as well (with the exception of Northern Veps, which retains ii and uu). At the same time, it retains a number of archaic features.

The closest relative of Veps is Ludic, connecting Veps to the wider Finnic dialect continuum.

Veps shows also characteristic innovations, such as the vocalization of original syllable-final *l, and the expansion of the local case system.

Dialects

Veps shows substantial dialectal variation, affecting both phonetics and grammatical features. Three main dialect areas can be distinguished, the northern, central and southern dialects.

Northern

Northern Veps is spoken in the Republic of Karelia along the coast of Lake Onega to the south of Petrozavodsk. It is also spoken in a few small villages in Leningrad Oblast. Villages speaking Northern Veps include Shyoltozero, Rybreka and Kvartsitny, as well as the city of Petrozavodsk itself.

Characteristics of Northern Veps are:

Diphthongs are either preserved in their historical form (koume), or the first component is raised (jaug > d'oug).

Combinations of vowel + l are usually preserved (tal'v, velg, sild, sil'm, olda, sül'g, pölvaz), rarely vocalized to diphthongs: al > au, el, il, ül, öl > üu and ol > uu.

l, n, r are always palatalized before e in a non-initial syllable.

Word-final consonants are not palatalized after i, in for example the past indicative, the conditional and some case forms.

Long close vowels are retained, with *üü often diphthongized to üu (*püü > püu, contrast Southern and Central Veps pü).

j is fortified to d' word-initially, and medially after consonants (jaug > d'oug, jogi > d'ogi, järv > därv, agj > agd').

The last consonant of the stem is lengthened in the third-person singular present indicative (küzub > küzzub, tapab > tappab), and stem-final e becomes o (lugeb > luggob).

Only traces of vowel harmony are retained.

Central

Central Veps dialects are rather distinct from each other, compared to Northern and Southern Veps which are relatively homogeneous. They are spoken around a long line stretching from Tervenichey in the Lodeinopolsky District of Leningrad Oblast, to near Lake Beloye. The largest locality speaking Central Veps dialects is Vinnitsy.

Characteristics of Central Veps are:

Diphthongs are usually modified (sain > sein', söi > süi).

Combinations of vowel + l are vocalized to diphthongs in Kuya and Pondala (Belozersk), and usually preserved elsewhere (edel, sil'm, sül'kta, völ).

al and el are vocalized to ou or uu (el may also become üu) in the adessive and ablative case forms (talvel > touvuu or touvüu, mägelpäi > mäguupei).

Word-final consonants are palatalized after i (mänid > mänid', mänižin > mänižin').

In Kuya village, the vowel in the allative ending depends on the preceding stem vowel. After i the ending is -le (kanoile), after a it is -la (kalala) and after other vowels it is -lo (lebulo).

j is preserved in most dialects, mostly in the west (jono, agj). j is fortified to d' in Kuya (d'ono, agd'). It is fortified to g' in Pondala, Voylahta, Nemzha, and Shimozero (g'ono, agg').

Final obstruent devoicing in Kuya Veps (sanub > sanup, vellesed > velleset).

Unrounding of ü and ö in a few villages (pühä > pihä, pökoi > pekoi).

ä > e in Shimozero (päiv > pei(v)).

Vowel harmony is weakly preserved, most prominently in the eastern and south-western areas.

Southern

Southern Veps is spoken in the Boksitogorsky District of Leningrad Oblast, including the villages of Radogoshcha and Sidorovo.

Characteristics of Southern Veps are:

Diphthongs are monophtongized to long vowels, especially in non-initial syllables (pertišpäi > pertišpää, heboine > heboone).

Combinations of vowel + l are usually preserved.

al and el are vocalized to aa and oo in the adessive and ablative case forms (tal'vel > tal'voo, kezal > kezaa).

l and n are palatalized before e non-initial syllables when followed by a case ending or person-and-number ending. r is not palatalized.

Word-final consonants are palatalized after i, in for example the past indicative, the conditional and some case forms.

j is preserved (jogi, jüged).

Unrounding of front rounded vowels, ü > i (pühä > pihä) and ö > e.

The ending -i of the third-person singular past indicative is usually dropped, leaving palatalization of the preceding consonant (pästi > päst', väti > vät', kolkati > kolkat').

Vowel harmony is preserved well (höblötädä, pörüdä, södä).

Palatalization

In general, palatalizable consonants are palatalized allophonically before a front vowel. However, palatalized consonants also occur in other environments, especially word-finally or in word-final clusters.

There are some cases where the front vowel /i/ is preceded by a nonpalatalized consonant. In native Finnic vocabulary, this occurs where inflectional endings beginning with /i/ are attached to words with a stem ending in a nonpalatalized consonant. The consonant is not palatalized by /i/ in this case, but remains nonpalatalized by analogy with the other inflected forms. The vowel /i/ is backed to [ɨ] in this case, like in Russian, making it unclear whether the palatalization is a consequence of the front vowel, or the backing is the result of the lack of palatalization. Either analysis is possible.

Compare:

nor' /norʲ/ ("young"), genitive singular noren /norʲen/, partitive plural norid /norʲid/

nor /nor/ ("rope"), genitive singular noran /norɑn/, partitive plural norid /norid/ (or /norɨd/)

Russian loanwords have also introduced instances of nonpalatalized consonants followed by /i/, which are much more frequent in that language.

Vowels

The status of /ɨ/ is marginal; it occurs as an allophone of /i/ after a non-palatalised consonant. See above under "Palatalization" for more information. It does not occur in the first syllable of a word.

Vowel harmony

Veps has vowel harmony like many other Finnic languages do, but in a much more limited form. Words are split into back-vowel and front-vowel words based on which vowels they contain:

Back vowels: /ɑ/, /o/ and /u/

Front vowels: /æ/, /ø/ and /y/

However, the front vowels can only occur in the first two syllables of a word. In a third or later syllable, and also sometimes in the second syllable, they are converted to the corresponding back vowel. Thus, vowel harmony only applies (inconsistently) in the second syllable, and has been lost elsewhere. It is not applied for inflectional endings except in a few exceptional cases, but it is retained more frequently in derivational endings.

For example:

korged ("high", back-vowel harmony), genitive singular korktan, derived noun korktuz' ("height"); compare Finnish korkea, korkeus.

pimed ("dark", back-vowel harmony), genitive singular pimedan, derived noun pimeduz' ("darkness"); compare Finnish pimeä, pimeys.

hüvä ("good", front-vowel harmony), illative singular hüväha, derived noun hüvüz' ("goodness"); compare Finnish hyvään. hyvyys.

päiv ("day", front-vowel harmony), genitive singular päivän, illative singular päivhan; compare Finnish päivä, päivään.

pä ("head", back-vowel harmony), illative singular päha; compare Finnish päähän.

keza ("summer", back-vowel harmony); compare Finnish kesä.

vävu ("son-in-law", back-vowel harmony); compare Finnish vävy.

üldüda ("to rise", front-vowel harmony in second syllable, back-vowel in third); compare Finnish yltyä.

küzuda ("to ask", back-vowel harmony); compare Finnish kysyä.

Orthography

The modern Vepsian alphabet is a Latin alphabet. It consists of a total of twenty-nine characters: twenty-two are from the basic modern Latin alphabet, six are derived from basic Latin letters by the addition of diacritical marks, and the final character is the apostrophe, which signifies palatalization of the preceding sound.

Veps orthography is largely phonemic, and represents each phoneme with one letter. Palatalized consonants are single phonemes and thus the combination of a letter and a following apostrophe is a single combined letter for this purpose. The following table shows the correspondences between letters and phonemes:

Palatalization of consonants before front vowels is not indicated in the orthography, so that plain consonant letters can represent both types of consonant depending on what vowel follows. For a following letter ⟨i⟩ this is ambiguous, however: it can be preceded by both types of consonants, as noted above in the phonology section. Whether a consonant before the letter ⟨i⟩ is palatalized or not cannot be determined from the orthography and must be learned for each word.

Grammar

Veps is an agglutinating language, like other Finnic languages. The preservation of the Proto-Finnic weak-grade consonants *d and *g in all positions, along with the loss of consonant gradation, has made Veps morphology relatively simple compared to the other Finnic languages. There are fewer different inflectional classes, and inflections of nominals and verbs alike can be predicted from only a few basic principal parts.

Nouns

Veps has 23 grammatical cases, more than other Finnic languages. It preserves the basic set of Finnic cases shared by most Finnic languages, including the six locative cases. However, several more cases have been added that generally have no counterpart in the others.

Notes:

1. "V" indicates a copy of whatever vowel the genitive singular stem ends with, replacing a i, ä, ö, ü with e, a, o, u. For example, for the illative singular: mecan > mecha, noren > norehe, pöudon > pöudho, pän > päha. Note that the stem-final vowel itself can disappear in these forms, but the rule applies the same.
2. In endings beginning with s or z or a group of consonants containing s or z, this changes to š/ž if the last preceding vowel is i. This always occurs in the plural forms.
3. The partitive, allative, terminative II, additive II and prolative singular cases have longer endings that are used with a few frequently-used pronouns, ken "who" and mi "what".

Principal parts

Nouns have four principal parts, which all other forms can be derived from by replacing the endings:

Nominative singular: Forms no other forms.

Partitive singular: Forms the prolative singular. Can usually be formed from the genitive singular by replacing -n with -d, but some words have an unpredictable form with -t and a different stem.

Genitive singular: When -n is removed, forms all remaining singular forms, and the nominative and accusative plural.

Illative singular: Forms the illative, terminative I and additive I singular. The illative singular is predictably formed from the genitive singular stem, so it's not a principal part as such.

Partitive plural: When -d is removed, forms all remaining plural forms.

The illative singular stem is the same as the genitive singular stem, except that the final vowel is dropped in some cases. The vowel is retained if at least one of these is the case, and dropped otherwise:

1. The final vowel is a diphthong.
2. The nominative singular is of the form "consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel".
3. The genitive singular has 1 or 3 syllables.
4. There is contraction of a syllable in the genitive singular stem (compared to the nominative stem), e.g. nom sg vauged > gen sg vauktan (contraction -ged > -kt-), nom sg lambaz > gen sg lambhan (contraction -az > -h-).
5. The final consonants of genitive singular stem are ll or l'l'.

Thus:

If the genitive singular stem has h before the final vowel, then the ending -ze (-že after i) is used, and the vowel is never dropped:

Endings

Veps has innovated a special reflexive conjugation, which may have middle voice or passive voice semantics. The endings are as follows:

Infinitives:

First infinitive in -da or -ta (reflexive: add -s).

Second infinitive in -de- or -te- with inessive or instructive case endings.

Third infinitive in -ma- with inessive, illative, elative, adessive or abessive case endings.

Participles:

Present active participle in -i (stem -ja-). This is the same suffix as is used for agent nouns.

Past active participle in -nu (stem -nude-).

Past passive participle in -dud or -tud.

The original Finnic present active participle is falling out of use, and is preserved only for a few verbs, as -b (stem -ba-).

Pronouns

The personal pronouns are of Finno-Ugric origin:

Language example

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Kaik mehed sünduba joudajin i kohtaižin, ühtejiččin ičeze arvokahudes i oiktusiš. Heile om anttud mel’ i huiktusentund i heile tariž kožuda toine toiženke kut vel’l’kundad. (English version: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood).