Moksha language

Cherapkin's Inscription

There is very little historical evidence of the use of Moksha from the distant past. One notable exception are inscriptions on so-called mordovka silver coins issued under Golden Horde rulers around the 14th century. The evidence of usage of the language (written with the Cyrillic script) comes from the 16th century.^[7][8]

Indo-Iranian Influence

Dialects

The Moksha language is divided into three dialects:

• Central group (M-I)
• Western group (M-II)
• South-Eastern group (M-III)

The dialects may be divided with another principle depending on their vowel system:

• ä-dialect: Proto-Moksha *ä /æ/ is retained: śeĺmä /sʲelʲmæ/ "eye", t́äĺmä /tʲælʲmæ/ "broom", ĺäj /lʲæj/ "river".
• e-dialect: Proto-Moksha *ä is raised and merged with *e: śeĺme /sʲelʲme/ "eye", t́eĺme /tʲelʲme/ "broom", ĺej /lʲej/ "river".
• i-dialect: Proto-Moksha *ä is raised to /e/, while Proto-Moksha *e is raised to /i/ and merged with *i: śiĺme /sʲilʲme/ "eye", t́eĺme /tʲelʲme/ "broom", ĺej /lʲej/ "river".

The standard literary Moksha language is based on the central group with ä (particularly the dialect of Krasnoslobodsk).

Official status

Moksha is one of the three official languages in Mordovia (the others being Erzya and Russian). The right to one's own language is guaranteed by the Constitution of the Mordovia Republic.^[12] The republican law of Mordovia N 19-3 issued in 1998^[13] declares Moksha one of its state languages and regulates its usage in various spheres: in state bodies such as Mordovian Parliament, official documents and seals, education, mass-media, information about goods, geographical names, road signs. However, the actual usage of Moksha and Erzya is rather limited.

Use in literature

Before 1917 about 100 books and pamphlets mostly of religious character were published. More than 200 manuscripts including at least 50 wordlists were not printed. In the 19th century the Russian Orthodox Missionary Society in Kazan published Moksha primers and elementary textbooks of the Russian language for the Mokshas. Among them were two fascicles with samples of Moksha folk poetry. The great native scholar Makar Evsevyev collected Moksha folk songs published in one volume in 1897. Early in the Soviet period, social and political literature predominated among published works. Printing of Moksha language books was all done in Moscow until the establishment of the Mordvinian national district in 1928. Official conferences in 1928 and 1935 decreed the northwest dialect to be the basis for the literary language.

Use in education

The first few Moksha schools were established in the 19th century by Russian Christian missionaries. Since 1973, Moksha has been allowed to be used as the language of instruction for the first three grades of elementary school in rural areas, and as an elective subject.^[14] Classes in universities in Mordovia are in Russian, but the philological faculties of Mordovian State University and Mordovian State Pedagogical Institute offer a teacher course of Moksha.^[15][16] Mordovian State University also offers a course in Moksha for other humanitarian and some technical specialities.^[16] According to annual statistics from the Russian Ministry of Education for 2014-2015, there were 48 Moksha-medium schools (all in rural areas) where 644 students were taught, and 202 schools (152 in rural areas) where Moksha was studied as a subject by 15,783 students (5,412 in rural areas).^[17] Since 2010, the study of Moksha in Mordovian schools is not compulsory, but can be chosen only by parents.^[18]

Revitalisation efforts in Mordovia

Policies regarding the revival of the Moksha and Erzya languages in Mordovia started in the late 1990s, when the Language, and Education Laws were accepted. From the early 2000s on, the policy goal has been to create a unified Mordvin standard language despite differences between Erzya and Moksha.^[19]

However, there have been no executive programmes for the implementation of the Language Law. Only about a third of Mordvin students had access to Mordvin language learning, the rest of whom are educated through Russian. Moksha has been used as the medium of instruction in some rural schools, but the number of students attending those schools is in rapid decline. In 2004, Mordovian authorities attempted to introduce compulsory study of the Mordvin/Moksha as one of the Republic's official languages, but this attempt failed in the aftermath of the 2007 education reform in Russia.

Vowels

There are eight vowels with limited allophony and reduction of unstressed vowels. Moksha has lost the original Uralic system of vowel harmony but maintains consonant-vowel harmony (palatalized consonants go with front vowels, non-palatalized with non-front).

There are some restrictions for the occurrence of vowels within a word:^[20]

1. [ɨ] is an allophone of the phoneme /i/ after phonemically non-palatalized ("hard") consonants.^[21]
2. /e/ does not occur after non-palatalized consonants, only after their palatalized ("soft") counterparts.
3. /a/ and /æ/ do not fully contrast after phonemically palatalized or non-palatalized consonants.^{[clarification needed]}
   • Similar to /e/, /æ/ does not occur after non-palatalized consonants either, only after their palatalized counterparts.
   • After palatalized consonants, /æ/ occurs at the end of words, and when followed by another palatalized consonant.
   • /a/ after palatalized consonants occurs only before non-palatalized consonants, i.e. in the environment /CʲaC/.
4. The mid vowels' occurrence varies by the position within the word:
   • In native words, /e, o/ are rare in the second syllable, but common in borrowings from e.g. Russian.
   • /e, o/ are never found in the third and following syllables, where only /ə/ occurs.
   • /e/ at the end of words is only found in one-syllable words (e.g. ве /ve/ "night", пе /pe/ "end"). In longer words, word-final ⟨е⟩ always stands for /æ/ (e.g. веле /velʲæ/ "village", пильге /pilʲɡæ/ "foot, leg").^[22]

Unstressed /ɑ/ and /æ/ are slightly reduced and shortened [ɑ̆] and [æ̆] respectively.

Consonants

There are 33 consonants in Moksha.

/ç/ is realized as a sibilant [ɕ] before the plural suffix /-t⁽ʲ⁾/ in south-east dialects.^[23]

Palatalization, characteristic of Uralic languages, is contrastive only for dental consonants, which can be either "soft" or " hard". In Moksha Cyrillic alphabet the palatalization is designated like in Russian: either by a "soft sign" ⟨ь⟩ after a "soft" consonant or by writing "soft" vowels ⟨е, ё, и, ю, я⟩ after a "soft" consonant. In scientific transliteration the acute accent or apostrophe are used.

All other consonants have palatalized allophones before the front vowels /æ, i, e/ as well. The alveolo-palatal affricate /tɕ/ lacks non-palatalized counterpart, while postalveolar fricatives /ʂ~ʃ, ʐ~ʒ/ lack palatalized counterparts.

Stress

Non-high vowels are inherently longer than high vowels /i, u, ə/ and tend to draw the stress. If a high vowel appears in the first syllable which follow the syllable with non-high vowels (especially /a/ and /æ/), then the stress moves to that second or third syllable. If all the vowels of a word are either non-high or high, then the stress falls on the first syllable.^[24]

Stressed vowels are longer than unstressed ones in the same position like in Russian. Unstressed vowels undergo some degree of vowel reduction.

Morphosyntax

Like other Uralic languages, Moksha is an agglutinating language with elaborate systems of case-marking and conjugation, postpositions, no grammatical gender, and no articles.^[27]