On the Expression of Spatial Relations in a Northern Russian Dialect

The paper reports new fi ndings concerning the expression of spatial relations in the archaic Northern Russian dialect spoken in the villages Tineva and Vadyuga in the upper reaches of Pinega river (Verkhnetoemsky district, Arkhangel’sk region) as compared with other Russian dialects and Modern Standard Russian based on the data of 14 speech corpora. The study shows that the Upper Pinega dialect still preserves some obvious traces of the Old Russian system (gradually decaying under the infl uence of Modern Standard Russian) in the way it expresses meaning of place and direction. Namely, in contrast to other Russian dialects and Modern Standard Russian it much less frequently (two to four times) utilizes adverbs tuda ‘to that place’ and syuda ‘to this place’ substituting them with the adverbs tam, tut, zdes’ and etto, which usually mean ‘in this/that place’ in other Russian idioms. The meaning of direction can also be expressed in the Upper Pinega dialect by means of the prepositional (locative) case of a noun instead of the accusative one common to other Russian language systems.