Variation of Clausal Negation in Insular Estonian Subdialects: Inherited Patterns and Syntactic Change

The article focuses on diachronic change of clausal negation in nonstandard insular varieties which constitute the westernmost area of North Estonian dialects. While contemporary North Estonian varieties display, as a rule, a simple and historically eroded negation system with an uninflected auxiliary, the Insular subdialects have preserved a different past-tense negative auxiliary until very recently. Presumably, the inherited default pattern for both present- and past-tense clausal negation originally involved a connegative form of the main verb that is unmarked in most Finnic varieties, whereas the negative auxiliary would be inflected for person and number. In contemporary data, the morphosyntax of basic clausal negation in nonstandard varieties is influenced by secondary patterns that are characteristic of Standard Estonian. The data are drawn from the Muhu (historically German Mohn) subdialect, which manifests the overlapping of inherited and secondary negation patterns. Recently, it has been shown that the increased use of compound past-tense forms in Insular subdialects differs from other North Estonian varieties, possibly due to German influence. This correlates with the use of certain negative clause types. Although it is difficult to find evidence of the direct involvement of language contact in the development of clausal negation in Insular Estonian, the synchronic variation indicates the morphosyntactic sphere of significant typological changes in negation over a long period. A more detailed analysis shows that the contrast between local variation in Insular Estonian, inherited Finnic, and, more broadly speaking, Uralic constructions, highlights those grammatical categories involved in long-term language change. While the negative auxiliary has preserved its primary semantic function, the marking of other grammatical properties within the negative phrase is more prone to change. The main hypothesis of this article is that variation in the investigated varieties shows that the abundance of parallel morphosyntactic patterns in Insular Estonian subdialects originates in different strata of prehistoric Finnic and Uralic varieties.