WHY DO SOUTHERN RUSSIAN DIALECTS NEED NU PARTICLE?

Based on 16 dialect corpora of Russian the paper shows that there are four types of Russian dialects in respect of nu particle’s frequency: peripheral southern (Smolensk, Bryansk, Oskol) with nu more than twice more frequent than average Russian; northern (Arkhangel’sk) with nu three times less frequent than average; nonperipheral southern (Kaluga, Ryazan’) and western middle-Russian (Tver’, Pskov) similar to all-Russian. Futhermore, a negative correlation exists in relative frequency of initial particle nu and postpositive -to in Russian dialects: the more frequent is nu, the less frequent is -to; with the extreme points in south-west and north-east of Russian dialect landscape. In addition, in the south-western dialects dak particle tends to fill initial position in a phrase, while in the north-eastern idioms it may be placed finally as well as initially in an utterance. Thus, the south-western dialects prefer initial particles and free particles in initial position, whereas the north-eastern ones, on the contrary, are oriented towards the postpositive use of particles. The distribution revealed is conditioned by the specific intonational patterns inherent in different idioms: in the north-eastern dialects the final part of reactive utterances is associated with tonal movements whilst in the south-western ones — the initial part of it.