Morphological markers of Tatar sub-dialects of the Penza and Ulyanovsk regions

The study aims to interpret the morphological markers of Tatar sub-dialects in a specific area – the Ulyanovsk and Penza regions. These regions territorially belong to the area of distribution of the Khvalynsk, Melekes, Karsun, Kuznetsk and Temnikov sub-dialects of the Western dialect of the Tatar language. All the presented linguistic material is compared with other dialects and sub-dialects of the Tatar language and, if necessary, with other Turkic languages. The scientific novelty of our work is determined by the identification of morphological features that mark the language of the Tatars of the studied territory, i.e., the interpretation of grammatical features inherent in all Tatar sub-dialects of this area and distinguishing them from other areas of the Western, Eastern and Middle dialects. As a result of the work, it was established that, according to their part-of-speech characteristics, the Khvalynsk, Melekes, Karsun, Kuznetsk and Temnikov sub-dialects are close to each other; specific phenomena were recorded; features were discovered that are inherent in ancient written monuments, the Old Tatar literary language, as well as modern Turkic languages. The study is based on materials collected by the author as a result of expeditions in 2017-2019 to native speakers of the Western dialect of the above-mentioned regions.