Morphological Homonyms in the Modern Mari Language

The subject of the study is grammatical homonyms in the modern Mari language. The scientific work was based on examples from the Mari Language Dictionary, the Mari-Russian dictionary, as well as data from a card file compiled by the author based on folklore, fiction, and periodical materials. Homonyms are found at almost all levels of the language: in phonetics (homo-phones), word formation, morphology. These can be not only words, but also word forms (suffixes and inflections), as well as phrases that sometimes belong to different grammatical categories. In the modern Mari language, homonyms can be divided into four groups: lexical homonyms, homoforms, homophones, homographs. The purpose of the work is to define morphological homonyms, to identify this group of homonyms, their features and number in the Mari language. The research method was the analysis of homonymous words based on lexicographic sources, as well as the method of analyzing scientific literature and the linguistic (descriptive) method. The result of the study was the conclusion that homoforms have become widespread in the modern Mari language. The homoform is not a permanent form, but a temporary one that exists until the next transformation. When they change, they already begin to differ from each other both in sound and form. Homoforms in the Mari language can be divided into the following groups: grammatical, lexical and grammatical.