Non-Urmi North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic varieties in the village of Urmiya, Russia: Distinctive features of phonology and morphology

Abstract The paper discusses North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) varieties spoken in the village of Urmiya in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, where Assyrians constitute the majority of the population. The Christian Urmi dialect is the dominant NENA variety in the village. We focus on non-Urmi varieties represented in the village, specifically on the variety spoken by the so-called šapətné Assyrians. Although its name suggests a relation to the village of Shapat in the Hakkari region of southeastern Turkey, we argue that in Urmiya, the ethnonym šapətné has likely become an exonym used by the Urmi Assyrians to refer to Assyrians of varying origin from southeastern Turkey. We discuss the sociolinguistic composition of the village, as well as the distinctive phonetic and morphological features of the variety spoken by the šapətné against Christian Urmi and other relevant NENA dialects. We identify northern Hakkari varieties and the Van dialect as closest to the major non-Urmi varieties of Urmiya.