Morphology

1. Changes in the word stem

Morphophonemic alteration used to be a characteristic feature of Finnish. Unfortunately, the insufficient Rufski material does not allow the researcher to identify the number of declension and conjugation classes. Anyway, the morphology is to some extent determined by phonological, derivational and inflectional factors.

1.1. Consonant gradation. There is no quantitative consonant gradation in Rufski. An example from our text material is almanaka 'calendar', almanaka (GEN), almanakas (INESS). There is still at least some qualitative gradation, e.g. in vesi 'water': the strong form veten (ILLAT) vs. the weak form vee (GEN).
1.2. Other changes. The change of type vesi 'water' vs. veten (ILLAT) was already mentioned. The fact that the noun nimi 'name' occurs in two various Nominative forms, the other being nime, shows that the mutation of -i- to -e- is not productive in nominal inflection. But in verb forms -a- mutates to -e-, e.g. in kasta 'to baptize' vs. kastetu (PASS PART PST & 2PST INDEF).

2. Nominal morphology

There are eight productive case forms in Rufski: Nominative (NOM), Genitive (GEN), Accusative (ACC), Inessive (INESS), Elative (ELAT), Illative (ILLAT), Instrumental (INSTR) and Translative (TRNSL). Historically, the ACC is the old Partitive (PRTV) form, and the INSTR combines in itself the forms of the former Adessive and Allative cases which became identical in form (provided that the language is a derivative of Ancient Finnish, as assumed). Additionally, the archaic Ablative (ABL) and Comitative (COMIT) forms are sometimes used. Normally, however, the Ablative is also formally identical with the Instrumental, i.e. Adessive = Allative = Ablative = INSTR.

Noun declension in Rufski

3. Verb inflection in Rufski

The finite forms of the Rufski verb can be analyzed as comprising two voices, active and indefinite-personal (ambipersonal). I prefer, however, an analysis of the indefinite-personal forms as active personal forms. There are two moods: indicative and conditional, and imperative, if it can be taken as a mood. Rufski has only one past tense, even though I have marked the occurrences in the text as "Second Past" (2PST). There is actually one archaic First Past tense form in the last sentence of the text (Hän rakshti oma duni). But it is hard to find anybody using it. The present tense forms are used also to refer to future events if the situation is perfective (non-past could be a possible label, then). The conditional has one present form and one periphrastic past form. In the past, the auxiliary ola in the conditional form is followed by the past participle form of the main verb (the past participle is identical to the Second Past).

The finite verb forms are inflected in 2nd person Sg. and in 1st person Pl.; the other forms are all alike. In some variations of Rufski, there are two present tenses, the Present (PRS) and the Progressive (PROG), and a periphrastic future (FUT) formed with the finite (present) form of the auxiliary tula ('come') and an inessive-like (nominal/infinitive) form of the main verb. Theoretically, there are also three past tenses, the (obsolete) 1st and the 2nd Past, and the Progressive Past, identical with the Present Progressive but used with a finite copula verb in the past tense.

NB! 1) Rufski appears to be divided into two dialectal variations, a more Russian influenced and a more English influenced one. Since the sample text obviously belongs to the first kind, there are no Progressive forms in it.

NB! 2) Similarly, there are no specifically Future forms in the sample text, although they are occasionally used also by Russian influenced speakers (to refer to states and repeated situations).

3.1. Indicative

3.2. Conditional

3.3. Negation