Umlaut and Dissimilation in Male Names and Appellatives Ending in -ej Borrowed from Foreign Languages

Abstract

The article discusses the umlaut and dissimilation of male first names affiliated to a-declension ending in the palatal j and preceded by the vowel a. This is illustrated by the use of male names of foreign origin such as Matej, Sergej, Aleksej, Tomej, Andrej, Ptolemej, Pompej, Tezej to which a grammatical morpheme -em is added in the instrumental singular, whereas the possessive adjectives of these names are formed by the suffix -ev. Handbooks of Language Standardization adopt the rules of dissimilation/umlaut for common nouns, but not for first names. An umlaut is commonly used when male first names end in a palatal regardless of the vowel e preceding the palatal which requires dissimilation in monosyllabic and disyllabic common nouns. Therefore, dissimilation is generally not used with the listed first names. Such a linguistic situation in which dissimilation is not used regardless of the rule is compared with umlaut and dissimilation in appellatives borrowed from foreign languages also ending in -ej. However, notwithstanding the systematic enforcement of the no-umlaut rule when the vowel e precedes the palatal, in some cases, even with the appellative, it does not happen (i.e., sprej˃sprejem, temelj˃temeljem). Therefore, a research questionnaire was designed containing 21 male names or appellatives ending in -ej with the target form in the instrumental singular, one possessive adjective in the nominative singular, as well as three examples of personal names in the instrumental singular ending in -om. The collected data was then analysed with regard to the (non)performance of umlaut and dissimilation.  The analysis has shown the use of umlaut in the given examples, while dissimilation in two-syllable words is much less common.