The first steps towards the first-order politeness research in Udmurt

ПЕРВЫЕ ШАГИ В ИССЛЕДОВАНИИ ВЕЖЛИВОСТИ ПЕРВОГО ПОРЯДКА В УДМУРТСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

Настоящее исследование является продолжением моей диссертации, написанной на кафедре Финно-угорской филологии Университета Сегеда. В статье я не анализирую выражение вежливости, как это делалось в диссертации, поскольку я включаю ответы носителей языка. Они выражают собственные идеи относительно различных ответов, полученных мной в ходе выполнения диссертации. Исследование основано на интервью, проведённых с десятью носителями удмуртского языка. Эти респонденты представляют не только различные возрастные категории, но и имеют другие особенности: говорящие на южных и северных диалектах, студенты и преподаватели Удмуртского государственного университета, как минимум два года (на момент проведения интервью) живущие за рубежом носители языка. Во время интервью предполагалось выполнить три основных задания: в первом они должны были выразить свое мнение об ответах, полученных ранее в различных ситуациях выражения вежливости, во втором нужно было сгруппировать ответы на основании того, какие из них могут принадлежать одному и тому же говорящему, и в последнем были показаны правильные группы ответов, и респонденты должны были определить возраст, пол, диалект и происхождение говорящего. Их ответы могут быть полезными для подтверждения результатов моего предыдущего исследования и для раскрытия новой перспективы в исследовании, поскольку носители языка видят малейшие различия, которые могут быть упущены людьми, не являющимися носителями. Исследование состоит из двух основных частей. В первой части носители языка выражают свои мысли относительно ответов в конкретных ситуациях, а во второй части они определяют возраст, пол, диалект и происхождение носителей на основе их ответов. В первой части ответы обычно совпадали друг с другом, но интерпретация использования неочевидного прошедшего времени удмуртского языка привела к значительному противоречию в этом исследовании. Как и ожидалось, некоторые из говорящих указали, что использование неочевидного прошедшего времени делает предложение более вежливым, но другие респонденты указали обратное, потому что в их интерпретации это означает, что говорящий старается избежать ответственности, используя эту временную форму. Из второй части исследования чётко видно, что не существует возрастной, гендерной, диалектной или географической группы говорящих, которую можно было бы легко выявить по данным ответам, и говорящие в основном, но не исключительно, использовали стереотипы для идентификации. В результате их ответы были примерно такими же точными, как и слепое предположение.

Ключевые слова: современный удмуртский язык, вежливость первого порядка, социопрагматика.

Introduction

I already invested some years into researching politeness in the Udmurt language. One of the main reasons behind this is that I wanted to do my research on a topic which lacks the attention of researchers of Uralic studies and the speakers can actually benefit from it in their lives. Politeness research fitted the picture perfectly, as the Finno-Ugric languages spoken in Russia are not really researched from a sociopragmatic point of view, but this kind of research would be very beneficial. The reason behind this latter one is that the speakers of the Udmurt language are more and more exposed to international communication, as they are the most visible minority language in Russia [22]. To be successful in international communication it is inevitable to know and understand the norms of the participants. Someone can try their best to be as polite as possible, but the concept of politeness can be different in different cultures, and these differences can lead to misunderstandings. One of the examples I often mention as I experienced it for myself is related to Hungarian language. In Hungarian it is quite common that at the end of an e-mail people write Elore is koszonom a segitsegetl 'Thank you for your help in advance'. The reason behind this is that the speaker wants to show that he/she is thankful for the attention paid to him/her, no matter if the other person is capable to helping or not. However, for other speakers, this can sound like an obligation to him/her as I already said thank you for it. Which means that although I wanted to be very polite, I turned out to be impolite in the situation. This is a good example, because it perfectly shows that how small things in our speech can lead to misunderstandings.

Earlier I dealt with second-order politeness research. This means that in my research I collected data from native speakers and based on their answers I tried to find out on my own what could be the logic behind their answers, based on assumptions I could make. I was interested in four speech acts: negative responses, apologies, responses to compliments and requests. The climax of that research was my dissertation. This present research is the continuation of that. I thought that the next step that should be taken in my research is moving on towards first-order politeness. This means that in this research I cooperated with native speakers who helped my work with their explanations of the situations. A research of this kind is perfect to support the theses I made based on the results or to put them in another perspective I, as a non-native speaker of the language, would not have thought about. This present study is meant to be the first step towards this transition. I focused on two points: on the one hand I am interested in how people would interpret answers that are specially selected: e.g. it has code-switching, the answer was quite different from the other answers, it has or could have special word forms in them. On the other hand I was interested if there is a group of speakers that can be easily identified by their way of speaking, because it can show if there is a specific social group of the speakers that would require special attention, and which could be used as a control group in another research, as they would be the ones to which the other groups could be compared.

This study built up in the following way: after the introduction I write about the theoretical background of the research, which is followed by the presentation of the informants I worked with and the questionnaire I used during my data-collection. After that, I discuss the results I got in the different tasks, and I the explanations given by the informants. These answers are grouped into two categories: in the first one I write about those explanations not having any stereotypical background and then the ones that are based on them. In the last section I summarize the results.

Theoretical background

In this section I will discuss three topics: first I will discuss how the politeness is defined from a sociopragmatic point of view, after that I will discuss what is meant by apologies (as the situations I used in my research belong to this speech act), and finally I will discuss the topic of first-order politeness research.

In the case of the politeness research there are two main theories that are considered as the starting point of this research field: one of the is the connected to the name of Leech [17] who based his theory on Grice's [8] maxims and the other one is the theory of Brown and Levinson [2] who based their theory on the face theory of Goffman [6]. According to the former one, we are talking about politeness in those cases when the speaker does not obey at least one of the Maxims, because this way he/she tried to avoid the other person to be hurt. In the case of the latter the starting point is that speaker has two faces: a positive one, and a negative one. The positive face represents that the person wants to be appreciated for what he or she has done, and the negative one represents that the person wants to act independently based on his or her own will. In those cases, when the speaker person doesn't act on his/her own will, or the other shows a negative attitude towards his/her actions, we are speaking about face threatening acts. We are talking about politeness when the speaker tries to minimize the threat towards the face of the other person even by exposing his/her own face to a threat. The theory that was introduced by Brown and Levinson [2] was amended later by one of the biggest critics of this theory, Foley [5] who wrote that it is important in these situations that both participants of the interaction should feel appreciated. This is an important remark, especially in the case of the situations in which the speakers apologize, as in those cases the speaker needs to protect rather his own face then the other person's. This amendment will actually have a really important role in the interpretation of these situations.

The apology is categorized as an expressive by Searle [23]. According to him we are talking about apology when the speaker carries about an action that is evaluated by the other in a negative way, so the speaker expresses his/her regret. By this definition it is also visible that the apology is a reaction to a given situation. Later Leech [17] defined the apology in the following way: the aim of the apology is to maintain the harmony between the participants of the interaction and it is carried out by an action which is profitable for the listener on the expense of the speaker. Seventeen years later Marquez Reiter [18] put this definition in another way and defined apology as an action which protects the face of the listener and threatens the face of the speaker. Holmes [11] discussed a special trait of the apologies: although the addressee of the apology is the listener, as he/she is the one having a negative attitude towards the action that was carried out, but the person, whose face is being protected from the threat is the speaker as he/she is the one whose action is evaluated in a negative way. The last theory that I mention in this study in connection with apologies is the one connected to the name of Goffman [7]. According to him, the apologies belong to two main categories: there are ritual compensations and substantive compensations. The former one is used in those cases, when the loss of the listener is virtual/theoretical, and expressing our regrets is enough to restore the harmony between the speaker and the listener, and the latter one is used, when the speaker suffers a real life loss, and verbal compensation is not enough.

Last but not least I would like to discuss first-order politeness research. As I mentioned it above the main difference between the second- and the first-order politeness is that in the former one the researcher tries to draw conclusions based on his/her own knowledge about the language use, while in the latter one the researcher works together with native speakers to analyze how politeness works in the researched language. Each one has its own benefits: native speakers have much more experience in their language use, therefore they understand minor differences in meanings that could be easily floated by a non-native speaker researcher, but at the same time coming from a different culture can bring new perspectives into examining the language.

These two types of research were differentiated for the first time by Watts et al. [27]. The starting point for the differentiation could have been the emic-etic theory by Pikes [21] or Harris' [9] theory about emic and etic opposition. The common point of these two theories is that there are the emic elements that somehow can be related to a given group, they are familiar for them, and there ate the etic element which cannot be related to that group. Watts et al. [27] defined the first-order politeness as “the various ways in which polite behavior is perceived and talked about by the members of sociocultural groups” [27, p. 3], while second-order politeness as “a term within the theory of social behavior and language use” [27, p. 3], or as Haugh [10] have put it: first-order politeness is what is felt polite by the speakers of the language, and second-order politeness is what is considered polite from a scientific point of view. It was Eelen [4] who developed the theory even further. In Eelen's theory first order politeness has two categories: the way politeness really appears in the language (politeness in action) and the idea of the speakers how politeness should work (politeness in concept). In the same theory second-order politeness is defined as the branch that explains the results of the first-order politeness [4].

Methodology

The informants. Prior to the introduction of the informants, there are two things to be mentioned. First, at Udmurt State University, BA studies are not three, but four years long. This will be important in connection with the changes I carried out in the research that I will introduce in the next paragraph. Second, there is an informant that I refer to as the main informant. The reason for that is that (s)he answered the questionnaire I used for my dissertation, his/her answers were included in this research (more about that in the next chapter) and some of the informants were chosen based on his/her identity, as there is a person, who is closely related, and both of the teacher know him/her well.

My original plan for this research was to ask ten people: one person who took part in the research my dissertation was based on, one person who is closely related to the previous one, two teachers of the Institute of Udmurt Philology, Finno-Ugristics and Journalism of the Udmurt State University (they have met a lot of students, so they have a very good knowledge about how the speakers of the different dialects sound), two students of the institute speaking the same dialect as the first informant, two students who speak a different dialect and finally two native speakers of the Udmurt language living abroad for at least two years (mainly living abroad, but sometimes visiting Udmurtia was acceptable). Also, according to the original idea the research would have been carried out in person with the informants currently living in Udmurtia and the ones living abroad would have been interviewed online. Unfortunately, because of the well-known reasons (COVID-19 pandemic) there was no opportunity for the research to be carried out in person, so it completely happened online. This situation affected the choice of informants as well, but all in all it had a positive effect on my research. As it was carried out online, and the group of those speakers that are current students of the above mentioned institute and personally known by me well enough to contact them through the internet without being a complete stranger, the possibilities were highly limited. So, in the case of the four students the criteria for selection was changed: people who studied at least one year concurrently in the BA program with the main person of my research. This way I got a seven-year interval. This also meant, that the age of the possible informants has been shifted a bit to an age-interval I know more people from, so there was a bigger choice of informants. I also decided to go that way, that from both dialects (the main informant's own dialect, and the different one) should be represented by a female and a male informant. Even this way I ended up with one person who was not a well-known person for me, but he/she was not a stranger completely, as during my previous travels to Udmurtia I completed a linguistic course with her group, so we were acquaintances. The positive side of this change is that these four participants are closer in age to the main participant, so the way how they use the language is more similar than the original target group's. Although this way some informants are only former students of the institute, but for the sake of simplicity, I will still refer to them by the term students.

From a sociolinguistic point of view the following information can be shared about the informants:

• The representation of the genders is almost equal: there are 6 female and 4 male informants.

• The territorial representation is quite equal as well: my original plan was to include mainly speakers of the northern and the southern dialect of Udmurt, but at the end I ended up with five speakers of the Southern dialect, four speakers of the Northern dialect, and one person represents the central dialect, but that person's village is located quite close to the line where the northern dialect starts.

• Talking about the age of the informants: the age of the close relative, and the students are really close to the age of the main informant (twenty-one or three years plus/minus), the two teachers are both above forty. The two informants living abroad are between the age of the two previous groups.

• I asked all the informants about which language do they consider as native: Udmurt / Russian / Both / Other, and all of them chose Udmurt exclusively.

The last thing I would like to mention is that one of the participant's answers will be taken into consideration in the first two exercises but not in the third. The reason behind this, is that he/she said about the second exercise that it is not possible to be solved with the information provided (he/she was the only one who chose this option, but an answer like this is also helpful, so I took this one into consideration) and the third exercise is connected to the second, so a bit after starting the third one, he/she opted out from solving it. I did not want to include a half-solved exercise, so in the case of the third exercise I did not include his/her answers.

The questionnaire

The questionnaire that I used consists of three exercises. All the exercises contained the same five situations with the same twenty-five answers. Before discussing the exercises, I introduce the situations and the answers.

In my dissertation I examined four politeness situations: apology, request, negative answer and response to compliments, but in this questionnaire, I included five situations from the apologies. The situations are based on the ones that Szili [26] used for her research on Hungarian students, with some minor changes. The questions were translated by me and the translations were checked by Ekaterina Suncova, the Udmurt lecturer of the Department of Finno-Ugrian Philology of the University of Szeged. She is a native speaker of Udmurt and has a high proficiency in Hungarian. For each situation I had five answers. In all the situations the answers of the same five people were included. In every case one of them was the answer of the main informant, and the other four got selected because at least one of their answers were interesting in some way (use of Russian words, possibly impolite answer and the use of Udmurt second past), and I wanted to hear the opinion of native speakers about them. Udmurt second past is a grammatical feature discussed in multiple studies before [14; 15; 16; 20], but summarized in a few words: this is a past form that is mainly, but not exclusively, used to express that an action that the speaker has second-hand information about, when the person did not have control over the action that took place. This latter use makes it perfect to express politeness, as the speaker can use this to protect his/her face by emphasizing, that he/she did not carry out the situation on purpose, but by mistake.

The answers of five different people were included so the main informant of this research would not feel uncomfortable if he/she finds out that those are his/her answers that are in question, and this way even if (s)he realize, it just seemed like one those five. This way I could also guarantee the anonymity I promised in my data-collection for the dissertation. The inclusion of five people's answers resulted in reduction of the number of situations included in this research, because if all the situations would have been included, they could have been too much to handle for the informants. A total of twenty-five answers seemed like the sweet spot: enough for the research, but not too much for the informants.

To randomize the answers of the different situations I placed them into the list in a random order, and all the answers got a unique ID number, generated by a random number generator. The randomly generated numbers for the answers of the first situation were one-digit numbers, in the case of the second ones twodigit numbers and so on. The number of digits were growing on purpose, to help the informants in their second task (more of that a bit later).

As it was mentioned earlier, the research has been carried out online. The application of choice was Zoom for multiple reasons: easy to handle, I used it before, so the user interface was familiar, it gives the opportunity to record the interview, it is available on all platforms and in most cases it is available without the separate installation of the application beforehand. I contacted all the participants through social media and told them that I am carrying out research, and would appreciate their participation, that it would take about thirty minutes (a subjective approximation, but it did vary between thirty and sixty minutes depending on the informant), and they were informed that that it will happen in Zoom. If they responded positively then the person could suggest a time suitable for him/her. I tried to be as flexible as possible, but if the time did not fit at all, we decided on a time suitable for both of us. Before each interview a meeting had been scheduled in Zoom, and the link had been sent to the participant a few minutes before the interview started. When the connection was established, they were informed that the interview was going to be recorded, but no third person will have access to it. It was not a problem for anyone. Some of them asked if they could switch off the camera for the recording. In two cases they were asked to switch off the camera to maintain the quality of the voice because the signal of the connection was low. When the recording started they were informed that the research has three exercises, they will be introduced to them one by one, that there could be words that are misspelled, but I did not changed them for the sake of authenticity (except for one, but it will be explained in a footnote where it is discussed) and that they should not care about the numbers after the answers before they are informed about the purpose of them. After providing all the necessary information the screen got shared with them and this is how they had access to the research, only getting as much information as needed for the task. At the end the recording was stopped before the questions regarding personal data. This supported the anonymity of the participants.

After the explanations the research started with the first task. The five situations were shown separately. On every page there was a table, the situation itself was described on the left side, and the answers (with their randomized numbers) were listed under one another. The informants were asked in this task to read the situations and the answers, and then express their ideas about them on their own along the lines like: Which one would they use?, Which is the most polite one? Which is the least polite one? etc. After giving the examples they had the opportunity to talk freely about anything they felt important. After that if there was a feature I was interested in but was not mentioned by the informant they were asked about those directly. When they finished their explanation, they got access to the next situation.

These are the situations and the answers they were working with (here the answers are corrected from typos and mistakes, heavily relying on what the informants suggested as correct forms in those cases) with English translations provided.

1. Бускельдылэн пичи пиезлы кыл сётиды, солэсь математикая гуртысь ужзэ эскероды шуыса. Берло нош со сярысь воксё вунэтиды. Чуказеяз пичи пи дорады лыктэ но юа, малы дораз од пыралэ шуыса. 'You promised your neighbor's little child that you will check his/her homework in Mathematics. The next day the little child comes to you and asks, why didn't you come?'

• Копак вунэтиськем. Вождэ эн вай. (4) As I mentioned above the answers are from previous research. For the sake of the transparency of the text I did not write the ID of the people here, later where I describe the results this information will be provided. `I forgot it completely. Don't be angry. This is the closest translation to the Udmurt expression. The literal translation of the expression is 'Don't bring your green', that is connected to the green color of bile, that is often considered as the byproduct of anger.'

• Ой, мон воксё вунэти со сярысь. Вождэ эн вай, пожалуйста. Борысь мон одно ик вуо дорад. (6) 'Oh, I completely forgot it. Don't be angry, please. Next time I will definitely come.'

• Вождэ эн вай, чылкак йырысятым потиз. Жингыртоно вал мыным. (3) `Don't be angry, it completely went out of my head. I should have been rung.'

• Воксё вунэтиськем ук, малы ачид од ветлы? (9) 'I completely forgot it, why didn't you come yourself?'

• Извини монэ пожалуйста! Мон толон со сярысь воксё вунети. (7) 'Forgive me, please. I completely forgot it yesterday.'

2. Дышетисьты Тиледлы книга сётиз. Ти верады вал, книгазэ туннэ бергес берен берыктисьокды шуыса, но шодтэк-шорысь тодады лыктэ, книгазэ гуртады вунэтиллямды шуыса. Дышетись: Ваид-а книгаме? `The teacher gave you a book. You told him/her that you will bring back his/her book today, but suddenly you realize that you left his/her book at home. Teacher: Did you bring my book?'

• Вунэти сьорам басьтыны. Луоз-аурокъёс бере сое вайыны? (93) 'I forgot to bring it with me. Is it possible to bring it after class?'

• Вунэтиськем. Собере ваё. Вождэс эн вае. (55) 'I forgot. I'll bring it later. Lit. 'I'll bring it after that' Don't be angry!'

• Гуртэ вунэтиськем, чуказе ваё. (44) 'I forgot it, I'll bring it tomorrow.'

• Вождэс эн вае! Мон книгадэс гуртэ вунэтиськем. Яралоз-а аскы вайыны Тилед? (90) 'Don't be angry! I forgot your book. Can I bring it to you tomorrow?'

• Вождэс эн вае, но мон сое вунэти. Быгатисько туннэ жытазе яке урокъёс бере вайымы. Яралоз-а озьы? (19) 'Don't be angry, but I forgot it. I can bring it to you this evening, or after class. Is it okay that way?'

3. Ти одиг болъякты дорын официант As it will be visible at Picture 1, there was a typo because официант was misspelled as оффициант луыса ужаськоды. Одигезлы кунодылы уг яра, Ти солы мукет сиён ваиды шуыса. 'You are working as a waiter at the place of one of your relatives. One of the guests is unhappy, because he/she got a different food than the one he/she ordered.'

• Вождэс эн вае! Мон туннэ нырысети нунал ужасько. Мон али ни ваё тилесьтыд заказдэс. (277) 'Don't be angry! This is my first day working here. I'll bring your order right now'.

• Мар ке уг яра ке, быгатисько отьыны администраторез. Кулэ-а? (669) 'If you don't like something, I can call the manager. Do you need that?' Lit. 'If something is not liked, I can call the manager. Is it needed?' The only change I made in the questionnaire, is that I made it inambigous whether the past form of the Russian verb was used as расчитал or расчитала. It would have given away the gender of the speaker who gave that answer but in exercise 3 it is one of the tasks of the speaker to tell me what gender do they assume based on the answers. Grammatical gender is not a feature of Udmurt langauge (same for other Finno-Ugric languages), so it did not cause a problem at other places.

• Ойдолэ ми мукетсэ ваём. (369) 'Let us bring you another one.'

• Вождэс эн вае, али воштом сиёнэз. (634) 'Don't be angry, we will change the food now.'

• Вождэс эн вае. Сейчас мон тиледлы ваё мар куриды. (234) 'Don't be angry. I will bring you now what you asked for.'

4. Эшты, кудиз тодэ, Ти ноку но дырыз дыръя уд лыктиське шуыса, 30 минут чоже возьма Тиледыз. Эшты: Остэ! Вуид-а мар-а?! Мон тонэ кудняла возьмасько ни! 'Your friend who knows that you never arrive on time is waiting you for 30 minutes already. Your friend: Oh my God! You arrived, or what? I've been waiting for you for ages.'

• Тон тодиськодук кыче мон... Вождэ эн вай. Мон туж тыршо мукет пумиськонэ берамытэк вуыны. (5320) '' 'You know what I am like... Don't be angry. I'll really try my best to arrive on time to the next meeting.'

• Тон ведь тодиськод, мон дырыз дыръя уг вуилиськы шуыса. (2389) 'You know that I do not arrive on time.'

• Вождэ эн вай, тодиськод ук кыче мон. (9996) 'Don't be angry, you know what I am like.'

• Вождэ эн вай, пожалуйста. Мыным туж возьыт сомында возьмад ни. (8649) 'Don't be angry, please. I'm ashamed of how much you waited already.'

• Ой, ну, вождэ эн вай. Тодиськод, коня мон дасяськисько. (6387) 'Oh, well, don't be angry. You know, how much time it takes me to get ready.'

5. Ти - компанилэн кивалтисез. Тиледлы туннэ кенешен кивалтоно. 30 минутлы бергес вуиды. 'You are the head of a company. Today you must chair a meeting. You arrived 30 minutes late.'

• Вождэс эн вае. Времяез не расчитал(а)¹. (34643) 'Don't be angry. I miscalculated the time.'

• Вождэс эн вае, пожалуйста. Яра-а на собеседование ортчытыны? Мон дырме коня ке рас- читать ой кар. (89769) 'Don't be angry, please. Is it still okay to have the meeting? I miscalculated my time a bit.'

• Вождэс эн вае, бергес вуэме понна. Вазьгес оз пормы лыктыны. (82333) 'Don't be angry because of my late arrival. I couldn't arrive earlier'

• Вождэс эн вае. (77149) 'Don't be angry.'

* Вождэс эн вае, берами шуыса. Кыче ке уже шедиз, сое шедьтыны тырши. (82169) 'Don't be angry for being late. I happened to have some work, I tried to solve that.'

The second and the third tasks are connected to each other, as the purpose of both of them is to find out if it is possible to identify the speakers by their language use, but they take a different approach. In Task 2 they had to try to group the answers, and in Task 3, after revealing the correct way of ordering trying to define characteristics of the people who gave the answers.

1. Бускельлэн пичи пиез. 2. Дышетйсьлэн книгаез 3. Оффициант 4. Эш возьмаське 5. Кивалтйсь бере кыле

Picture 1 Task 2 of the research

Before introducing the informants to the second task, they were told that the numbers behind the answers gain their significance now. They were informed that the answers are from five different people, all of them gave an answer for each situation and the answers will appear in tables, the answers belonging to the same situation are in the same column, and their task is to pick an answer for each situation for each person. To put it in another way: they should make five groups of five answers. The number of digits of the numbers are there to help them, as they should pick their answers that way: every person should be matched with a one-digit number, a two-digit number and so on. To help them remember the situations they were provided with a small summary of the situations in order, located at the top of the page. They have some time to think about their answers, they had the possibility to make less than five groups if they are not sure about all of them, or they can say that based on the answers provided it is not possible to group the answers. To help the informants as much as possible when they told the groups they came up with, the answers they used before will be crossed. I was surprised in a positive way because I expected a few informants to opt-out from this task, but this happened only once, regardless the clarification that it is a valid option. This was the task that had the biggest variation in time, as some of the speakers answered quite quickly, while others needed much more time, but they were never rushed to finish it, they could use as much time as they needed.

Before showing them task three they were told, that in that part they will see what the correct groupings of the answers were, or to put it in another way, what were the answers belonging to the same person. They were comforted, that they do not have to worry whether they grouped the answers correctly or not. They got the situations and the answers in a two column five row table on separate pages for each person. In the left column they had the small summaries of the situations (the same ones as in Task 2) and on the right column the answers given by that person. Their task was to tell me, based on the answers, the gender and the age of that person, whether they are the speaker of the Northern, the Southern or the Central dialect of Udmurt, and the region (rus. район, udm. ёрос) of that person. They were also asked to elaborate on their reasoning. The twist in this task that they did not know about, that the only difference between these people was that they were from different regions, and therefore they were the speakers of different dialects, but actually they were all female, and the biggest difference in age was 3 years. I decided to go this way, because the dialect is the property that is the easiest to identify based on the differences in the vocabulary and in grammar. As the gender was the same and the age was almost the same for all of them, I had an easier task to identify, if there is proper reasoning behind their guesses, or they are just relying on stereotypes.

The analysis

Task 1