Kalmyk Tales Recorded by G. J. Ramstedt: the Frequency of Grammemes

Abstract

The article is devoted to the description of quantitative data of grammatical characteristics of word forms of the Kalmyk language based on the tales recorded by G. J. Ramstedt during his expedition to the Kalmyk steppe. On the basis of the program TextAnalyzer, developed in the framework of the research work at the Kalmyk Institute for Humanities of the RAS, the authors determined the frequency of occurrences of parts of speech, inflected forms of nouns, indicative mood, voice forms of verbs as well as the distribution of converbs and negation in magical texts. Preliminary results of the distribution of frequency characteristics of grammemes in the Kalmyk language are summarized in the table which shows the frequency of the word forms. The quantitative analysis suggests a particular ratio of different grammemes and specifics of usage of separate word forms in the Kalmyk language. In general, quantitative data indicate conditionality of usage of different grammemes depending on many factors: from historical to situational.