ИСТИНА

Among ca. 1250 occurrences of loan Russian nouns in the INEL Kamas corpus, 255 represent plural forms. Of those plural forms, 206 behave quite straightforwardly, attaching a Kamas plural to a more or less direct rendering of the Russian stem, with main stress preserved (and secondary stress on the suffix). In the majority of cases, the standard Kamas ʔi (* jəʔ) plural is used. The other plural marker, zaŋ, appears expectedly in the possessive declension. It should be noted that even here the shape of the noun is not always identical to Russian, since voiceless obstruents regularly undergo intervocalic voicing in Kamas. The remaining cases are more intricate. In 25 cases, it is undoubtedly the Russian plural form which additionally takes a Kamas plural: ăgurcɨ́-ʔi [cucumber.PL-PL] (Rus. oguréc, pl. ogurcý). Several words are attested in Russian plural without any Kamas marking; all except one also appear in the corpus with Kamas plural or both. The more interesting class is represented by words whose stem is not identical either to SG or to the PL form of Russian. The stem is undoubtedly Russian plural, as can be seen from stem alternations and/or from the position of stress: čólă-ʔi [bee.PL-PL] (Rus. pčelá, pl. pčóly). However, the final ɨ vowel of the PL is not preserved (unlike in ăgurcɨ́-ʔi above), and it is substituted not with the common schwa, but with an ă unexpected in non-first syllables in native Kamas items. Thus the interaction of two morphological systems creates forms which cannot be fully accounted for in native terms of either system. Stress and vowel quality seem both to play a role.