I. P. Novak. Dialectal specification of Karelian material of P. S. Pallas’s dictionary

Introduction. A unique source for the study of the historical dialectology of the Karelian language from the moment of the formation of its main dialect areas until the beginning of their research in the middle of the XIX century is old-written monuments such as dictionary entries and translations of texts of spiritual content. This article is the first attempt to analyze and identify the dialectal features of the Karelian language material presented in two parts of the Comparative Dictionary of All Languages and Dialects by P. S. Pallas, to determine the possible geographical localization of its sources.
Materials and Methods. The object of the study was 479 lexemes “Korela way” and 275 lexemes “Olonets way” written down in Cyrillic symbols. To determine their dialectal affiliations, they were analyzed using modern dialectal data on 21 Karelian sub-dialects of Karelia and Central Russia from the “Contrastive onomasiological dictionary of the Karelian, Veps and Sami languages”. The study was based on the use of the philological and the comparative historical methods. As all the above-listed materials were uploaded as separate dictionaries to the LingvoDoc linguistic platform, it became possible to apply the cognate analysis tool to them.
Results and Discussion. The results of the study confidently point to the Karelian-Proper origin of the material in the “Korela” part and the Livvi origin of the material in the “Olonets” part of the dictionary, as evidenced by vivid phonetic, phonological, morphological, and lexical dialectal markers. Noteworthy is the obvious dialectal heterogeneity of the sources of the “Korela” glossary, where many concepts are supplied with several matches containing some differential features of various Karelian-Proper dialects. Comparison against data from modern Karelian dialects permitted the presumable source sub-dialects to be identified.
Conclusions. Judging by some specific features identified in the “Olonets” part of the dictionary, the data therein can be traced to south-eastern sub-dialects of the Livvi supradialect. Considering the scope of dialectal markers overlap with data from modern Karelian-Proper sub-dialects, “Korela” material most often shows coincides with sub-dialects of the Tunguda-Kem’ and Padany-Myanduselga ranges and with the sub-dialects of Karelian spoken in Central Russia. A valid assumption would be that the language material for the dictionary was collected in the immediate vicinity of the administrative centers of the Olonets, Kem’, and Povenets Uyezds of the Olonets Viceroyalty. More studies are needed to specify the geographic ranges of sub-dialects in Central Russia more precisely.

Keywords: Karelian language, P. S. Pallas, dictionary, old-written language heritage, supradialect, dialect, sub-dialect, dialectal marker

Acknowledgments: The paper was prepared within state assignment of Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The work on the introduction and processing of dictionaries on the LingvoDoc platform was supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 20-18-00403 “Digital description of dialects of the Uralic languages based on big data analysis”.

For citation: Novak IP. Dialectal specification of Karelian material of P. S. Pallas’s dictionary. Finno-ugorskii mir = Finno-Ugric World. 2024;16;1:33–49.(In Russ.). DOI: 10.15507/2076-2577.016.2024.01.33-49.