Вопросы ономастики (Dec 2014)
On the Permic Toponymic Substrate in Mari El and in the Middle Course of the Vyatka River (In the Light of the Ethnic Interpretation of Archaeological Cultures). 2
Abstract
The second part of the paper continues the analysis of the substrate (pre-Mari and pre-Russian) toponymy of the Emanayevskaya and Kochеrghinskaya archaeological cultures area of the late 1st — early 2nd millennium AD (in the middle course of the Vyatka River and the territory of the Mari El Republic) in order to verify the hypothesis about the colonization of the areas in question by the ancient Permic (ancient Udmurt) people. In this part the author analyzes toponymic stems using the method of ethnic modelling of substrate toponymy based on the method of semantic modelling developed by A. K. Matveyev. The method applied in this paper consists in the isolation of typical differential stems used in the toponymy of the modern Permic languages and their comparison with the substrate toponymy of the studied area. This analysis confirms the suggestion made in the first part of the paper about the non-Permic origin of the majority of substrate place names of the Vyatka River and the territory of Mari El as well as of the Emanayevskaya and Kocherghinskaya archaeological cultures of the 2nd half of the 1st millennium AD. The mapping of the results of “Permic” ethnic modelling confirms the presence of a wide lacuna characterized by the absence of typically Permic differential stems in the area of the main remains of the Emanayevskaya and Kochеrghinskaya archaeological cultures. On the contrary, the major portion of the substrate place names on this territory have more affinity with the Volga-Fennic and, partly, with the Sami and Balto-Fennic languages. The author suggests that the population of the Emanayevskaya culture spoke an unknown extinct Finno-Permic language, being a Volga-Fennic one or a transitive language combining Volga-Fennic and Permic features, or a group of such dialects or languages. The article focuses on some phonetic characteristics of this language (group of languages) as reflected in the toponymy.
