Assessment of the Classification of the Northwestern Dialect of the Mari Language from the Perspective of Glottochronology

Abstract

Introduction. The classification of the Northwest dialect of the Mari language is currently not entirely clear. According to the Encyclopedia of the Mari El Republic, the “Northwest Mari language exhibits some features of both Hill Mari and Meadow-Eastern Mari languages.” However, G. Bereсzki believed that the Northwest dialect belongs to the Hill Mari language. The aim of the study is to analyze the linguistic similarity assessment of the language of the first Gospel created by Priest S. Bobrovsky (1821) and the dialect of the 20th century according to the data of I. G. Ivanov and G. M. Tuzharov, in relation to the Hill and Meadow Mari languages from the perspective of glottochronology. Materials and Methods. To assess the proximity of the Northwestern Mari dialect of the 18th–19th centuries to the Meadow and Hill Mari dialects, phonetic isoglosses and glottochronology were analysed. For this purpose, a glossed corpus of the first Gospel was uploaded on LingvoDoc, from which a concordance was created. Proprietary LingvoDoc programs were applied to it for comparative-historical analysis. Result and Discussion. As a result, it was found that in the 19th century, the first Northwest Mari Gospel showed a lexical similarity of 97% with Meadow Mari and 94% with Hill Mari. In the dictionary compiled in the 20th century, there was already significantly less similarity with both Meadow and Hill languages, but the same pattern persisted: lexically, the Northwest dialect in the 19th century and in the 20th century was closer to Meadow Mari. Kreknin’s and Platunov’s 18th-century dictionary practically matched the Meadow Mari book “Beginnings of Christian Doctrine...” created in the early 19th century, with only one diagnostic position showing double reflection. In the Gospel translated by Priest S. Bobrovsky, three positions already showed reflection typical of the Hill Mari grammar by A. Albinsky. Conclusion. Therefore, it becomes clear that initially in the 18th century, Northwestern Mari differed little from the Meadow Mari language, while by the 19th century, it had become much closer to the Hill Mari dialect. The materials of the article may be useful for specialists in the Mari and Finno-Ugric languages.

Keywords

• mari dialects
• northwestern dialect
• glottochronology
• phonetics
• classification of dialects