О диалектной основе марийского букваря 1870 года [On the Dialectal Basis of the Mari Primer (1870)]

Abstract

This paper is a response to a discussion note by Yuliia Normanskaya about consonantism in the first Meadow Mari primers (1870 and 1873). The journal "Ural-Altai Studies" previously published a study of the grapho-phonetic features of their vocalism (Klyucheva and Normanskaya 2015) and consonantism (Klyucheva 2017). An article on consonantism was followed by a discussion note in the same issue of the journal (Normanskaya 2017). It contains a discussion of some of our conclusions, in particular: 1) some objections are raised against the compilativeness of the Primer of 1870; 2) the conclusion about the Morki-Sernur dialect in the Primer from 1873 is confirmed by additional argumentation. Besides, Normanskaya made a clear conclusion about the dialect basis in the Primer from 1870: it is identified as the Yoshkar-Ola dialect of the Mari language. But this conclusion cannot be accepted. The localization of the “Yoshkar-Ola dialect” ”over a wide area from Yaransk to Urzhum” and generally the classification of Mari dialects in the Normanskaya diagnostic table are doubtful; we also noticed incorrect dialectological data in it (especially significant for affricates). In sum, this was the reason for writing a detailed answer. This paper also provides arguments for our new decision that the dialect of the Primer from 1870 corresponds most of all to the Volga dialect of the Mari language. The authorship of the Mari primers of 1870 and 1873 is discussed, based on revealed new archival data, and some general methodological conclusions are made on the problematic point of dialect attribution of early Mari books.

Keywords

• mari language; mari dialectology; documents of mari literacy; phonetics; orthography; verb morphology