Diachronic Dialectal Classification of Mansi: Evidence from Basic Vocabulary

EasyChair Preprint no. 9012

Abstract

This paper deals with diachronic classification of Mansi dialect groups based on new resources. The previous research on this data was focused on highlighting the phonetic isoglosses between the discovered dialects, so now it is possible to compare the results based on phonetics with the results gained from lexicostatistics. This research aims to define the dialect groups of Mansi from the 18^th to 21^st centuries, based on the lists of basic vocabulary, using new expeditional and archival data published on the linguistic platform LingvoDoc and field materials gathered by the author. As a result, for the first time, lists were compiled of the basic vocabulary of seven archival and three contemporary dictionaries that became known to researchers in recent years, an appropriate questionnaire was also completed by a native speaker of Sosva Mansi. Judging by a comparison with the 19^th century data, the most distinctive dialect group is North Mansi, as it has retained many features from the 18^th century. Other dialect groups have not been so stable. In the late 18^th century there were dialects of the Perm province, although not homogenous enough as a group, and out of them the Kungur and Solikamsk dialects were closer to the Tavda (southern) dialect, which is known from recordings from the 19^th-20^th century. The eastern dialects disappeared at the beginning of the 21^st century. Judging by the data obtained from the last native speakers, the Yukonda (eastern) dialect shared 93% of basic vocabulary with the northern dialects.

Keyphrases: archival data, dialectology, lexicostatistics, the Mansi language, the Uralic languages

@Booklet{EasyChair:9012,
  author = {Idalia Fedotova},
  title = {Diachronic Dialectal Classification of Mansi: Evidence from Basic Vocabulary},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 9012},

  year = {EasyChair, 2022}}