ПРИМЕНЕНИЕ ДИАЛЕКТОМЕТРИЧЕСКОГО МЕТОДА К КЛАССИФИКАЦИИ УДМУРТСКИХ ДИАЛЕКТОВ
APPLICATION OF DIALECTOMETRIC METHOD TO THE CLASSIFICATION OF UDMURT DIALECTS

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents a dialectometric analysis of Udmurt dialects. The cornerstone of the dialectometric method is a matrix of distances between settlements representing different dialects and subdialects, which are proportional to the number of linguistic differences between these settlements. This matrix is used to build a hierarchical clusterization and visualization of Udmurt varieties, where clusters of similar settlements and prominent isogloss bundles can be clearly seen. A comprehensive set of questionnaire data coming from a large number of settlements is a prerequisite for such a study. I use dialectal maps from the first three volumes of the Udmurt Dialectological atlas (the first volume appeared in 2009) as the source of such data. The results are compared to the most widely used existing classification of Udmurt dialects. While there are few high-order differences between the two (i.e. at supradialect and, sometimes, dialect levels), more inconsistencies appear when looking at them in detail. The visualization also clearly highlights some homogeneous areas of local continua (primarily in the Northern supradialect), which makes it difficult to arrive at a total and clear-cut classification. This can be explained in part by the fact that the Dialectological atlas contains almost exclusively lexical data, while the traditional classifications are mostly based on phonetic and morphological criteria. In any case, the observed divergence demonstrates the impossibility of creating a one-size-fits-all dialect classification suitable for any kind of linguistic research.

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