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The purpose of the present study is to summarize and interpret the lexemes of Baltic origin in Saami, in the context of Fenno-Saamic and Fenno-Volgaic relations. Our conclusion is that about 20% of lexical parallels between Baltic and Saamic from about 40 Balto-Fenno- Saamic comparisons are without the Balto-Fennic counterparts. It means that it is probable that the ancestors of the Balts and the Saami were in direct contact.
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The study deals with the topics of etymological analysis and brief nascence (consequently, a hierarchical position in the Baltic pantheon) of the theonym Chaurirari mentioned in Maciej Stryikowski’s work Kronika Polska, Litewska, Żmódzka i wszystkiej Rusi (1582). The one and only scientific examination of the issue was carried out by Vladimir Toporov. It must be stated with many regrets that tatpuruṣa composite Lith. *Kaur-aris ‘tawny tint (element of fire symbolism) horse deity’, reconstructed by the author of the hypothesis, is not acceptable due to reconstruction motivation of unauthenticated (in any written source of Baltic mythology and religion) Balt. *aris ‘horse’. Providing that non-existence of a horse-deity cult in Baltic and Slavic religious systems, save totemic vestiges, such an interpretation is doubtful in relation to mythological motivation. Being based on the new theonym etymology and analysis of the deity functions, a proposition has been made that Chaurirari could not be interpreted as ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. The lexeme may be correlated with nomen proprium (theonym) Kaukarius ‘ghats God’, which is mentioned in several Lithuania Minor lexicographical lexicons of the 18th century (Brodowski’s and Milke’s thesauruses).
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The history of the Czechs in the Middle Irtysh region is closely related to the history of P.A. Stolypin’s reforms of the late 19th – early 20th century. The evidence provided by the language conscious representations has allowed identifying the migration paths of the Czechs, as well as the places where they “exited” the European part of Russia and Europe. The paper traces the formation of the Czech dialect and its development in Siberia. It also underpins the thesis concerning the specific role played by interdialect and inter-linguistic interference in forming the sprachraum of the polyethnic region. The connection of interference and bilingualism has been demonstrated by the example of the development of the Czech dialect in the Middle Irtysh region. The paper also considers theoretical foundations of the research: different approaches to the problem of interference in linguistics, viewpoints on the connection of interference and bilingualism, the author’s point of view has been presented adequately. Based on the material collected by the author, it has been demonstrated that interference appears at all levels of the language system, being especially explicit in lexis. Lexis represents the “power” of the Russian language and of Siberian old-settlers’ dialects, which is reflected in direct lexical borrowings from the surrounding dialects and in adaptation (phonetic, grammatical, derivational, and semantic) of the Czech lexicon seen as particularly important.
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In addition to the references to Mackenzie mentioned in the first part of this paper, I found another one in Schurmann (1962, p. 13) that reads as follows: “In the late 1940s, an American named Mackenzie, then teaching in Kabul, was reputed to have come across some Mongol settlements in the Turkestan region. He made some photographs and compiled a small vocabulary. However, although he communicated his discovery to a number of scholars, none of his material has been published, to my knowledge.” This statement is also cited in Doerfer (1971, p. 228). It is to be hoped that this series of papers might lead to the discovery of Mackenzie’s photographs. Their localisation would be of indispensible importance for the ethnography, history and culture of the Turkic, Hazara and Moghol people of the northern part of Afghanistan. After writing this short introduction in the middle of 2014, the work had to be put aside due to other obligations. Not much new can now, after about four years, be said about A. F. Mackenzie. His second name was Franklin as it is stated by Dupree (1973, p. 74) who knew Mackenzie from their common time in Afghanistan where both seem to have worked for or been in contact with an American organization called Meridian.
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This paper reconstructs the Khitan vowel system by analyzing materials concerning the Khitan Small Script. First, the approximate phonetic values of the graphemes were determined by systematically comparing Khitan transcriptions of Chinese words with their original Chinese sounds and by analyzing Khitan rhymes. Next, an exhaustive survey of two adjacent graphemes in a corpus elucidated the script’s spelling rule and thus were the accurate phonetic values determined. Finally, a comparative study based on the reconstructed values established regular vowel correspondences between Khitan and Mongolian. In conclusion, the author presents twelve Khitan vowel phonemes that are distinguished by four vocalic features.
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In this article I am surveying several possible loanwords from Koreanic languages (probably Koguryǒ and/or Bo-hai) into the Khitan language. Apart from explaining the origin of some of the Khitan words that have no Mongolic, other Central Asian, or Chinese etymologies, I will demonstrate that these loanwords can shed light on the decipherment of Khitan characters with unknown readings, and therefore advance the reconstruction and reading of the Khitan language itself.
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The research reported here is based on dialectological fieldwork among Lebanese Jews from 2006 to 2015. In the 20th century most Jews of Beirut lived in the Jewish Wādi ˀAbu Žmīl quarter, an area measuring 300 metres by one kilometre. Very few families lived in other parts of the city. The Beirut community consisted of Jews originally Lebanese, Syrian Jews from Aleppo and Damascus, numerous Ashkenazi Jews, Jews originally Maghrebi, some Kurdish Jews, Jews from Turkey and Greece, especially Salonika, and Sephardi Jews originally from Andalusia who reached Beirut after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. The Beirut Jews’ dialect differed from that of the Sidon Jews, but in many respects also from the dialects of the Beirut Arabs, lacking highly typical phenomena such as the Imāla. Like diverse other Modern Judeo-Arabic dialects, this one embraces the vast array of vocabulary used in Jewish life. At its height Beirut’s Jewish community numbered several thousands, but over time it dwindled and disappeared – together with its dialect. Most of its speakers left, many of them for Israel, where the fieldwork was undertaken.
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The paper presents the results of a study of metaphorical vocabulary with the meaning of assessment of social change. The analysis involves common Russian vocabulary as well as the material of Russian dialects. Previously unpublished expeditionary records of dialect speech are introduced into academic discussion. Special attention is paid to the onomasiological analysis of linguistic facts. Four groups of motives are revealed: the motives of destruction (loosening, turning inside out, and death); spatially dynamic motives (moving away and disappearance); the motives of qualitative changes (the loss of one’s own properties and status, the acquisition of similarity with representatives of a foreign nation, the acquisition of worse properties, cooling down); and the motives of confusion (mixing of different cultures and disorientation). It is shown that the bearers of traditional folk culture tend to evaluate the changes of any kind as undesirable. A disapproving assessment of social change is due to the orientation of traditional culture toward strict adherence to customs.
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This paper examines the term ā-rè recorded in mediaeval Chinese historical sources as the title of the ruler of the Yenisei Kirghiz state. The author aims to discover which Old Turkic title this Chinese phonetic transcription corresponds to. By reconstructing the sounds in ā-rè according to Middle Chinese the author argues that the most likely pronunciation of the term was änäl, which he suggests is a phonetic variant of the Old Turkic title inäl. The author also argues that this was a temporary title of the ruler of the Yenisei Kirghiz during their vassalage under the Uyghurs.
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The aim of this article is to introduce a typology of Slavic immigrant dialects spoken in the Russian Federation. The paper deals with two Polish and three Czech varieties located in Siberia,in the case of the Czech ones also at the Black Sea coast of the Northern Caucasus and, partly,with West Ukrainian patois of Siberian Hollanders. The author outlines the current state of their research and analyzes the most eloquent examples of the phonological and grammatical resemblances between them which appeared mainly due to the fact that their original dialectal systems have been similarly influenced by their language surroundings, first of all by Russian. In particular attention is drawn to the problem of penetration of Russian palatalized consonants to phonetic or even phonological systems of those dialects. In morphology, it is shown that the functional sphere of some grammatical categories and forms has changed in the examined dialects not only under influence from Russian, but sometimes also as a result of their independent development in an insular situation.
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The present paper discusses the Russian lexemes горлопан ‘shouter, bawler’ and крыса ‘rat’, which are problematic from the point of view of etymology. The word горлопан can be explained as a compound, connected by grade haplology to Russian dialectal лопать ‘to shout’ and горло ‘throat’: горлопан = горло-лоп-ан > горлопан (because of expressivity). The Russian word крыса is seen as an expressive doublet to Slavic gryz-. The paper is based on historical and lexicological material, and uses dialectal examples that ensure the reliability of conclusions. The author pays particular attention to the semantic, phonetic, and derivational aspects of the etymology of the word.
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The present article proceeds from that stream of Turcological research according to which the category of “exception”, within the context of (Turkic) vowel harmony, is to be regarded as at least misleading. From a historical point of view, the perfect vowel harmony of contemporary Turkish may be considered a later development which evolved from a primitive, regularly disharmonic system. Through a thorough scrutiny of an 18th-century Armeno-Turkish text, we add new arguments to the debate, by observing that the vowel phonology of Turkic languages seems to have been ruled by at least two colliding processes: a primitive, regular disharmony-triggered morphemic marking [RDMM] versus a transmorphemic rightward vowel harmonising [RVH]. A possible interpretation of some local “disharmonic” phenomena ‒ fossilised remains of a primitive stress assignment? ‒ is proposed here.
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Koroshi is the Balochi dialect spoken by the Korosh (Koroš), a group associated with the Qashqa’i tribes of Fārs in southwestern Iran. Entirely isolated from the main body of the Baloch habitat, Koroshi distinguishes itself in grammar and lexicon among Balochi varieties. The phonology of Koroshi demonstrates a solid Balochi pedigree but not without major mutations. Likewise, the nominal case-number system of Koroshi shows significant deviation from most other Balochi dialects. In verb morphosyntax a salient peculiarity is the coexistence of two parallel systems of the imperfective, which appear to be stabilising in an evolutionary process of the Koroshi aspect system. Borrowing from the neighbouring languages is salient in the lexical domain, where Persian, the Fārs dialects, and Qashqa’i Turkish each play a part as the source language. Given all these peculiarities the degree of mutual intelligibility between Koroshi and other Balochi dialects is yet to be established.
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This paper describes the underlying phonological and morphological properties of the Mursko Središće dialect in the context of its relations with other dialects of Međimurje and with dialects of the neighbouring Slovenian territories. This dialect belongs to the Upper subdialect of the Međimurje region. It is characterized by a large number of diphthongs, open and open in positions where we would normally expect a closed Y and closed R. Also visible is the tendency of reflecting the old rear nasal *Y as a, which has already been confirmed in the Croatian–Slovenian language contact in some dialects in Istria and Hrvatsko Zagorje. Morphology is mostly characterized by syncretism of dative, locative, and instrumental endings -aj in the declension of nouns and adjectives. The paper also gives examples for the pseudo-analogonymy between the dialects of Mursko Središće, Prelog, and Beltinci in Prekmurje.
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In this paper, the author analyzes lexical items defined by a questionnaire of the Slovene Linguistic Atlas (SLA) and used for outbuildings, farmyard as well as farm chores in the eastern Slovenske gorice sub-dialect, which belongs to the Pannonian dialectal group. In the SLA questionnaire, the above-mentioned lexical items are gathered in no less than seven sections, including the questionnaire’s grammar part. For that reason, the Dialectological Section of the Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language ZRC SAZU divided the lexical items into meaningful parts, namely, “outbuildings and farmyard”, “farm chores”, and “other”. The data collected from six local dialects (only two are included into the research points’ network for SLA) show that in the eastern Slovenske gorice sub-dialect, eighty-six lexemes are used for the items analyzed in the article. Two thirds of the lexemes are of Slavonic origin and hardly one third was overtaken from neighbouring Germanic (84%) and Romance (15%) languages in different periods. The dialectal vocabulary of Slovenske gorice sub-dialect analyzed in the paper is almost forgotten by the middle-aged and younger generations, so the research is a tiny but important contribution to the preservation of the Slovene linguistic cultural heritage.
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The Croatian language, comprising huge differences considering the number of its speakers, being very important for the reconstruction of a Slavic proto-language (Čakavian accentuation), has become the object of dialectological research early. It has been included in the Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA) and in the European Linguistic Atlas (ALE). It was included in the Serbo-Croatian Dialectological Atlas, which was abandoned. In 1996, the Croatian Language Atlas (Hrvatski jezični atlas – HJA) was established by M. Lončarić at the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics in Zagreb, with expected 400 research points (in Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and diaspora). The fieldwork was planned to be finished in 6–8 years but the unsufficient funding made the dynamics of the project much slower. Currently, about three-quarters of the expected points have been researched: all the Čakavian ones, while onefifth of the Kajkavian and one-third of the Štokavian ones remain. For the Čakavian points, phonological descriptions have been made, on a model similar to OLA phonological descriptions, and they are currently in print. The paper provides an overview of research in Hungary, especially in its Western part, in particular the results of a recent study of the Štoji dialects.
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The paper deals with the history of investigation of Ukrainian dialects in Hungary. The authors present the scientific achievements of V. Dóhovics, L. Csopey, L. Dezső, E. Baleczky, I. Udvari, A. Zoltán, and M. Kocsis in the field of Ukrainian dialectology in chronological order. It is stressed that historical dialectology has been in the center of attention of Hungarian Slavists for a long time.
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Review of: 1. JANHUNEN, J. (ed.): The Mongolic Languages. Helsinki, 2003. 2. STAROSTIN, S. – DYBO, A. – MUDRAK, O.: Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages. Leiden–Boston, 2003. 3. SVANTESSON, J. O. – TSENDINA, A. – KARLSSON, A. M. – FRANZÉN, V.: The Phonology of Mongolian. Oxford, 2005. 4. RACHEWILTZ, I. DE – RYBATZKI, V.: Introduction to Altaic Philology. Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu. Leiden–Boston, 2010. 5. KANE, D.: The Kitan Language and Script. Leiden–Boston, 2009. by: András Róna-Tas
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The author presents the New General Atlas of Hungarian Dialects which is in progress. We get a short review about the necessity of a new general dialect atlas in Hungary. The main reason is the radical decrease of dialect words which was effected by the end of the traditional agricultural way of life. The other reason is that the data of the first general Hungarian Dialect Atlas was collected between 1949 and 1964. The author presents the aspects of the research and the content of the questionnaires; the character und the number of the lexical, morphological, syntactical, and sociolinguistic questions; and the sociolinguistic aspects of the informant selection. The collection was started in 2007 and will be finished in 2011.
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