Abstract
The article presents the results of a study of the phonetic, phonological, and morphological systems of three dictionary entries made in the mid-17th century— early 18th century in the Karelian Proper supradialect of the Karelian language: 1) Karelian-Russian glossary made by Archimandrite Theofan in 1667 on Solovetsky Islands; 2) Karelian-Russian dictionary by Prokhor Kolomnyatin, 1668, presumably written down in the Upper Volga or the Northern Ladoga region; 3) early 18th century Karelian-Russian glossary from the collection of P. P. Vyazemsky, probably based on Middle Karelian patois. The comparative analysis of the relatively identical materials from these manuscripts performed here for the first time and involving also data from modern Karelian-Proper dialects has revealed some distinctive features of the Karelian language at the time of mass migrations of Karelians. Noteworthy phenomena in the phonetic system, characteristic of the final stage in the functioning of the Old Karelian language, are incomplete diphthongization process, reduction of geminates in front of descending diphthongs, voiced/voiceless consonant opposition, differentiation of “hissing” and “whistling” fricatives, minor palatalization of front consonants. The language of Karelian immigrants obviously featured all types of consonant alternations found in modern Karelian-Proper dialects. As the material was derived from dictionaries, we could not reconstruct the full inflectional paradigms of the Karelian language of the time. The data available, however, proved sufficient for concluding that the morphological system of the Karelian-Proper supradialect has been relatively stable over the past several centuries. The material presented in this study will occupy a worthy position in the process of studying the history of the Karelian language development and formation of its dialectal system.
Published Version
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