On the Language of Early Lithuanian Tatars or, Have Lithuanian Tatars Ever Written in Ukrainian?

Abstract

This paper presents an attempt at the attribution of one of the oldest Tatar manuscripts, housed at the St Petersburg University library under signatura 893, with an eye to assessing the possible impact of Ukrainian on early Lithuanian Tatar writings. As a result of the linguistic analysis of an excerpt, first published in 1857 by Muchlinskij and newly transcribed by the author, as well as of some other early Tatar texts, their language is identified as a Polissian vernacular koine, as compared with the 'supradialectal' prostaja mova, which was used as a standard language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.