The Atlas of the Turkic Dialects in the Russian Federation: Some results and problems
(63rd Annual Meeting Ulaanbaatar, 2021)
The 2021 is the fourth year of our work on the project of the dialectological atlas of Turkic languages in Russia. In 3 years preceding 2018 we worked on the development of the relevant questionnaires bazed on the principles of the historical linguistics. Also, all the time, the collection of field materials continued according to previously developed and promptly updated questionnaires. Some results including the on-line dialect maps will be demonstrated.
From the scientific results of the work, the most interesting were discovered local changes in the genealogical and areal classification within individual groups of Turkic languages:
1. Genealogical classification and areas in the dialect system of the Turkic “z” languages of Southern Siberia, that is, the Khakass, Mrassu dialect of the Shor and Middle Chulym dialect of the Chulym-Turkic language. A completely non-trivial point is that the Melet and Tutal sub-dialects of the Middle Chulym dialect do not form a common genealogical node, which implies the settlement of the present territory of their residence on two sides – from above Chulym and downhill along Mrassu to Tom’, and from there to the mouth of Chulym and a slight ascent along it.
2. It can be considered conclusively proved that the Malkar subdialect of the Karachai-Balkar is the result of the Ossetian substrate exposure of the Kholam-Besengi-type dialect (contrary to the traditional view that the Kholam-Besengi dialect is the result of the interference of Malkar and Baksan-Chegem).
3. Based on significant archival and field material on the Volga-Turkic Kypchak languages, new possibilities for classifying dialects, the boundaries of which are relatively independent of the traditional sociolinguistic boundaries between the languages of the region, are emerging.
Thus, the collection of material on uniform historical-oriented questionnaires, taking into account minimal sociolinguistic data, already makes it possible to greatly clarify the distribution of linguistic phenomena on a geographical map and raise questions about the relationship between genealogical and areal phenomena in the history of the language.