The South-Eastern Contact Area of Finnic Languages in the Light of Onomastics (original) (raw)
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Finno-Ugrian hydronyms of the river Volkhov and Luga catchment area
Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Aikakauskirja, 2011
The aim of the present work is to study by the means of onomastics of language of the ancient Chudes mentioned by the Russian chroniclers. More precisely, the research concerns the Chudes that inhabited the Novgorod Land before their assimilation with Slavs. The previous view has been that the language belonged to the Finnic group. In this work, I have defined the boundaries of actual Finnic toponyms, examined the areal connection of the formants of hydronyms, the distribution of Chud toponyms and the names of large bodies of waters in Pskov territory between Estonia and Novgorod. The results of onomastics are also compared with archaeological data. The basic conclusion is that the language of these Chudes was not Finnic.
The prehistoric context of the oldest contacts between Baltic and Finnic languages
Dating and locating the ancient contacts between Baltic and Finnic is a crucial question when searching for the origins of the Finnic languages. Evidence gained from linguistic palaeontology seems to place Proto-Uralic in the Volga-Kama Basin, some 2000 kilometres east of the Baltic, in a region where the Uralic Mari and Udmurt languages are still spoken today (see Toivonen 1952 for a well-detailed study of the fi eld and Häkkinen 2009 for a somewhat revised view). However, there is no clear linguistic or archaeological evidence to tell us when Proto-Uralic broke down into its different daughter languages and when one of these, Proto-Finnic, had left this eastern area and spread to the shores of the Baltic Sea. In order to reconstruct the process and its different stages we require information that can be provided by the Baltic loanwords. As the Baltic loanwords are not attested in the more eastern Uralic branches, with the exception of a relatively few lexical items in Mordvinic (cf. van Pareren 2008 and Grünthal, this volume, for a recent detailed overview of the question), we must assume that the contacts took place when Finnic already was an independent branch within the Uralic language family or was at least in the process of breaking off. The contacts cannot be located far away from where the Baltic languages are or have been spoken. The area in which the Baltic languages were spoken was prehistorically much wider than it is today, since the major hydro-nyms of a vast area between Moscow and the mouth of the Vistula are of Baltic origin (Toporov – Trubačev 1962). The Volga-Kama Basin lies still too far east to be included in a list of possible contact locations. Instead, we could look for the contact area somewhere between Estonia in the west and the surroundings of Moscow in the east, a zone with evidence of Uralic settlement in the north and Baltic on the south side. Since present-day Finland lies quite far away from this zone, the discussion regarding the areal dimension of the contacts has concentrated on whether to include Finland in the contact area or not, and this question has chronological implications. There have been two main concurrent hypotheses concerning the assumed contacts in the territory of present-day Finland, fi rstly, the alleged migration of the Finnish settlement and, secondly, its continuity on the northern side of the Gulf of Finland. In addition, some other models have also been proposed. Here we shall discuss these theories and their strong and weak points.
Studies in Uralic Etymology II: Finnic Etymologies
Linguistica Uralica, 2014
This paper is the second part in a series of studies that present additions to the corpus of etymological comparisons between the Uralic languages, drawing data from all the major branches of the language family. It includes both previously unnoticed cognates that can be added to already established Uralic cognate sets, as well as a few completely new reconstructions of Uralic word roots. In this second part new Uralic etymologies for the following Finnish words are discussed: aita ’fence’ (< PU *ajta), ammottaa ’gape open’ (< PU *ammV- ’yawn’), kaiho ’longing, yearning’ (< PU *kajšV ’illness’), katkera ’bitter’, katku ’burnt smell’, katketa ’break in two’ (< PU *kačka- ’bite’), korpi ’dense forest, wildwood’ (< PU *korpi), ohut ’thin’ (< PU *wokši), puhjeta ’burst; open (of flowers)’, putkahtaa ’emerge, come up, pop up’ (< PU *pučki ’hollow stalk, tube’), and sato ’harvest, crops’, sataa ’yield harvest’ (< PU *čača- ’grow’). The principles of reconstruction and the citation of lexical material are explained in the first paper of the series (Luobbal Sámmol Sámmol Ánte (Aikio) 2013).
Finnish-Uralic Linguistic Connections (Update 04.13.21 )
The Finns present an enigma in our tabulation of Finnish-Uralic words in our "Indo-European-Eurasian Words Linking Ancient Pastoralists." There are many connections of Finnish to Akkadian, which suggests that perhaps in the early Bronze Age the Finns were moving from their original region of the Ural Mountains around Eurasia. There are many Hittite, Caucasus connections to Finnish-Uralic, as well as Steppe linguistic connections (Altaic, Mongolian). We updated this work to increase visibility on the relationships of Finnish-Uralic to European Languages, Hittite and Caucasus (Georgian), Akkadian and Steppe (Altaic, Mongolian) languages. The assortment of these groups helps to explain the movements of the Finnish-Uralic people. It appears that they moved to the Urals, further east to the Altaic Mountains, near the Steppes, back to Europe and had direct contact with the Akkadian language (Assyrians) Hittites and the Georgians. The Finnish-Uralic people are attested to be hunter-gatherers, which would explain their movements in following and herding game. They no doubt traded in metals, which may also explain their movements to other areas, beyond the forest zone of Russia.
Fennia: International Journal of Geography, 2002
This paper deals with the Uralic languages, their regional distribution and relationship with one another. The Uralic languages are spoken in a large area in North and Central Eurasia. Most of the Uralic languages are seriously endangered minority languages-only Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian are principal national languages spoken in independent countries. Despite being relatives, the Uralic languages differ remarkably from one another. In the west, the Uralic languages have had most intensive relationships with Indo-European languages, and in the east, with Turkic languages. The differences within the language group carry information regarding these contacts. In the research of the Uralic languages, the proto-languages and the original home of the peoples speaking these languages have attracted particular interest. Comparative and historical methods and archaeology have been important in the research of the history of the Uralic languages.
Studia Uralo-Altaica, 2021
The present paper provides a brief overview of the state of the art of an ongoing research project, the Typological Database of the Volga Area Finno-Ugric Languagesfocusing on three case studies. The database is a collection of updated research material from three Finno-Ugric languages of the Volga-Kama linguistic area, namely, Meadow Mari (Finno-Ugric, Uralic), Udmurt, and Komi-Permyak (Permic, Uralic). The case studies cover both morphological and syntactic properties of these languages.