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Чусовой словарь из архива Г. Ф. Миллера: особенности и его значение для классификации мансийских диалектов
The article presents a research on the Mansi dictionary, dating back to the early 18th century, composed along the Chusovaya River. The dictionary was discovered in G. Miller’s archive. Other existing archives (for ex. Schergen’s and Pallas’s) do not mention the dictionary. The only source referring to the dictionary is an article (1958) by Y. Guya, a hungarian linguist. The researcher determines three peculiarities of the Mansi dialects spoken in Nizhny Tagil, Nizhnyaya Tura and along the river Chusovaya based on several Mansi words recorded in the 18th century. Discrepancies were discovered in Miller’s and Guya’a dictionaries. Thus, it was decided to compare Chusovoy with other Mansi dialects: Berezovskiy (unknown in the Pallas’s disctionary), Solikamskiy, Cherdynskiy, Cungurskiy, Verkhoturskiy and Kaprinskiy — recorded at the same time in the same area. The most extensive description and analysis of those sources based on L. Honti’s classification are to be found in J. Normanskaya’s article “How the classification of Mansi dialects was changed (on the material of the first Cyrillic books and dictionaries of the 18th and 19th centuries)” (2022). Having the article as a reference, a comparative analysis of the collected data has been completed and showed that the Chusovaya dictionary confirms J. Normanskaya’s conclusion. Dialect-differentiating features in Northern and Western Mansi dialects, developed by L. Honti, were non-existent or had only just appeared in the 18th century. However, transition proto-mansi k>χ preceding a back vowel, characterized by J. Normanskya as the only characteristic exclusive for Northern Mansi dialects, has not been recognized in the Chusovoy dialect, normally perceived as a Western Mansi dialect. The Chusovoy dialect features traditional Northern transition: chot ‘шесть’, chórom ‘три’.