Buryat Historical Phonetics in Seventeenth-Century Russian-Language Documents: Problem Statement Approached. Part One

Introduction. It is in the mid-to-late 18th century at latest that the main phonetic characteristics of Buryat that distinguish the latter from other Mongolic languages — reflected in its western and eastern dialects — took shape. The initial period that had witnessed the formation of these specific elements still remains somewhat unclear. The paper analyzes authentic sources and attempts to show a possibility that the areal phonetic features of Buryat emerged within local population groups of Baikalia as far back as the early-to-mid 17th century. Goals. The article analyzes ethnonyms (and other onyms) relating to the Buryat population and recorded in seventeenth-century Russian-language documents to identify spelling (pronunciation) specificities characteristic of Buryat dialects. Materials and methods. Part One of the study deals with discussions over some general chronology of phonetic changes that have resulted in the shaping of Buryat, and distinguish the latter from other Mongolic languages. The paper examines major related works, analyzes methods and approaches employed by the researchers. Results. Our insights into scholarly publications conclude there is no compromise view on the lower chronological limit that would serve as terminus a quo for Buryat phonetic features. According to some researchers, key processes that fundamentally rebuilt the Buryat consonant system had begun in the 17th century and proceeded to completion by the early 18th century, while others insist those had emerged only in the late 17th century to culminate throughout the 18th century. Conclusions. Scholars that have dealt with Buryat phonetics tended to focus on eighteenth-century linguistic materials and rarely turned to other sources, such as Russian loanwords in Buryat, Mongolian loanwords in Evenki and Yakut, chronological attributions of the latter be further explored in historical contexts of phonetic systems of recipient languages, with due account for actual circumstances of interaction with native speakers of Mongolic languages. The absence of original written sources shall definitely leave these questions unanswered. So, historical linguistics can independently serve as a promising tool for such historical reconstructions.

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