Buryat Historical Phonetics in Seventeenth-Century Russian-Language Documents: Problem Statement Approached. Part 2

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. The study examines ethnonyms and personal onyms across Buryat-related historical communities contained in seventeenth-century documents (Rus. otpiski) of Russian servicemen and Cossacks. The work focuses on names traced in two territorial groups of the Buryat population on different banks of the Angara River conventionally be referred to as ‘right-bank Angara territorial group’ and ‘left-bank Angara territorial group’ — regardless of any dialect classification. Results. The conducted analysis attests to that the mentioned period was already characterized by the existence of certain spelling (pronunciation) features within the two identified territorial groups of the Buryat population, the ones to reflect different stages in the development of the Buryat phonetic system. Conclusions. The revealed possibility implying the phonetic features of the Buryat language inherent to different stages of the latter’s development could have already existed as early as the mid-17th century in the population of two wide territorial areas of Baikalia makes it appropriate to outline further prospects of linguistic research to detail developmental chronologies for those phonetic characteristics that eventually led to the shaping of specific features in present-day Buryat.

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