Latin-Russian-Kalmyk Dictionary by Adrian Sokolov (1769–1771): General Description and Some Remarks on Its Grapho-phonetic Features

 Introduction. Lexicographic sources are of special value in the studies on the history of any language. As for Kalmyk language, the earliest sources of such kind dating back to the second half of the 18th century are an anonymous Russian-Kalmyk dictionary published by Kalmyk researchers in 2014 and Latin-Russian-Kalmyk dictionary by Adrian Sokolov (1769–1771), which has yet to be introduced into scientific circulation. This paper aims to provide a general description of A. Sokolov's dictionary and to analyze some grapho-phonetic features of the Kalmyk language of the second half of the 18th century. The study is based on “Kalmükisch Vocabularium von Studenten Adrian Sokolov in den Jahren 1769, 1770 und 1771” stored in collections of National Library of Russia (St. Petersburg). The dictionary consists of 76 pages and includes 1,785 Kalmyk words. We compiled the Russian-Kalmyk part of the dictionary and added modern literary Kalmyk forms, after that the dictionary materials were uploaded to Lingvodoc platform to provide comparative analysis with Proto-Mongolic and contemporary literary Kalmyk forms. Results. The particular value of this dictionary is that it contains an author's Cyrillic transcription of Kalmyk words, made by an outside observer unfamiliar with the rules of the literary (written) language, and therefore more accurately (in our opinion) reflecting the characteristics of Kalmyk oral speech of this period. The correspondences established in the dictionary, such as e — lit. Kalm. ө (Proto-Mongolic *e), o — lit. Kalm. ɵ, ai / oi — lit. Kalm. a, i — lit. Kalm. ү, b — lit. Kalm. в, coincide with Proto-Mongolic reflexes and can be characterized as archaic features of the Kalmyk language of the second half of the 18th century. They are also found in the Kalmyk wordlists made by German scholars of the same period, such as G. F. Müller (1760–1762), P. S. Pallas (1771, 1776–1789), B. Bergman (1804–1805), and J. G. Klaproth (1831). This allows us to conclude that these linguistic features were typical for the Kalmyk language of this period as a whole, and not just for separate dialects. The innovative correspondences such as e — lit. Kalm. ɵ (Proto-Mongolic *ö), o — lit. Kalm. у, and ts — lit. Kalm. ч are also found in the abovementioned wordlists, which may indicate the fact that they were supra-dialectal. The correspondences io — lit. Kalm. ү, u — lit. Kalm. ө, u — lit. Kalm. ү are only found in B. Bergman's materials, who recorded, supposedly, Derbet dialect of the Kalmyk language. Thus, we can suggest that the dictionary by A. Sokolov also reflects the dialectal features of Derbet dialect of the Kalmyk language of the second half of 18th century.

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