A  Geolinguistic  Comparison  of  Some  Finnic  Lexical  Issues

Abstract

The study is based on material collected for the Atlas Linguarum Fennicarum (ALFE), which is a joint project prepared by Finnish, Estonian and Karelian linguists. Several lexical issues, the areas of which tend to cross language borders, are discussed. The analysis reveals certain mutual relationships of languages and dialects. On the one hand, we can see the historical ties of South-Estonian dialects with the Eastern or Northern Finnic languages, as well as the contacts of Southeast-Finnish dialects with North-Estonian dialects. On the other hand, the contrasts between the Eastern and Western Finnic languages, as well as between the Northern and Southern Finnic languages are visualised.