Geographical Lexicon and Toponymy of Staroshentalinsky Dialect of the Erzya-Mordovian Language

This article analyzes the geographical lexicon circulating in the Staroshentalinsky dialect of the Erzya-Mordovian language and the toponymic nomenclature of the village of Staraya Shentala in the Shentala district of the Samara region and its surroundings. Staroshentalinsky dialect belongs to the group of Mordovian dialects of the Samara region, characterized by a significant number of lexical archaisms in particular in the geographical vocabulary. Thus, a number of geographical terms that remain to this day in the dialect of the Erzya-Mordovian population of Staraya Shentala are contained in the oldest known Mordovian lexicographic monuments - the “List of Mordovian words” from the work “Northern and Eastern Tartary” by the Dutch researcher N. Witsen, which dates back to the second half of the 17th century. Vocabulary of the Staroshentalinsky dialect of the Erzya-Mordvin language shows the greatest affinity with the dialects of Erzya and Chuvash Sura region that may indicate the historical territory of the settlement of the native Staroshentalinsky dialect speakers. The structural and comparative analysis carried out in this work has shown that, in general, the toponymic space of the village of Staraya Shentala has the most of the characteristics of the Erzya-Mordovian toponymic spaces. A number of common structural elements for the toponymic nomenclature existing in the dialect in question, with corresponding clusters in other Erzya dialects of the Samara Volga region and the Republic of Mordovia, have been identified. At the same time, a number of unique phenomena are recorded in this toponymic space: both for the Mordovian dialects of the Samara Volga region, and for the Mordovian toponymy as a whole. The deetymologized toponymic bases of the space under study probably go back to the Volga Turkic languages, some of them may be archaic Finno-Ugric toponyms.