A Komi-zyryan dictionary in the collection of the old Russian scribe Prokhor Kolomnyatin (1668)

The article describes a new monument of the Komi-Zyryan language of the 17th century discovered in the author’s collection of the Old Russian scribe Prokhor Kolomnyatin. In addition to a collection of moral compilations, traditional for monastic collections of the 15th-17th centuries, the monument contains multilingual lexical materials, including dictionary-phrasebooks of the Karelian, Zyryan and Crimean Tatar languages. The monument also contains important information for a diachronic study of the Komi language, since it is its earliest known lexicographic fixation and belongs to a period almost undocumented by written evidence. The article describes Komi lexical, phonetic, grammatical and graphic features, which make it possible to determine its place among the already known monuments of the Komi written language. The Zyryan dictionary is small in volume: more than half of the text is a detailed money account, followed by about a hundred Komi-Zyryan words and a translation of the Trisagion prayer. In contrast to the existing monuments, which are based on the language of the ancient Komi population of the Low Vychegda, the linguistic features of the dictionary indicate in favor of another ancient Komi dialect - Vym’. An important feature of the dictionary is the presence of -l-forms. Their consistent use allows verifying the formation of interdialect phonetic alternation v~l with sound - the main distinctive feature of modern l-, v-l- and -l-dialects of the Komi language. The modification of the common Permian etymological [l], obviously, occurred in different territories and at different times. According to the available Low-Vychegda monuments, the alternation v~l was formed during the 17th and ended by the beginning of the 18th century. The appearance of -l-forms in the Vym’ dialects, then in the Izhma and Upper Vychegda dialects, can also be attributed to this time, but there was no documentary evidence of this. The new monument has an accurate dating and to a certain extent fills this gap. The dictionary contains dialect vocabulary that is not uninteresting for historical lexicology, and the list of monetary units from “denga” to thousands of rubles, indicating the possibility of using the dictionary in the practice of trade transactions, etc., is of undoubted interest for ethnohistorical research.

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