Mutual contacts and lexical relations among the Finnic varieties of western Ingria and northeastern Estonia

Abstrac t The aim of this article is 1) to describe the historical language contact situation between the genetically closely related Finnic varieties of western Ingria, 2) to give examples of the nu­ merous loanwords originating from mutual contacts among local Finnic varieties as well as areal diffusion, and 3) to discuss the method of investigating contacts and borrowing among closely related varieties. The data are taken from old dialectal materials published in vocabularies and dictionaries as well as preserved in archives. The words that are analysed and discussed etymologi­ cally in more detail are drawn from Vote, Ingrian, and Estonian. Although it is often difficult to confirm the direction of borrowing among closely related varieties, I seek to determine the direction of diffusion in the varieties whose development cannot be de­ scribed merely in terms of a traditional binary family tree model. Examples of mutual borrowing between Vote, Ingrian, Estonian, and Finnish are presented. Estonian loanwords in Vote and Ingrian can usually be recognised by their distribution. Most vocabulary originating as loans (in Vote, Ingrian, and Estonian) has been bor­ rowed from Finnish. Loans in both Vote and Estonian often have a distribution not only in Ingrian but also in Finnish. Because of the phonetic similarity of these varieties, the donor variety usu­ ally cannot be defined. Vote loanwords occur only sporadically in Ingrian and Estonian: they may also form a substratum.