“The Karelian Confession”: a 19th century Tver Karelian written language monument

“The Karelian Confession”: a 19th century Tver Karelian written language monument

Novak I.P. (ILLH KarRC RAS, Petrozavodsk, Russia; ISP RAS, Moscow, Russia)

Abstract

The article provides a description and linguistic analysis of the 19th c. manuscript in Karelian – “The Karelian Confession” (Korelskaya Ispoved’) – retrieved from Tver Region’s State Archives. The size of the original text is over 500 words. It can be conventionally subdivided into the introductory part – a short protreptic to the confession, and the core part, made up of 70 questions grouped according to components of the ritual of confession, as well as some moralistic advice. The detected elements of the conspicuous differentiating phenomena of Karelian dialectal speech at the phonology level suggest that the language of the manuscript belongs to the Tolmachyovo sub-dialectal group of the Southern dialect of the Karelian Proper. The article also presents the results of analyzing the inflectional system in the manuscript, which support the conclusion regarding its dialectal localization.

Keywords

Karelian; Tver Karelians; written language heritage; dialectology; history of language; phonology; morphology; LingvoDoc linguistic platform.

Edition

Proceedings of the Institute for System Programming, vol. 38, issue 6, part 1, 2026, pp. 219-234

ISSN 2220-6426 (Online), ISSN 2079-8156 (Print).

DOI: 10.15514/ISPRAS-2026-38(6)-14

For citation

Novak I.P. “The Karelian Confession”: a 19th century Tver Karelian written language monument. Proceedings of the Institute for System Programming, vol. 38, issue 6, part 1, 2026, pp. 219-234 DOI: 10.15514/ISPRAS-2026-38(6)-14.

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