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GEOGRAPHY OF MULTILINGUALISM OF PEOPLES OF KOLYMA-ALAZEIA TUNDRA IN THE LATE 19TH TO THE EARLY 20TH CENTURIES // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2020. Issue 1 (27). P. 44-60

This study is the second one in a series of studies devoted to the emergence and development of multilingualism in the Kolyma-Alazeya tundra area, a region where the territories of Yukaghir, Even, Chukchi, Yakut, and Russian settlements overlap. The starting point of this study are Evens, their arrival to the area, their contacts with the neighbors, and the languages they spoke. Based on the various sources (the works and reports of ethnographers, travelers, and missioners) we trace the migration routes of Even nomadic groups from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th centuries in this region. We discovered that the Even clans found to the west of Kolyma spoke Yukaghir and most of them considered Yukaghir to be their native language. Apparently, many Evens spoke two languages (Even and Yukaghir), some of them were trilingual (in Even, Yukaghir and Yakut), and quatrolingualism and quintolingualims were also attested. There were also some nomadic Even groups near the Southeastern border of Kolyma-Alazeya tundra, and there is evidence that some of their members could speak Chukchi, Even and Russian. The article briefly compares two dialects of Even which are spread out in the west and east of this region. This comparison confirms intensive language contact between Evens, Yukaghirs, and Yakuts in the Great Western Tundra in the past. At the same time, we did not observe any Chukchi influence in the dialect of the Eastern part of Kolyma-Alazeya tundra.

Keywords: multilingualism, Even language, historical sociolinguistics, language maps, Kolyma-Alazeya tundra