On Some Hitherto Unidentified Mari Items in the ”Vocabularia Comparativa” of P. S. Pallas
On Some Hitherto Unidentified Mari Items in the ”Vocabularia Comparativa” of P. S. Pallas

Summary/Abstract: The ”Linguarum Totius Orbis Vocabularia comparativa” of Peter Simon Pallas published in 1787-1789 is a prominent early record of the Mari language, containing Mari translations of 273 Russian headwords. This material has been examined by Thomas A. Sebeok in an ample commentary published in 1960, and by Alho Alhoniemi two decades later, but they were unable to identify all words. Using recent lexical resources on Mari and studies of the original manuscripts, the ­present contribution identifies further words and corrects some errors in earlier interpretations. The result is a more complete picture of Pallas and 18th-century Mari.

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