IS KOMI-YAZVA SEPARATE LANGUAGE OR KOMI-PERMIAN’S DIALECT?

The question of Komi-Yazva separate language or Komi-Permian dialects is currently open. There are different opinions: linguists of the late XIX - early XX cent. suggested that it is a dialect. In the early XXI cent. opinions of the scientists were divided and some experts supposed that Komi-Yazva can be a separate language. Currently, on the LinguoDoc platform there are special program modules, which reproduce the etymologist's big data analysis results, as well as 16 dictionaries of Komi dialect related languages with etymological connections. These are audio dictionaries, materials for which were collected in 2015-2018, and archival dictionaries of the XVIII-XIXcent. As a result of the dictionaries’ processing with the use of special comparative-historical module for phonetic and etymological criteria, it was found that the distance from the Komi-Yazva to the modern dialects of the Komi-Zyryan and Komi-Permyak languages is significantly greater than between the latter two ones, so in terms of phonetic changes, Komi-Yazva is currently a separate language. In the XVIII. cent. Komi-Yazva was close to the Komi-Permyak dictionaries recorded by P. S. Pallas and Nikita Ovchinnikov. As the analysis shows, 250 years ago, Komi-Yazva and Komi-Permyak languages had only minor dialect differences, but over the next two centuries, the Komi-Permyak dialects had many innovative changes, which brought them closer to the Komi-Zyryan dialects of the Komi Republic, whereas the Komi-Yazva language presents the archaic stage of Komi languages: the features, which were the characteristics of the Komi-Permyak first dictionaries in the XVIII-th. century.