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 numerous 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 etymologically 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 described 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 borrowed 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 usually cannot be defined. Vote loanwords occur only sporadically in Ingrian and Estonian: they may also form a substratum. The speakers of Finnic varieties in western Ingria used to live in old rural communities with long-term plurilingualism, villages with a mixed population, and vague language boundaries. The arrival of new inhabitants from the countries, which ruled this area and the foundation of St. Petersburg in 1703 changed the ethnographic balance between different peoples in Ingria. This increased linguistic diversity and altered the hierarchy of the languages leading gradually to accelerating language and identity shift of the local peoples of Ingria. [Summary in Finnish and in Estonian]

Research on the interaction of the Amuric languages (referred to as “Nivkh” or “Ghilyak” when regarded as a single language) with the Tungusic languages was initiated by Grube (1892). His focus on loanwords has been the object of study until the present day. Recently, Janhunen (2010: 292, 296; 2016: 23) has suggested that contact between the two families already started between their ultimate ancestors: Pre-Proto-Amuric and Proto-Tungusic. This thesis investigates whether some of the lexical parallels proposed by earlier research belong to this period. As the thesis is written from the perspective of language contact, the parallels are regarded as the result of borrowing instead of inheritance. The distinction between these two modes of transmission formed the theoretical basis for the methodology that was employed. To prove ancient contact, it had to be shown that the Amuric and Tungusic languages inherited their shared lexemes from their respective ancestors and that these ancestors may have borrowed from each other. As the methodology relied on the literature on Amuric and Tungusic historical phonology, an overview of this topic is also included. First, fifty parallels were drawn from those listed in previous research. These could be reconstructed to Proto-Amuric and Proto-Tungusic using the Comparative Method and thus could have been inherited from them or an earlier ancestor in the case of Proto-Amuric. Additionally, they exhibited phonological similarities that could reasonably be expected from borrowing between Pre-Proto-Amuric and Proto-Tungusic. Afterwards, a direction of borrowing had to be established, the principal evidence of borrowing. For that purpose, nine criteria were developed. These criteria considered morphology, diachronic and synchronic phonology, extent of attestation, semantics and extra-linguistic factors. Finally, the data was separated into older and younger strata, since in the selection phase only the Proto-Amuric stage was considered, while the target was Pre-Proto-Amuric. These layers were classified on the basis of phonological developments. For most of the fifty parallels the direction of borrowing could be determined. In this stage of analysis, fifteen of them were ultimately dismissed as recent or doubtful. The remaining thirty-five were examined for properties that could have resulted from the sound changes that followed Pre-Proto-Amuric that were proposed in earlier research. Ultimately, it could only be proven that the absence of vowels in non-initial syllables was a property characteristic of ancient lexemes in the Amuric lineage. Consequently, although a substantially old stratum of Amuric-Tungusic parallels was found, further research is needed to show that any of them date to Pre-Proto-Amuric and Proto-Tungusic times.