Dialect Cartography of Erzya and Moksha Languages: Digitized Historical Sources and Evaluation of the Contemporary Data

This study investigates the correspondences between a recent map of Uralic languages that also covers the Erzya and Moksha languages in detail. We discuss our point of view in linguistic cartography more generally, but especially within the context of Uralic languages, and address various difficulties that can be recognized in defining the speaker area boundaries and choosing settlements that should be included in the traditional or contemporary speech communities. We use the historical data of Heikki Paasonen, which, we believe, is a highly reliable indicator of at least some areas that should be included in the traditional distributions of these languages as points of comparison. This data is contrasted with the contemporary language maps.