The Case for Southwest Finnic

Areal or genetic grouping?

Abstract

This article discusses a group of South Finnic languages and/or dialects that share common phonological features. These languages and dialects are Livonian, Mulgi South Estonian, Island North Estonian and Western North Estonian, all deriving from Proto-Finnic. In contemporary Finnic taxonomy, the first language to diverge from Proto-Finnic was South Estonian, followed by Livonian, and later by North Estonian and Votic. Nevertheless, all the mentioned languages have converged after their initial divergence, resulting in an areal grouping called South Finnic. The contribution of this article is to assess linguistic features shared by the mentioned languages and dialects and what their nature can reveal. I argue that the features point to a new understanding of Finnic taxonomy in that the addition of a narrower group of Southwest Finnic can be justified as a Finnic branch.