The Position of the Upper Kama Dialect in the Komi Language Dialectal Area: Evidence from the LingvoDoc Platform

The Upper Kama dialect is spoken by the Komi ethnic group residing in the upper Kama River region. The idiom developed independently from the area of distribution of Komi dialects and existed solely in oral form. In Komi linguistics, there is debate regarding the position of the Upper Kama idiom within the dialectal area of the Komi language. The paper presents the main stages of data processing for four Komi-Permyak dictionaries, including two archival dictionaries from the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, two audio dictionaries of the southern Komi-Zyryan dialects, and an audio dictionary of the Upper Kama dialect uploaded on the LingvoDoc platform. The study found that, based on phonetic-etymological criteria, the Upper Kama dialect is the most similar to the modern Upper Sysola dialect of the Komi-Zyryan language. However, when analyzing the similarity of the basic vocabulary, the dialect in question is most similar to the Kudymkar dialect of the southern Komi-Permyak language. This contradiction may explain the numerous discussions about the position of the Upper Kama dialect in the Komi language dialectal area.