Geographical terms used in reference to the lakes in Moksha-Mordovian dialects of the Samara bend

Introduction. The article considers geographic terms for lakes and ponds, which can be found in three Moksha-Mordovian dialects of Samara Bend: Tornovoye, Shelekhmet and Bakhilovo. Until now, the geographical vocabulary of these dialects has not been the subject of special study, nor has it been put into academic discourse. The purpose of this study was to describe and to conduct lexico-semantic and etymological analysis of geographical terms used to define ponds and lakes in these dialects. Materials and Methods. The general theoretical and methodological basis of the research consists of the works of national and international researchers. Their subject of research is the toponymy and geographical vocabulary of the Mordovian languages. In lexical terms the work is based on the materials of the author’s field studies conducted in the villages of Tornovoye and Shelekhmet of the Volga region and Bakhilovo of the Stavropol district of the Samara region during the field seasons in 2017 and 2018. When collecting and analyzing linguistic field material, descriptive and comparative methods of linguistic research were used. Results and Discussion. The results of the study showed that the geographical lexemes differ both from the corresponding literary-written Mordovian forms and from the majority of dialect variants. Each of the studied dialects uses its own unique term in these meanings. When comparing limnonymy terms of Moksha dialects of the Samara Bend, with an appropriate geographical terminology of other Mordovian dialects of the Samara Volga region, only the term pandalu found in shelekhmetsky dialect shows full compatibility. The term bua found in tornovsky dialect cannot be found in other Mordovian dialects of the Samara Volga region. Conclusion. The study made it possible to establish that the geographical terms of the Moksha-Mordovian dialects of Samara Bend, used to designate lakes and ponds, have significant differences from the composition of the corresponding terminology of the literary and written Mordovian languages and their dialects, and also significantly differ from dialect to dialect.