PHONOLOGICAL AND ETHNO-LINGUISTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOURCE LANGUAGE OF "CHUVASH" BORROWINGS IN MARI 1 The article considers the question of which of the actually attested languages can be identified with the source of Mari loanwords. The ancestor of the Chuvash language is traditionally considered to be the language of the Volga Bulgars, recorded in epitaphs of the XIX century. The author compares the systems of vocalism and consonantism in the Mari loanwords and in the Volga-Bulgarian epitaphs. As a result of comparison of linguistic and archaeological materials, it was revealed that the source language of Mari loanwords is the ancestor of the language of Volga-Bulgarian epitaphs. It follows that the study of Mari loanwords provides a new rich material for studying the Bulgar branch of the Turkic languages. Chuvash loanwords in the Mari language have repeatedly attracted the attention of scientists [Mudrak, 1994; Fedotov, 1968; 1920; Veke, 1933; Veke, 1935; Bereczki, 1992-1994; Räsänen, 1920]. Traditionally, it is assumed that most of the Mari loanwords came from the modern Chuvash language (see Mudrak, 1994; Bereczki, 1992-1994) or from Late Bulgarian, whose phonetic system was largely identical to modern Chuvash (Räsänen, 1920). However, the development of vowel phonemes in Mari loanwords, according to some scholars [see, in particular: Bereczki, 1992 - 1994], does not lend itself to a systematic description. This is usually explained by later Mari innovations in the vocalism system. Here is just one example illustrating the ambiguity of phoneme correspondences in words of the Chuvash language and in words borrowed from it in the Mari language. The Chuvash reduced phoneme e in borrowed words can correspond to any Pramari reduced vowel: mar. l. küvar 'bridge'; 'floor'; mar. g. 'bridge' < chuv. 'most' [Fedotov, 1996, I, p. 276]; mar. g. inzyk, 'suck' < chuv. 'suck' [Fedotov, 1996, I, p. 149]; mar. l. šupaš; mar. g. šinaš 'to offer, to regale' < chuv. ... Read more