UDC

811.161.1

Authors

Marina V. Flyagina
Southern Federal University; per. Universitetskiy 93, Rostov-on-Don, 344006, Russian Federation; e-mail: flyagina_75@mail.ru

Abstract

Folk geographical terminology of the Don River area dialects is rich in various lexemes reflecting the nature of that region. Being one of the most ancient and, consequently, most stable lexical layers, geographical words clearly demonstrate the history of people’s attitude towards nature and recreates fragments of the linguistic view of the Russian world. Dialect vocabulary is the most valuable source for studying the history of not only the dialect itself, but also of the literary language, since dialects often preserve those linguistic, including lexical, facts that in the literary language are already consigned to history. The geographical terminology of the Don River area, primarily stemming from the mother dialects, eventually acquired a number of features distinguishing it from similar systems of other Russian dialects and determining its specificity. Local geographical appellatives of the Don River area were examined here in detail against a broad East Slavic background and compared with geographical words of other Russian regions. Although certain groups of vocabulary and dialect words in general have been thoroughly studied before, it can be of interest to characterize dialect names in the diachronic aspect and compare the data of modern dialects with the materials of the past centuries, thereby determining the maternal basis of the Don River area dialects. Studying the vocabulary of the Don River area dialects in the historical perspective allows dialectologists to find in the lexical system plenty of facts and information providing deeper insight into the process of the dialect’s evolvement or, more precisely, helping to reveal the patterns of its development. This is what determines the prospects for the chosen area of research.

Keywords

modern Russian dialects, Don River area dialects, landscape vocabulary, folk geographical appellatives, diachrony

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