Verbal Aspect of Traditional Ukrainian Festivities: a Study of Dialectal Speech

Abstract

Using the example of dialect texts recorded in three dialect areas of Ukraine, as well as lexicographic material, the article analyzes the specifics of the functioning of nominative units designating certain holidays of the winter and spring cycles. The main focus is placed on the representation and linguistic treatment of dialect vocabulary related to traditional holidays, ritual actions, beliefs, and the worldview concepts of the Ukrainians. The current state of research on the outlined topic demonstrates that the study of folk calendar nominations is an important task for contemporary linguistic studies, including dialectological research. In linguistic and ethnolinguistic works, the scholars provide the etymology of the recorded names, identify semantic dominants, trace the variation of lexical units, and establish the mythological motives underlying verbal and nonverbal components. Particular attention is also paid to the state of research on the nominations of calendar-based religious and folk holidays and rituals in the Ukrainian academic discourse; various approaches of linguists to the description of the vocabulary and phraseology of the folk calendar, based on folklore texts, records of dialect speech, writers' epistolary heritage, and other materials, are analyzed. At the same time, linguists emphasize the importance of collecting and processing this fragment of the lexical system in order to preserve information about the material and spiritual components of human life. The study also establishes that traditional folk ritual culture, associated with a considerable number of customs, realia, actions, and so forth, has an extensive system of names that requires a comprehensive scholarly approach. The lexical customary component of the Ukrainian people is considered through the example of general names of holidays and pre-holiday stages (vechornytsi/evening gatherings). The core of the article is the description of nominations of the winter calendar cycle and the early spring feast of the Forty Holy Martyrs. During the analysis, emphasis is placed on the sacred nature of certain numbers, whose special significance is also confirmed by illustrative material. The vocabulary denoting holidays, ritual processes, and actions is represented mostly by one-word names which, within the Eastern Slobozhanshchyna dialects, display different degrees of functional activity. Phraseological units performing descriptive functions are recorded sporadically; they help provide additional information about the semantic content and essential characteristics of folk traditions. The author shares the view of linguists regarding the presence of transformational processes in the lexical group under study, caused by extralinguistic factors. Thus, on the basis of dialect texts, it is shown that changes affect the verbal plane (variation of the textual component), the realia-related plane (changes in elements of material culture), and the actional plane of festive rites. The concluding theses of the study emphasize the need for further investigation of the vocabulary of calendar rituality, in particular for determining the static and dynamic features within this thematic group and for establishing lexical correspondences with the dialects of adjacent and more distant dialect continua of the Ukrainian language.