Ассоциативно-вербальная сеть языка PLAUTDIETSCH немцев-меннонитов Сибири

Abstract

The paper examines the language of the Mennonite Germans Plautdietsch from a psycholinguistic view point. First, the article describes the history of the Mennonite Germans, discusses the problem of determining their linguistic status in the dialect-Mundart- language paradigm and singles out Plautdietsch as an independent language. Further, a brief description of Mennonite lifestyle is given, in particular, that of the inhabitants of Neudachino village in Novosibirsk region, where the research material was collected. Due to the absence of an established written tradition, it was not possible to conduct the associative experiment in written form, both stimuli and reactions were recorded and then transcribed in Cyrillic, the spelling understandable to the informants. Based on the results of a pilot associative experiment conducted with 13 Plautdietsch speakers in 2021, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of stimuli and reactions were studied. By calculating the total brightness index, the core, semi-periphery, and periphery of Mennonite Germans’ linguistic consciousness have been distinguished. According to the semantics of the associations, a verbal-associative network that consists of five thematic groups and expresses the linguistic consciousness of Mennonite Germans (Everyday Life, Possessions, Space, Time and Conceptual Categories) was formed. Already at the stage of the pilot experiment, the conducted research allows us to draw conclusions about the uniqueness and autonomy of Plautdietsch, as well as to highlight the key features of the native speakers’ linguistic worldview.