FOLK TERMS DENOTING ROAD IN THE ZHYTOMYR REGION

Abstract

The article contains, analyses and systematizes a collection of folk geographical terms designating various types of roads in the dialects of the Zhytomyr region, recorded according to the native speakers of this area. According to the nature of the object of nomination, the lexical and semantic group “road” is classified into six semantic groups depending on the quality of the road, location, type of road surface and parts. The article traces the etymology and semantic variants of the collected terms from the first-known Slavic records and earliest records in the area under study to the present day.
 The semantic chronology is analysed for those geographical names for which it was possible, such as road, highway, path, route etc. The meanings of the collected terms are described in comparison with the literary language and dialects of Ukraine and other Slavic languages. The materials used and explored by the study include artefacts and archival official papers. Moreover, the article traces the means whereby some geographical terms were formed. The new words are most often formed by means of suffixation or metaphorical transfer of names from other objects to geographical phenomena similar in their structure or form. Some terms include composite names formed by nouns and adjectives where the nouns denote geographical objects and the adjectives provide additional characteristics, indicating the quality, materials used and origin. The article outlines the territories of distribution of the recorded terms in the Zhytomyr region and identifies the folk terms that are most commonly used throughout the surveyed territory, those with their functioning limited to several districts or localities, and those occurring rarely. The folk terms are divided into those with widely known meanings, those recorded with new semantical meanings, and unique lexemes, never recorded in the language varieties spoken in other areas of Slavia. Functioning of a large number of phonetic variants of some lexical units recorded is observed, which is typical for the territory of the Zhytomyr region. The article also outlines the semantic fields of some polysemantic words used to denote other phenomena not related to roads.