Magic of Words: Lexemes with Semantics ‘Spell’ and ‘to Spell’ in Vepsian (Etymological-Semantic and Linguo-Geographical Aspects)

Abstract

A comparative analysis of the Veps language lexemes with the semantics ‘spell’ (puheg, puitoomine), as well as verbs with the meaning ‘to spell; pronounce incantations. The relevance of the study is due to the significance of the spell tradition for the worldview of the Vepsian people and the possibility of identifying the semantic and etymological features of the vocabulary group associated with this sphere of life. The names of the concept of “spell” (puheg, puitoomine) are analyzed, where the lexeme puheg, unlike the Russian term spell (< to spell < to speak), is associated not with speaking, but with a kind of “blowing” words from the mouth in the process of speaking. It is known from the literature, about a similar phenomenon that is characteristic of one of the Russian dialects of the Komi Republic (blowing words), about which the authors of this article believe that it may be a kind of tracing paper from the Baltic-Finnish languages, in which such a phenomenon is represented more widely, although they do not exclude and some universality in the development of languages. In the presented author's development, attention is paid to the etymology and semantic nuances of the lexemes sana and vajeh with the meaning ‘word’, one of which (sana) also intersects with the magic of the words of the world of spells in its semantics. The etymological aspects of the verbs of “magical action” (puhuda, puiteida, otvedaida) are analyzed in the study, where both original stems and borrowings from the Russian language are manifested. Linguistic maps illustrate the breadth of distribution of the analyzed terms in the dialects of the Vepsian.