Lexical and Semantic Features of the Designation of Time in the Ukrainian Dialects of the Carpathians
This article examines the peculiarities of the designation of certain time periods in a number of Ukrainian dialects of the Carpathian region; in particular from the perspective of the specifics of dialect segmentation of this semantic sphere and of the principles of nomination. The lexical material of the Carpathian-Ukrainian dialects allows us to distinguish certain semantic models and shifts observed in time designations: the transfer of spatial parameters for the nomination of time and vice versa; the orientation in the names of months to phenological and economic cycles, and not to the division of the astronomical year into segments containing a certain number of days; the perception of the concept of “time” itself displayed by the vocabulary as a favourable or unfavourable time for any activity or life in general; the nomination of morning as the appearance of daylight or a period of time somewhat removed in the past from the moment of speech; and some borrowings are also noted as an integral part of the vocabulary denoting time in its various manifestations. On the basis of the analysis of material from Carpatho-Ukrainian dialect dictionaries, it is concluded that this vocabulary represents a number of semantic models of names of time periods that have parallels in other Slavic and some non-Slavic languages. Taking into account the linguistic and geographical aspect, namely, a fairly wide distribution in the language territory of Slavia, as well as beyond its borders, we can assume the status of these models as semantic archetypes represented collectively in the dialect zone of the Carpathians.