The illustrative area of a regional dictionary: Structure and content potential of intentionally fragmented recollections of sub-dialect speakers

The article covers the various-aspect informative value of illustrative recollections in a regional dictionary. Its aim is to identify structural features of the illustrative area of the regional dictionary and its potential of presenting various types of information about antecedency. An Essay on the Dictionary of Kuban Region Sub-Dialects is taken as a source for examination, with a significant part of justifying examples therefor sampled from materials recorded by the authors of the article during multiyear dialectological expeditions. Pursuant to the purposes of lexicography, dialect macrotexts were subject to fragmentation, i.e. extraction of fragments of various size and structure in their shortened form. The article provides a graduated scale of intentional fragmentation by way of four structural types of intentionally fragmented illustrative recollections: illustrative recollections with actualized composition; illustrative recollections with reduced composition; illustrative recollections with zero composition; one-word remarks, equal to a dialect word, in an illustrative dialogue. The article demonstrates the informative potential of the identified structural types of illustrative recollections and its determinancy by volume. It defines the priority of illustrative recollections with actualized composition for communicating factual content. It also demonstrates that the informative value of illustrative recollections with reduced composition, as well as with the zero one, is ensured by presuppositions which exist in the subtext and must be present in the linguistic consciousness of the reader. The article notes the informative single-aspect feature of one-word remarks, equal to a dialect word, as part of an illustrative dialogue. The analysis of conceptual content, incorporated into illustrative recollections about singing and attitude towards singing in the past, proves the persistence of traditional cultural values of the Kuban Cossacks in the consciousness of Kuban region residents. The article concludes that the actualization of evaluative emotional content and conceptual content allows for illustrative recollections to be viewed as axiological texts by virtue of ethical and esthetical impact on the dictionary reader. In conclusion, the authors establish that the illustrative area of An Essay on the Dictionary of Kuban Region Sub-Dialects, due to broad presence of oral recollections therein, makes it a reliable source for their various-aspect study, due to the fact that the dictionary reconstructs the world of the past and reflects ethnical beliefs of the Kuban region dialect community. The findings allow for the argument that the regional dictionary, with its position at the intersection of two directions of communicational impact, i.e. between the collector and the informant, between the dictionary addressee and the lexicographer, is able to provide a mediated communicative contact between the dialect speaker and the reader, making the voice of the narrator heard through space and time. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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