Beekeeping terminology in the Bulgarian dialect of Gega (based on The Small Dialectological Atlas of the Balkan Languages)

The paper is based on the unpublished field materials of The Small Dialectological Atlas of the Balkan Languages (SDABL), the dialectological expedition of 1998, and describes the beekeeping terminology of Gega, a southwestern Bulgarian dialect of Pirin region. The beekeeping vocabulary of Gega is presented by 119 lexemes. The author carries out a thorough examination of the lexical lacunae (23 % of responses to 128 questions): wild honey harvesting, cross-fixed frame, mud and clay hive, vertical hive etc. and offers some good explanations for these lexical gaps. The beekeepers of Gega do not focus their attention on the details of the reproduction process of bees (queenless hive, nurse bee, worker bee or drone bee larva), their diseases (braulosis, bee paralysis disease), on some time concepts (honey flow), etc. The micro-field "Frame with Honey Comb" segmentation is also very poor. 10 cases of lexical indistinctions (e.g. pros koser 'skep made of coils of straw or branches' = pros koser 'basket for a caught bee swarm', vostina 'empty comb without honey' = vostina 'wax melter' = vostina 'meltings') demonstrate the peculiarities of the conceptualization of the information about environment in the Gega dialect. The lack of multi-word terminological expressions is emphasized. All the cases of nominal and verbal polysemy (maika, pilo, silen, slab, biser, sugaref, topi, seka etc.) are analyzed. Despite the limited amount of Gega lexical material, some attention is devoted to the development of polysemy in the dialect (e.g. pilo(-e) 'chicken; brood nest in a hive', pil'ince 'fledgling chicken; larva'; l'evokar 'left-handed person' and l'evokarka 'aggressive bee'). All the 119 lexemes of beekeeping terminology are examined from the etymological point of view. 90 % of them occurred to be native Slavic words. A special group is formed by words borrowed by Old Bulgarian: daska (< Germ. tisc or Balk. Lat. *disc-), iskarvam (< Balk. Lat. *carriare), pita (< Gr. пцтта, ттта), kil'iika (< Gr. KeXXOv < Lat. cella) and kacul'ka (an inherited Balkanian substratum word). There were found only two late Romance borrowings (bukol < Ital. boccale; burkan < Rum. borcan) and five words of Turkic or Turkish origin (sandsk, kapak, g'um, torbicki, koremce). The late influence of modern European languages (through standard Bulgarian vocabulary) can be observed in ramka, nektar, centrifuga, sirop. This is an uncommon case of standard Bulgarian to impact the Gega dialect, which is quite isolated from its influence. Beekeeping terminology in the Bulgarian dialect of Gega reflects adequately the situation when the apiculture is being revived now on an "upgraded" level after several decades of decline.

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