Brewing vocabulary in the Russian North: an ethnolinguistic aspect

The article considers the brewing vocabulary which refers to the peculiarities of beer fermentation and its qualitative characteristics. The material includes the dialect data from Arkhangelsk and Vologda Oblasts, as well as from the northeastern part of Kostroma Oblast (the northern part of Sharyin-sky, Vokhomsky, Oktyabrsky, Pavinsky Districts formerly belonging to Vologda Oblast). The data were taken from the dialect dictionaries of these territories and lexicographic files of the Ural Federal University Toponymic Expedition. The work aims to carry out an ethnolinguistic interpretation of the Russian North dialect vocabulary which denotes the peculiarities of fermentation and the qualitative characteristics of beer. Such methods as semantic reconstruction, ideographic, systemic semantic analysis, identification of semantic and motivational parallels between linguistic facts and extralinguis-tic forms of culture are used to build a complex ethnolinguistic research. Terms of brewing are combined into several thematic groups: 1. General characteristics (beer korchagovoye, tshannoye, styrovoye, bol'shoye, malen'koye etc.). 2. Preparation of malt and mash (zasolodit', chizhit', buchit' etc.). 3. Fermentation of beer: leaven (mel, prizgolovok, nazhivka etc.), process of fermentation (gulyat', zhit', khodit'; naveselivat' etc.), beer foam (molodi, babka, zaytsy, kolpak etc.). 4. Poured out remains of beer (kochevrya, tret'yak, synok, svistun, badog, zadnyukha etc.) 5. Sediment in beer (drobina, druzg, olovina, barda, bardama etc.). 6. Poorly brewed beer (kisel', pivo-netecha etc.). With reference to these ideograms, the author presents the basic vocabulary of brewing in the Russian North, reveals typical semantic-motivational models and searches for cultural and linguistic parallels and their traditional representation. Generally, the vocabulary of brewing is composed of archaic lexemes (ex. olovina, druzg, molodi etc.), it includes expressive names and names which can be interpreted only through cultural and linguistic parallels. The vocabulary of beer fermentation expresses the idea of its anthropomorphic form. The names of beer of the first, second, third grade are the most expressive part of the brewing vocabulary (ex. bryukhoduy, konev'ya ssyach'). Its comprehensive analysis allowed to identify non-trivial semantic transitions such as 'deceiver, chatterbox' ^ 'weak beer', 'vertigo' ^ 'strong beer', 'son, stepson' ^ 'beer of the first, second, third grade'. The ritual function explains several names of the second grade beer: the name badog derived from badog 'stick', it is associated with the tradition of "drinking before leaving", tolkun is a liquid beer which is used to "pack off' overstaying visitors.

Keywords

Authors

References