Representation of the semantic field “human disease” in the Dictionary of Russian Dialects on the Territory of the Republic of Mordovia

The article focuses on the analysis of the semantic field “human disease”, the identification of the peculiarities of the national language world picture reflected in Russian folk dialects. The research was carried out on the material of the Dictionary of Russian Dialects on the Territory of the Republic of Mordovia. Various methods were used in the work: descriptive analysis to represent the material extracted as a result of continuous sampling from the dictionary; comparative and component analysis of the lexical units in order to establish their systemic hierarchical relationships and identify paradigmatic relations between them; contextual analysis to determine the content plan of the considered language units. In addition, the method of linguistic and cultural interpretation was used, based on the analysis of language material with the involvement of information on the history, culture, social organization of the analyzed community. Based on lexicographic data, linguistic units representing the semantic field of human disease were characterized in the structural-semantic aspect. The studied units were classified according to their part-of-speech belonging and to the presence in their semantic structure of integral and differential components. Such language units form an essential part of the regional vocabulary and express various meanings. A complex analysis of dictionary materials shows that the studied dialects have numerous names of human diseases, symptoms, changes in appearance and emotional states that arise as a result of a malady. Verbs characterizing various stages of diseases, painful states of a human body or certain organs are also observed. Dialect names are usually derived from nation-wide bases, the internal form of the word reflects the symptoms of the disease, especially of disease manifestations. In the Dictionary, the semantic field “human desease” is characterized by a variety of paradigmatic relations linking language units: synonymy is widely developed; polysemy, homonymy, antonymy are also presented in this semantic field; an abundance of doublet synonyms generally typical to dialects is observed. Thus, in the Dictionary of Russian Dialects on the Territory of the Republic of Mordovia, the semantic field “human disease” is represented by the richest variety of lexical and idiomatic units, formed as a reflection of human life in the linguistic world picture. The overall study of this material contributes to the comprehension of the national mentality and the specification of features of the national language world picture. Contribution of the authors: the authors contributed equally to this article. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.