The Nominative Composition of the Rusin Language as the Evidence of the Culture-Specific Living Conditions of the People

The article discusses the nominative composition of the Rusin language in terms of its origin, as a reflection of this ethnic group formation. The Rusin lexicon is characterized by developed synonymy, largely formed under the influence of extralinguistic factors, the most important of which, on the one hand, is the natural territorial isolation of the Carpathian Rusins, and, on the other hand, their multicultural environment, multiple changes in the state status, as well as the current broad settlement of the ethnic group in the world. The author identifies the specificity of the Rusin lexicon, including an ancient layer of Slavic words (zane, ralo, ramnja), unique formations from the ancestral roots (bukvarnik, ednota, mukariti, oknastyj), a large number of borrowings from the languages of neighboring peoples - Hungarian (guljash, letin’), German (mel’duvati, kram), Romanian and Moldavian (kamanak, melaj), as well as Western- (prusluk, hlopcha), and South Slavic (bagatelja, ruzha) languages. Special attention is paid to the synonymous row “okno, vozur, vygljad, obolok”, etc., formed under the influence of cognate languages, and to the shepherd terms, reflecting the specified features of the lexical system of the language at a more general level: archaic units (cheredar’, pastyr’), Slavic units (bacha, еlevnikar’, еlochеr’, yalochеr’), borrowings from unrelated languages (bovgar’, vakar’, gulyash kondash, chaban).

Keywords

Authors

References