Attributive constructions with the lexeme vremya ‘time’ in the Tomsk dialect corpus

Time is an essential element of any picture of the world. The concept of time permeates language and all our consciousness as a whole, thereby belonging to the essential categories of human consciousness. Time is perceived as a universal entity and an individual value that organizes all spheres of personal life. The author considers attributive constructions with the lexeme vremya ‘time’ on the material of the Tomsk dialect corpus. Attributive constructions are a way of generalizing information and isolating the significant properties of objects of the surrounding reality. Therefore, their analysis can help identify the most significant features in the concept of time in the Middle Ob dialects. Informants were found to use attributive constructions to characterize different spheres of human existence: past and present, work, recreation, historical milestones in life. Among the most frequent are the attributive constructions that characterize natural time. Their frequency is due to the fact that the peasant’s life to a much greater extent depends on the natural time than the city dweller’s life since the traditional society features a high degree of human involvement in the environment. Also, informants frequently use constructions indicating significant events (wartime) and characteristics denoting the opposition of the present and the past (this time/that time). Attributive constructions indicate the value orientations of informants, including peacetime, work, and the sphere of the past. The diverse structure of constructions concerned emphasizes the universality of the category of time, setting the limits of human existence.

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