SEMANTIZATION OF THE SACRED VOCABULARY IN THE DICTIONARY OF V. I. DAHL; [СЕМАНТИЗАЦИЯ САКРАЛЬНОЙ ЛЕКСИКИ В СЛОВАРЕ В. И. ДАЛЯ]

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of lexicographic techniques of vocabulary semantization, which are used in the dictionary of V. Dahl. The article analyzes the principles of the interpretation of the meanings employed in the dictionary through the ratio of the general and the particular, through reference to a variety of synonyms and richest illustrative material presented in the form of various kinds of stable expressions: proverbs, sayings, riddles, etc. Special attention is paid to the dictionary definition of the sacred vocabulary embodying stereotyped ideas of the Russian people about the realm of the supernatural, which sincretically unites the sacred and the demonic, sacred and profane, real and fictional. Vocabulary data makes it possible to identify groups of vocabulary that make up the structure of opposite semantic fields – sacred vs. demonic: names of subjects, participants in sacred communication, names of actions (rituals, magic, ritual practices of traditional medicine, etc.), names of sacral loci and time intervals characterized by heightened activity of the supernatural forces, etc. The study defines the universal lexicographical techniques of semantization of the sacred word in Dahl’s dictionary: interpretation through reference to a sacredly marked motivator (including false etymological correlations), identification of basic sacred meanings through denotative or conceptual components, and interpretation through analysis of systemic connections of units of one paradigm (syntagmatic, paradigmatic, and epidigmatic). The particular methods of semantization of sacred vocabulary include such as anthropomorphic analogy, reflecting the animistic ideas of man that existed at a certain stage in the development of society; creation of a generalized image, an image-concept that has a minimum of species and a maximum of generic characteristics; detailing of the symbol – as a rule, based on the fragmentation of mythological plots. The ability to construct entire semantic fields according to a “given matrix”, when the user needs to intuitively identify the connections between separate components, select the directions of these connections and create a model of the field is methodologically significant for work with the sacred vocabulary of traditional folk culture recorded in the dictionary. The article presents analogs of such models and demonstrates some procedures for identifying the components of the sacred lexeme semantics. © 2023 Kazan Federal University. All rights reserved.