Etymological methods in ethnolinguistic research into mythological vocabulary

The first part of the article provides a brief overview of works reflecting the mutual interest of ethnolinguistics and etymology in which the capabilities and achievements of each other are used (articles by V.N. Toporov, O.N. Trubachev, S.M. Tolstaya, A. Loma and M. Bjeletiћ, K., O. and M. Stachowskie, H. Schuster-Šewc, books by U. Dukova, N. Hobzey, R. Dźwigoł and others). The result of this interaction in the field of mythological vocabulary shows its fruitfulness in the study of lower Slavic mythology. In the second part of the article, the etymologies of two rare Slovak demonyms are proposed. The first is the name of the local Ccentral-Slovak character grgalica / grgolica, which, based on the assessment of the mythological image, its typological features, as well as the analysis of the same root vocabulary in different Slavic languages, is proposed to be associated with the onomatopoetic verb grgať and similar. The second term – West-Slovakian Bendúš - known from the description of the young people spring game and understood by the author of information about him as a relic of a certain deity, is plausibly explained as an anthroponym derived from the root bend- ‘belly, thick’.

«Alphabet wars» in the history and modernity of Slavic languages: sidenotes to the Artur Steplewski’s book

The article concerns problematics of the (re)interpretation of graphicsof graphics and the alphabet in national categories in the history of Serbian, Croatian, and Ukrainian literary languages through the prism of A. Stemplevsky's monograph «Semiosis of Script: monograph «Semiosis of Script: Cyrillic and latin alphapet in Serbian and Croatian national discourse on the Slavic background».The concept of nationalization is introduced to describe expanding of meaning due to ideological and cultural connotationswhile alphabets as a whole or their separate graphemes have been used in the symbolic function.The article highlights the issues of the parallel functioning of the Latin and Cyrillic alphabet in the history and modernity of Serbian and Croatian, as well as other Slavic languages, and the perception of this fact in the usus and national discourse.Special attention is paid to the measures of language policy and the efforts of representatives of national elites who influence the choice of the alphabet and/or the principles of spelling during standardization.

Etymological methods in ethnolinguistic research into mythological vocabulary

The first part of the article provides a brief overview of works reflecting the mutual interest of ethnolinguistics and etymology in which the capabilities and achievements of each other are used (articles by V.N. Toporov, O.N. Trubachev, S.M. Tolstaya, A. Loma and M. Bjeletiћ, K., O. and M. Stachowskie, H. Schuster-Šewc, books by U. Dukova, N. Hobzey, R. Dźwigoł and others). The result of this interaction in the field of mythological vocabulary shows its fruitfulness in the study of lower Slavic mythology. In the second part of the article, the etymologies of two rare Slovak demonyms are proposed. The first is the name of the local Ccentral-Slovak character grgalica / grgolica, which, based on the assessment of the mythological image, its typological features, as well as the analysis of the same root vocabulary in different Slavic languages, is proposed to be associated with the onomatopoetic verb grgať and similar. The second term – West-Slovakian Bendúš - known from the description of the young people spring game and understood by the author of information about him as a relic of a certain deity, is plausibly explained as an anthroponym derived from the root bend- ‘belly, thick’.

The specifics of Croatian folk mythology

The article is devoted to the areal distribution of Croatian mythological characters, taking into account the general picture of folk mythology in the space of Southern Slavia. The author regards demonological images specific to the Adriatic, southern and northern parts of Croatia (including the Istrian peninsula), northwestern Croatia (often representing a single whole with the neighboring Slovenian area), Slavonia and Croats living in the environment of a foreign-cultural and foreign-speaking majority (Drava’s Croats in Hungary and Burgenland’s Croats in Austria and Hungary). The need to analyze character types considering the neighboring South Slavic regions (Bosnian, Serbian, Slovenian) is caused by the common system of distribution of cultural dialects and the corresponding terminology of folk culture in the whole South Slavic territory. As far as the geolinguistic study of folk mythology is concerned, and more broadly – cultural dialects, the ethnolinguist’s attention naturally falls on borrowings in the names of demonological characters: Italian, German, Hungarian, etc.

Motivation of the dialectal word in reflection of the analytic dialectology

The paper deals with the problems of the Russian dialectology. We consider the modern period of the development of dialect studies as the era of “analytical and explanatory dialectology” whose aim is to give dialect word a deep interpretation and in connection with this to analyze the language of traditional culture. Thus, we offer to broaden the framework of dialect studies and to shape what can be called cultural dialectology which aims at the reconstruction of the traditional spiritual culture.

Ukrainian magical folklore in the archive collections of the RGO and OLEAE

The article describes the found out archival collections of Ukrainian magical folklore from the funds of the Russian Geographical Society (RGO) and the Society of Amateurs of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography (OLEAE). The author determines the history of the manuscripts and expresses ideas about their authorship, the available editions of these materials, the functional composition, the features of the content and poetic language of the charms included in the collections under consideration. Special attention is paid to the fact that in some of these collections, charms are juxtaposed with «small» forms of verbal magic, creating a complete picture of this fragment of folklore tradition. The expediency of publishing some of these manuscripts (the most complete and little-known) is due to their exclusivity, as well as to the fact that Ukrainian verbal magic is still the least known among the three Eastern Slavic traditions.