Botanical Lexis and Terminology of Laudative Meaning in Naming People of the Pirot Dialect

Folkloristics 7/1 (2022): 67-90
Author: Dragana M. Ratković
Text:
https://doi.org/10.18485/folk.2022.7.1.4

The topic of this article encompasses nouns and nominal syntagma of the positive expressive tonality used in the dialect of Pirot, primarily for naming the plants and their parts, and secondarily for naming people. Corpus consists of two dictionaries of Pirot dialect: one authored by Novica Živković (1987), the other by Dragoljub Zlatković (2014, 2017). Linguistic units are analyzed from various aspects: linguocultural, lexic-semantic, genetic-semantic and cognitive. The aim is to obtain answers on following questions: 1) what kinds of persons are named using botanical lexis and terminology of laudative meaning; 2) which genetic, lexic and cognitive mechanisms partake in materialization of the given linguistic units or semantic realizations; 3) what an attitude does the Pirot speaker assume towards the named persons as bearers of specific characteristics. Described methodology enables reconstruction of those elements of Pirot dialectal worldview that are concerned with the role of the plants in conceptualization of MAN, as well as those concerned with value system of traditional culture of the Pirot speaker.

Keywords: Pirot dialect, naming people, lexeme, phytonym, laudative meaning, metaphorical meaning, connotation, positive assessment, traditional culture.