For the first time in Ukraininan lingustics the thesis studies the beliefs about the celestial bodies in Middle Polissian dialects in respect of ethnolinguistic aspect.
The structural organization and semantics of lexical cultural discources related to the beliefs about the celestial bodies were analyzed in 55 Middle Polissian dialects according to the materials, collected on a special quetstionary.
The author’s structuring of the fragment under investigation related to the beliefs about the celestial bodies has been suggested: the main lexical and semantic groups TLG related to the images about the celestial bodies have been determined; the main themes and motives which form the cultural texts of Middle Polissian beliefs about the moon, the sun and the stars have been defined.
Some new ethno-linguistic material which has become the basis for defining the structure of the cultural phenomenon as a part of an integral system of diversified units – verbal, actional, locative, temporal, attributive, basic etc. – has been introduced into the scientific circulation.
The nomination of Middle Polissian beliefs about the celestial bodies has a branched system. In particular, different nomination types have been determined: lexical nomination which is represented by the lexical units of different parts of speech in different grammatical forms, mostly by verbs, nouns and adjectives, less commonly by adverbs, numerals; a proposition nomination and a discourse one, which are represented by word combinations of different structural types, as well as by discriptive constructions and micro texts. The nomination in a plural form is a characteristic of a cultural discourse related to the images about the stars.
Lexical nomination appeared to be non-uniform from the point of view of ritual functioning, that enabled to separate the next groups: 1) commonly used vocabulary, whose semantic field includes the meaning of the word which functions in cultural discourses; 2) the words which function beyond the ritual, related to the celestial bodies, gaining another meaning; 3) the words with specifically ritual functioning.
A system of definite oppositions which reflect the main opposition of Middle Polissian beliefs has been formed in the theses. The main discourse opposition about the celestial bodies – life: death – is realised through definite oppositions:
- the moon – young : old, bright : dark, health : disease, sleepwalk : sleep, light: red (purple), peace : war, yield : crops fail;
- the sun – lightness: darkness, sunrise : sunset, God : devil, warm : cold, health: disease, wealth : poverty, the Sun : Sun eclipse, home : out of home;
- stars – brightly : faintly, shine: go dark, many stars : few stars, health : disease;
- incantations – health : disease, this world : that world, hurts : does not hurt, get older : get younger, alive : dead, the sky : the sea ( field, forest );
- folk meteorology – weather : bad weather, clear moon : faint moon, light : dark ( cloudy, beyond clouds), North : South, high : low, straight : aside, up : down ( moon’ ‘’horns’’), warmth : coldness, heat : frost, dry : wet, soon : not soon, sunrise : sunset, morning : evening, today : tomorrow, winter : summer, clear : faintly, not seen (stars) : bright (stars), starry sky : not starry sky, many, more : few, less (stars).
The themes of the content plane are the basis for the formation of cultural texts, related to the images about the celestial bodies: sacredness, disease, doomsday, life, death, movement, planting and sowing, wealth, weather, bad weather, fate etc. and motives: the cult of celestial bodies, harmness of the moon and sun light, stains on the moon, darkness, lightness, light and shadow play, colour, clearness of the celestial bodies, dryness, warmth, stars multiplicity, faintness, rain, coldness.
A multicenter study of the beliefs about the celestial bodies makes it possible to reconstitute a linguistic view of Polissians’ intellectual culture, to decipher the signary of LSG names, related to the beliefs about the moon, LSG names, related to the beliefs about the sun, LSG names, related to beliefs about the stars, as well as the processes which occur in the intellectual culture in the existing Middle Polissian dialects.
