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This article analyses the mountain mythonymy of the Urals, i.e. names for supernatural anthropomorphic beings that guard treasures of the earth (minerals and metals) and aid (or interfere with) their discovery, extraction, and carving. Russian mountain mythology has already been studied by folklorists, but the linguistic aspect is only unfolding now. The material referred to in the article was collected during the 2020–2023 expeditions and retrieved from dictionaries, folklore texts, and fiction. The article mainly draws on the mythology and mythonymy of the Urals (as well as some zones of Siberia). The paper analyses the core nominations in the sphere of “genii loci” — mythonyms хозяин (khoziain, lit. ‘master’) and хозяйка (khoziaika, lit. ‘mistress’). The authors note that the images of the owners of the mountains and earth treasures originate in peasant beliefs about the spirits of natural loci which could have been supported by the corresponding mythological images that existed among indigenous Uralic peoples. In the Middle Urals, a mountain spirit usually takes a female form. The article traces the genesis of this image and explains its feminine nature. The authors compare the following two mythonyms: хозяйка (khoziaika) from folk legends and Хозяйка Медной горы (Khoziaika Mednoi Gory, lit. ‘Mistress of the Copper Mountain’) from Bazhov’s tales. The authors note that the widespread appreciation of Bazhov’s tales stands in the way of determining the direction in which the mythonym migrated (from the author’s tale into folk speech or vice versa). Хозяйка (Khoziaika) is the most widespread mountain mythonym which is found in the Middle Urals vocabulary and phraseology associated with the extraction and carving of minerals: коса хозяйки (kosa khoziaiki, lit. ‘the mistress’s plait’), слезы хозяйки (slezy khoziaiki, lit. ‘the mistress’s tears’), мастер от хозяйки (master ot khoziaiki, lit. ‘craftsman from the mistress’, ‘craftsman inspired by the mistress’), камень хозяйки (kamen’ khoziaiki, lit. ‘the mistress’s stone’), хозяйка зеркало разбила (khoziaika zerkalo razbila, lit. ‘the mistress broke the mirror’), etc. The legends of the Southern Urals more often feature the image of a master (хозяин). This may be explained by the influence of Tatar and Bashkir culture.

This article discusses the mountain metonymy of the Urals, i.e. the designation of supernatural anthropomorphic creatures that store the riches of the subsoil (minerals and metals) and contribute to or hinder their discovery, extraction, and processing. Russian mountain mythology has been studied by folklorists, but the linguistic aspect is only beginning to be explored. The material for the article was collected in the field between 2020 and 2023, and derived from dictionaries, folklore texts, and authorial literature. The author mostly focuses on Middle Ural and South Ural mythonyms; for comparison, the article draws on material of other zones connected with the Urals geographically or historically (Bashkiria, Siberia). The article provides detailed descriptions of the motivations of mythonyms and the conditions for the appearance of nominations. Mountain mythonymy can be divided into several groups depending on the motivation, i. e. the thematic group of vocabulary underlying the mythonym. This article analyses mythonyms motivated by social vocabulary, namely, denoting a person or kinship: золотая девка (golden girl), каменная девка (stone girl), горная девка (mountain girl), чудская девица (Chudskaya maiden), горный батюшка (mountain father), горная матка (mountain mother), Шубин (Shubin), etc. The article reveals and explains the specificity of Ural mountain mythonymy: thus, the девка token is used for the nomination of female spirits, whereas the баба nomination is characteristic of traditional Russian peasant mythology. An expressive feature of Ural mountain mythonymy is the presence of mythonyms formed from toponyms (девка Азовка, девка Дедюрка). The article proves that the formation of mountain mythonymy was influenced by the mythology of the Russian peasantry, the mythology of the autochthonous peoples of the Urals (Turkic and Finno-Ugric), as well as the terminology of mining actively developing in the Urals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The authors study the history behind the development of mineral deposits in the Ural Gemstone Belt (near Murzinka village, Gornouralsky Urban District, Sverdlovsk Oblast), as well as mineralogical and toponymical terminology connected to this history. The analysis focuses on the following issues: how the deposits were discovered; what role in it belonged to visiting Italian masters (the Tortori brothers); how their activities are connected to the popular term тальян (тальянчик, тальяшка) ‘any precious (crystal) stone’, ‘amethyst’, ‘pure quartz’, ‘smoky quartz’, and the name of the mountain (mine) Тальян. The authors conclude that, although this version is widespread in popular literature, the Tortori brothers were not the first to discover gemstones near Murzinka settlement. The mountain name Тальян is a metonymic transfer from the name of a mine near Murzinka. In this mine, crystal gemstones were mined — mostly amethysts that were called тальяны. In any case, the word тальян derives from the stem (и)тальян- meaning “Italian” but is not connected to the discovery of the deposit. Most probably, the word conveys a naïve impression of coloured transparent stones that resemble Italian glass. Thus, it is a motivational parallel to the word вениса ‘garnet’ (lit. ‘Venetian stone’). The term тальян appeared no later than the eighteenth century; it already existed near Murzinka before the Tortori arrived. After their arrival, the word could gain a new motivational impetus — and started to be perceived as a result of dedicatory nomination.

The article considers the word duboglot, which functions in the Russian dialects (mainly South Russian) in the meanings of ‘strong dry cough, usually accompanied by a sore throat,’ ‘angina.’ Semantic and motivational reconstruction of this word is carried out based on its role in the text. The authors conclude that the word got into the dialect system from the folklore (mainly from the charms), where it refers to diseases related to inflammation of the oral cavity, pharynx and lower respiratory tract, and accompanied by a strong cough, pain. It is established that most often the word appeared in the texts as a part of the formula “X (a tree), take your Y (duboglot), otherwise I will eat you / swallow you,” which is initially addressed to an oak tree as a convenient “recipient” of diseases that are expelled from the speaker’s space. The authors suggest that the word duboglot is “induced” by the logic of unfolding the text: this is “the oak glot” (glot is the ability to swallow – from the Russian verb glotat’ ‘to swallow’), which should belong to an oak, not a sick person. The word creation within the framework of a spoken construction is supported by the capabilities that are inherent in the language system. Firstly, it is the image of an oak “mouth” (throat), which is formed on the basis of the natural properties and features of oak. This image could be fixed in the internal form of the word itself, which is a controversial issue, but it certainly is seen in the stable compatibility of dub ‘oak’ ↔ duplo ‘hollow’, and at the synchronous level is also supported by the phonetic proximity of these words. The image of a tree, secondly, has another facet: the image of roots of a tree and its crown is projected on the idea of the growth of a tumour (including one in the throat); roots and crown of a tree simultaneously seem to be a “tool” for clearing the throat. Yet another facet of the image is related to how the native speaker sees the properties of a bark: there is a productive model for the Russian language that fixates the connection between the designations of wood (oak) bark and tumours on the human body (including throat tumours); oak bark itself is generally an “archetype” of a bark, hard, rough, stripped from the surface of a tree (which corresponds to “tearing” sensations with a sore throat). DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2020.9.2.14

In the Russian subdialects, there are many lexemes with the meaning of speed concerning the execution of some actions, and many of them have a figurative underlying form. The article refers to the nominations of high and low speed, motivated by designations of the sound’s acoustic characteristics, peculiarities of human speech, as well as to the “speed” vocabulary, based on the sound symbolism found in the dialects of the Russian North. To represent sounds of high speed, it is common to use interjections, derived from verbs with a meaning of a short and fast action, which is often accompanied by a sound (лоп, шорк), as well as onomatopoeic interjections (жик, фить). The analysis of lexemes of low speed based on the phonetic form of the motivating word demonstrates that sluggishness is associated with voiceless hushing sounds (шúшлеть, шошéлиться), palatalised resonant consonants, and front vowels [’у] and [’а] (алялва, тня). Fast and slow actions are compared with sounds which have certain acoustic properties. Speed is compared to sounds with a high tone (свистáть ‘to walk fast’), short sounds (шáркать ‘to run by with noise’) and sounds which emphasise the intensity of work (только сбóркает ‘to do something fast, at once’). Low speed is associated with quiet sounds, such as rustle or hissing. Speech codes are also used to describe sluggishness. The nominations actualise characteristics of duration (пкала ‘stammerer’ → ‘a sluggish person’), lack of clarity and distinctness in speech (ммлить ‘to do something very slow; to delay something’), and ineffectiveness (раздобáривать ‘to chat, to have useless talks’ → ‘to do something too slow, to dawdle’).

This article presents the results of a motivational analysis of Russian dialect and national vocabulary denoting sluggish people and slow actions. There are a lot of nominations for low speed, and they are characterised by high expressivity, and lexemes of different subject groups are used as designations. After analysing patterns of the development of semantics of slow motion, the author concludes that there are a number of prevailing motives, reflecting the idea about the characteristics preventing people from acting quickly, and defining the perception of low speed by naïve consciousness. These characteristics are divided into two groups: evaluation and physical ones. The list of physical characteristics shows that the image of sluggishness in Russian dialects is characterised by a mixed nature: hardness as durability and softness as the inability to keep the original shape; low, medium, and high temperatures. Sluggishness is associated with heavy or large objects. The latter feature is more widespread in the vocabulary of speed: cumbersome, bulky objects, as well as salient, ball-shaped objects, reminding of stout people, develop the meaning of sluggishness. Comparisons of an object with a sluggish person are included in the group of evaluation characteristics, as evaluation there is similar. Objects that seem simple, primitive, or show their owner’s low culture, have the same axiological motive in the development of low speed semantics. The same can be said about items of poor quality, not meeting the requirements or not fulfilling their functions.

Статья посвящена реконструкции языкового образа реки Волги. Материалом для анализа послужили преимущественно диалектные данные русского языка. В центре внимания – деривационно-фразеологическое гнездо с вершинным словом Волга, то есть семантические и семантико-словообразовательные дериваты гидронима, фразеология и паремиология с его участием. В результате идеографического анализа материала были выделены предметно-тематические сферы, демонстрирующие присутствие дериватов гидронима Волга: «География», «Гидрологические параметры», «Социум» и «Материальная культура». Отмечается, что наполнение обозначенных денотативных зон неравномерно, и наиболее детализированной в лексико-семантическом плане сферой является «Социум»: образ Волги в народном сознании тесно связан с бурлачеством и отхожими промыслами. Лингвистические данные, по мнению автора, поддерживают существующий в фольклоре антропоморфный образ Волги. Река представляется в виде веселого, бойкого, умного человека (скорее молодой девушки). Помимо портрета Волги, предлагается ряд мотивационных решений для непрозрачных фразеологизмов с «волжским» компонентом.

The article deals with designations of sluggish and prompt people motivated by nominations of mythological characters, with reference to Russian dialects. It is noted that the meanings of speed can only be found among the names of lower demons, who are believed to be able to contact with the humans and to make people be active or sluggish. The names of the devil and the demon are the most productive in this regard, as the sign of velocity is characteristic of their image. Images of these characters are worked out in detail in “speed” vocabulary and phraseology. A quick person is compared to the devil and the demon. Prototypical situations in which the devil and the demon demonstrate the ability to move quickly are considered as a standard of movement with high speed. The choice of an unnaturally high speed by a man is explained by the influence of the devil or the demon on his consciousness. The names of such characters as shulikuns, kostroma and yagarma can also be used as the basis for speed nominations. In the first case, the semantic development of the name of the mythological character is based on the ideas of his behavior and appearance (shulikuns are short, nimble and fussy). In the other two cases, the semantic development is determined by the belonging of kostroma and yagarma to the number of characters of intimidation and their rapprochement with demonic forces: images of mythological characters possessing “supernatural” properties are very productive as a source of speed nominations and are used to describe “outstanding” human features. Semantics of slowness is represented in rare examples (makura). The nominations of kikimora (shishimora) and kumokha have contradictory speed interpretation attributed to both high and low speed.