Peculiarities Of Linguistic Worldview Transformation On The Territory Of Later Settling

Abstract

Orenburg Russian dialects are of particular interest in terms of studying the linguistic worldview primarily because they were formed as a result of versatile active contacts between North Russian and South Russian dialects surrounded by Turkic and Finno-Ugrian languages, as well as competition between Cossack and «peasant’s» dialects. The consideration of secondary dialects’ lexical system on the territory of the Orenburg region and their peculiarities reveals the presence of a significant number of Turkic borrowings related to the natural features of the area, being new for the Russian migrants. Mastering of the corresponding fragments of other linguistic worldviews that do not have corresponding analogues affects certain aspects of household and economic activity, especially of steppe cattle breeding, among which camel husbandry and breeding of downy goats are marked out. In this, migrants’ own linguistic worldview was not replaced and substituted for another one; on the contrary, under the influence of other linguistic worldviews, it was adjusted and expanded in accordance with the peculiarities of its own, in which its basic foundations were not touched, but even strengthened due to the acceptance of other realities in their development by neighboring ethnoses.

Keywords: Linguistic worldviewdialects of territories of later settlingOrenburg Russian dialectslanguage contacts

Introduction

Areas of dialects of later settling became the subject of research for many scientists in the 1970s and 80s of the 20th century. However, unlike mother dialects that have developed over many centuries, specific conditions for the formation and occurrence of secondary dialects, often in sufficiently active inter-dialectal and interlinguistic contacts, determine their diversity and «individuality» on certain territories and in each individual case. Hence are the complexity of their classification and the identification of typology, especially if the «material» base has been insufficiently collected and the factors influencing the formation of dialects’ secondary systems have not been properly defined. Secondary systems of dialects often collapse quite quickly, which results in their loss even before the beginning of their methodic research.

Unfortunately, we should agree with the opinion of T.E. Bazhenova that, so far, «we have had the most general idea» of the linguistic landscape for the territories of the later settling (Bazhenova, 2016, p.28).

Problem Statement

In this connection, studies related to the characteristics of secondary dialects and their systems deserve special attention. Secondary dialects of the former Orenburg province represent the so-called «white spot» in modern dialectology, due to their original prevalence and mixture.

Starting from 1744, the development of a vast territory, including the modern territories of the Orenburg region, the Chelyabinsk region, Bashkortostan, northern and western Kazakhstan, parts of the Kurgan, Samara, Perm, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk regions and Tatarstan (Chibilev, et al., 2017), took place, accompanied by the constant movement of settlers from 20 provinces of the Russian Empire, contacts with nomadic Turkic and Finno-Ugric peoples, as well as those who were returning home from the Urals and Siberia into the previously developed lands. The situation with the existence of the established or emerging dialects was also exacerbated by waves of immigrants in the XIX century.

The social factor entrenched this language situation, because there is an indication of the influence for more prestigious Cossack dialects on «peasant» dialects, as peasants in ethnically mixed settlements of the Orenburg region adopted the features of the other speech. This fact is stated by D.K. Zelenin, who analyzed the speech of the Cossacks in the village of Blagoslovenny, Orenburgskaya stanitsa (modern village of Blagoslovenka) and the neighbouring village of Nezhinka, saying: «in the dialect of Cossacks in general, conscious principles act more strongly than in the dialect of peasants. Cossacks consider themselves to be «educated»; they regard peasants as the inferior race, and, in order to distinguish themselves from peasants, they are even ready to deliberately bastardize their language, as the Urals Cossacks do, behaving affectedly and pronouncing Ya zhnayu (= I know). The Cossack dialect could be chosen as a model for imitation just because it belonged to Cossacks. Newly affluent Cossacks ..., having adopted the Cossack speech, immediately became in the eyes of themselves and their neighbours real Cossacks» (Zelenin, 1905, pp. 235-236). The corresponding examples in the description of the Orenburg dialects are given by Moiseev, who notes that the Cossacks not only «set the tone for military activity, economic activities and for public life», but also considered their speech to be «an exemplary one» (Moiseev, 2010, p.7).

Research Questions

Unfortunately, for a long time, the material for the study of Orenburg dialects had been presented fragmentarily by Orenburg materials in the dictionary of V. I. Dal, records of D. K. Zelenin and also by the records of the 50-70s of the XX century. At the present moment, «Orenburg Regional Dictionary» and «Orenburg Regional Dialectological Reader (textbook on Russian dialectology)», which were published only at the beginning of the XXI century (Moiseev, 2005, 2010), allow us now to consider the specifics of Orenburg Russian dialects in various aspects (Bekasova, 2015, 2016, 2017).

Purpose of the Study

In accordance with the introduction of new materials for scientific use, it became possible to study lexical units, their definitions and corresponding illustrative material with the purpose of revealing the features of the linguistic worldview, associated primarily with significant changes in geographical and natural conditions that could naturally lead to the transformation of the traditional way of life.

Research Methods

In this connection, the main methods of studying the transformation of the linguistic worldview on the territory of later settling were field research (according to J. Weissgerber and J. Trier), those methods allow one to identify certain fragments of the linguistic worldview and to determine its systemic organization on the basis of word family analysis, describing certain spheres of life or some meanings of the conceptual sphere (Weissgerber, 2004, Trier, 1931).

It is known that from the beginning of the XVIII century, the first wave of active development of the Orenburg region was formed «at the expense of people from mid-Volga Region, where the North-Russian dialects of the Vladimir-Povolzhsky group were prevalent in the past and are still used today» (Moiseev, 2010, p.6) , so the Orenburg border line was formed primarily due to the speech of Orenburg Cossacks, retaining the unstressed 'o' (Zobov, 2007). Comparison of the dictionaries of the Northern Russian dialect and B.A. Moiseev's «Orenburg Regional Dictionary» makes it possible to identify a number of discrepancies in the names of landscapes, plants, fish and wild animals, methods of fishing, crafts, etc.

Findings

In particular, in the relief of the Orenburg region, represented mainly by forest-steppe and steppe zones (with 5% of forest), there are no swamps at all, which results in the absence of appropriate nominations, cf. brusena, brusenka, brusena, brusniki, brusnitsa, brusnitsy (cowberry), brusnichina (cowberry leaves), brusnichnik, brusnyak, brusnichnyag (1. cowberry bush; 2. a place where cowberry grows), brusnushka (a curd tart filled with cowberry) (Strogova, et al., 1992-1999, p. 92) – brusniga (cowberry) (Moiseev, 2010, p. 24); brodni, brodnik (woven shoes for walking around the swamp), brodynya (the person who walks slowly) (Strogova, et al., 1992-1999, p. 89) – brodni (boots with long bootlegs) (Moiseev, 2010, p. 24) etc.

Undoubtedly, life in a new place caused the emergence of other activities, as well as corresponding nominations and figurative meanings associated with them. The most illustrative in this respect are the terms of downy knitting ( gluhotinka, persyuk, shlenka, yagodka perevyaz, etc.), all of these terms are closely related to the newly developed breed of Orenburg goats, which can be considered to be a kind of endemic to the territory with special environmental conditions of the Orenburg sharp continental climate, i.e. strong winds, hot torrid summer and deep frosts. The traditionalism of the existing methods of processing down and creating shawls (including so-called pautinka (a very fine shawl) determines the originality of the corresponding nominations.

Through contacts with neighboring ethnoses, the settlers also acquired fragments of other linguistic worldviews. A new type of farming, especially in the field of steppe livestock breeding, required appropriate vocabulary, for example: adayets, kushpelsky horse (Kazakh breeds of horses), kurgash (a lamb of 5-6 months), bashmachina, kasharka (a she-stirk of under two years), tayka, taychina (a two-year-old she-stirk), bashmak, basmak, bashmach (a one-year old calf), bugumala (a disease of cows, bulls, in which a large tumor (a bruise) appears in the throat), targil, targyl (a tigroid colour bull or cow, that is, red (brown) with black stripes) etc.

Camel breeding is especially significant in this respect; as camel breeding does not have any connection with the previous experience of settlers, for example: kaspak, kospak, kuspak (1. A crossbreed of a one-humped camel and a two-humped camel; 2. A castrated camel used in various works); buta, butak, butakan (a colt); iliuk (a one-humped camel with a low flat hump); ingen (a yellow camel), etc. In this case, we can rightfully consider these borrowings to be a «fixed» piece of the other (or borrowing language) worldview» (Urynson, 1999, p.79).

However, in most cases, a loanword is assigned and gets embedded into an existing or expanding sprachraum. In this connection, for example, assimilated terms of livestock breeding, including for purposes of commercial intercourse and economic ties with the Turkic peoples, undergo semantic transformations in some cases, for example: kuspak – a castrated camel in Kazakh language, but a work camel in Orenburg dialects; jibaga, dzhebaga – sheep, and also camel's hair in the period of spring shearing, in Orenburg dialects, but in Kazakh language it is a coat with a fine stitch without a cut and (ironically) heavy and uncomfortable overclothes (I put on a jibaga and could not walk properly in it; You’d rather give up wearing your jibaga ; He put on his jibaga and was just walking back and forth); adayets (a Kazakh (Kyrgyz) from Adayev people) – is an ignorant, rude and impudent person in Orenburg dialect; ashat (from the Bashkir language) is to eat, drink, drink, celebrate, etc. in the modern speech of Orenburg people.

The assignment of vocabulary occurs through a kind of «in-growth» of a foreign language unit into the phonetic, word-forming and morphological systems of the Russian language, for example: kurgash, kurgashina (lamb meat); chok (camel's hump) – odnochokiy, dvuchokiy (a one-humped , a two-humped camel), persyuk (delicate down) – persyuk she-goat, persyuk he-goat (a breed of goats, from which they get a persyuk ), ayda – aydate, aydashka (neglectfully about a woman of easy virtue: There are such aydashkas , tell them « ayda », and they will go wherever you want), etc. This is emblematic of the fact that «people's consciousness is never satisfied with the external acceptance of somebody else’s concept, it creates its own concept» (Kolesov, 1999, p.156).

The names of dishes undergo special transformation, as they actively come into general use of migrants; this fact could also be exemplified by the illustrative material of the B.A. Moiseev’s dictionary. So, «residents of Kuzminovka village, who in the past, according to elderly residents, once cooked their favorite dish of salamata and fired their village», are called salamatniks ( salamata is a farinaceous dish) (Moiseev, 2010, p. 152), «Pavel Nikolayevich chose the best kurgashik , slaughtered it with his own hand and skinned it, for that he tied the carcase to the wagon’s team pole, and then started cooking bizhbarmak » (Moiseev, 2010, p. 79), «I wonder what happened to our master? Ah, he went to the Kirghiz people and bizhbarmachit (=eats bizhbarmak ) there» (Moiseev, 2010, p. 23). It seems to us that in the latter case the Russian verb from the noun bizhbarmak means communication of representatives of different ethnic groups, which are united not only by a common territory, but also by a special ritual of a friendly feast, where both the hosts and the guests equally recognize and appreciate its main dish (bizhbarmak is the national food of Kazakhs, it is boiled meat, mixed with boiled noodles, and spiced with onion sauce).

The original recipe for a borrowed dish can be subjected to significant changes, for example, kozhe ( kuzhe ), a national dish of Orenburg Kazakhs made from zhugar (or flour), which is cooked in a cauldron with the addition of rendered sheep fat, in Russian tradition it is converted into kuzya , where the main ingredient is millet, often with the addition of fresh milk (sometimes sour milk) (Moiseev, 2010, p.77).

Conclusion

On the whole, the functioning of foreign loanwords in Russian Orenburg dialects demonstrates «adjusting one's own worldview and bringing it into line with changing circumstances» in a new cultural and linguistic space (Semenova, 2010, p.130), which, however, mainly affects only the external side of the everyday economic life of the people and includes derivatives into the existing traditional worldview with the expansion of already available ideas. Sufficiently illustrative of such adaptation within the worldview of the native language is the word obruset (= become Russified), fixed in the dictionary of B.A. Moiseev – 1. About wild animals and birds: get used to domestic conditions, become domesticated. «You will catch a hare and take it home; soon it will become tame ( obruseet ) and live there».2. About people: to get used to new conditions of life, to settle down. «When we arrived here, we ( the peasants ) were different from the Cossacks ( otlichka= difference), and now we have become Russified ( obruseli ) » ( here and throughout emphasis added - E.N. Bekasova ). «Gradually, we have become Russified ( obruseli ) in a new place. The Kirghiz became Russified ( obruseli ) and stopped trampling on our crops» (Moiseev, 2010, p.111).

Highlighted text fragments clearly show that it is not so much about borrowing someone else’s, but it is rather of both Kazakh and Russian settlers soaking up new culture and new phenomena (including those which distinguished peasants and Cossacks), those facts, first of all, show settlers’ refusal to take a hostile attitude to another culture, and reveal their readiness to appropriate another culture as their own. Apparently, this is a consequence of the human world sociableness, which had been developed over the centuries of experience of interethnic contacts and development of a new space.

References

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