NAMES OF TREES AND SHRUBS IN A FEW POLISH DIALECTS IN UKRAINE

Abstract

Flora is an inseparable element of rural life and, consequently, it preserves the linguistic image of the world in human consciousness. The paper presents the vocabulary relating to the world of trees and shrubs in a few Polish dialects in Khmelnytskyi and Zhytomyr regions in Ukraine based on several published dictionaries and unpublished texts. The examined thematic scope counts 149 lexical units, divided into five groups: “General notions and places of growing”, “Names of trees and shrubs”, “Parts of trees and shrubs”, “Characteristics of trees and shrubs” and “Functioning of trees and shrubs”. The analysis goes beyond presenting exclusively “peculiar” lexemes in favour of a comprehensive approach to the researched scope, what corresponds to the latest tendencies in studying Polish vocabulary in Ukraine. Thus, the article shows both native Polish lexical layer counting 84 words (i.e. 56%), of which 57 words (i.e. 68%) are common to Polish and Ukrainian and/or Russian, and borrowed layer counting 65 words from Ukrainian and/or Russian (i.e. 44%), among which Ukrainianisms definitely prevail (i.e. 68%). Showing the ratio of native Polish to borrowed lexical layer reveals, on the one hand, the strength of the native language, and on the other hand, the strength of foreign influences. Their competition manifests itself among others in broad synonymy that can appear on different levels. It is worth emphasizing that the research concerns word registers and dictionaries and consequently does not reflect the frequency of word use in texts. We suppose that a frequency study of thematic vocabulary would bring different results and should be the subject of further research.