The Experience of Lexicographic Recording of Ukrainian Eastern Steppe Dialects

Abstract

The aim of the article is to highlight the concept and basic principles of compiling a dictionary of Eastern Steppe Ukrainian dialects. The aim implies reaching the following objectives: substantiating the criteria for selecting the empirical material; developing the dictionary compilation principles; defining the structure of the dictionary and the dictionary entry; describing the specific designation of variants of the dialect names of clothing; covering the semantic structure of the analysed dialect words; representing synonymy, polysemy and homonymy of the studied lexical units; recording expressive shades of the analysed dialect vocabulary; writing trial dictionary entries. The material for the article includes dialect recordings made by the author, mainly by the expeditionary method, in Donetsk Oblast settlements during 1997–2013. To track the degree of word spread in the studied dialects, the materials collected by students of the Philological Faculty of Vasyl Stus Donetsk National University have been used. The research metho-dology is based on the theoretical foundations of dialectology, lexicology and lexico-graphy. To achieve the aim, general and specific scientific methods have been used: analysis and synthesis; descriptive and analytical method for collecting, inventorying, systematising dialectal lexical units, as well as for interpreting linguistic facts; the com-parative method has been used to determine the peculiarities of the analysed dialectal vocabulary; the technique of modelling dialect vocabulary has been applied to construct dictionary entries. The article presents the concept and principles of compiling the re-gional dictionary of Eastern Steppe Ukrainian dialects, taking into account the existing developments in Slavic dialectology, describes the criteria for selecting the empirical material, characterises the dictionary type and its general structure, as well as features of dictionary entries (interpretation of meanings, grammatical characteristics, labels reflecting the peculiarities of the word functioning in the dialect, the originality of the illustrative material). The study contains trial dictionary entries which demonstrate the specifics of the vocabulary of the new-settlement Ukrainian dialects of Donetsk Oblast. Further research and thorough presentation of the principles of compiling the regional dictionary of Eastern Steppe Ukrainian dialects will be possible after extracting, selecting and analysing more lexical material. In this regard, the proposed principles of lexico-graphic recording of Eastern Steppe Ukrainian dialects can be expanded and refined.