Вопросы ономастики (Jul 2017)
Folk Calendar of Czechs and Slovaks through the Lens of Language. Review of the book: Valentsova, M. M. (2016). Narodnyi kalendar chekhov i slovakov. Etnolingvisticheskii aspekt [The Folk Calendar of Czechs and Slovaks. An Ethnolinguistic Aspect]. Moscow: Indrik
Abstract
The paper reviews the recent book by Marina Valentsova The Folk Calendar of Czechs and Slovaks investigating into the lexicographic, semantic, genetic and structural aspects of the study of folk calendar. The book pays special attention to Czech and Slovak chrononymy and, thus, is of interest for onomatologists. The reviewer acknowledges the abundance of the studied linguistic and ethno-cultural data retrieved from a large number of sources including those previously unpublished and describes the Czech and Slovak dictionaries presented in the book under review: according to the reviewer, one of the author's achievements is the elaboration of the structure of an encyclopedic article most appropriate for the ethnolinguistic interpretation of lexis. Such a structure enables not only to elicit the linguistic links of calendar terms, but also to describe the corresponding realia and their relations. The other parts of the book that discuss the key issues in the study of Czech and Slovak calendar terminology appear to be of no less value. All the studied materials are divided into five groups: chrononyms as such; names of rites and ritual actions; names of ritual objects; names of actors; names of calendar folk elements. The author gives a comprehensive description of formal, semantic and symbolic properties of common nouns and proper names constituting these five groups of lexis, focusing on the comparative analysis of the Czech and Slovak traditions. The reviewed work is characterized as an innovative research that offers new challenges for scholars from various fields of humanities.
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