The Slovenian Linguistic Atlas as a source for diachronic lexicon studies (expressions for parts of the body and diseases from nineteenth-century books on folk medicine)

Abstract

This article compares the dialect expressions for parts of the body and diseases in the new Slovenian Linguistic Atlas and the vocabulary connected with folk medicine in three nineteenth-century books on folk medicine from three dialect areas (the Rovte–Poljane, Styria–Lower Sava, and Carinthia–Jaun Valley areas) in order to present the extent to which and how the dialect atlas can be used as an authoritative source for defining the areal usage of lexemes, identifying or reconstructing the pronunciation of standardized forms, defining the usage of standard expressions with different roots, and semantically defining the historical expressions used in folk medicine.

Keywords

• slovenian linguistic atlas
• folk medicine books
• dialect expressions
• historical folk medicine expressions