The Image of the Volga in the Russian Language Tradition

This article reconstructs the image of the Volga in the Russian language, mostly referring to material from Russian dialects. The author focuses on the derivational and phraseological word family of the word Волга (Volga), i. e. the semantic and word-formative derivatives of the hydronym, as well as idioms and the paremiology based on it. Relying on the results of an ideographic analysis of the material, the author singles out several subject groups containing derivatives of the hydronym Волга, including “geography”, “hydrological characteristics”, “society”, and “material culture”. The author maintains that these denotative groups are unequal, with the sphere of society being the most detailed from the point of view of the lexical units it contains and semantics. In people’s consciousness, the image of the Volga is most closely connected with barge haulers and seasonal work. According to the author, the linguistic data described corroborate the anthropomorphic image of the Volga existing in folklore. The river is portrayed as a cheerful, lively, and smart person (a young girl). As well as the depiction of the Volga, the article puts forward a few motivational interpretations for a number of less clear idioms with components connected with Волга

Archaeology · Consciousness · Depiction · Epistemology · Ethnology · Folklore · Formative assessment · Lexicology · Linguistics · Sociology · Volga region · Computer Science · Discourse Analysis and Cultural Communication · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy · Regional Socio-Economic Development Trends

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