Vol.1, No 5, 1998 pp. 341 - 342
Projects
VEGETABLE LEXICON OF THE SOUTH MORAVA
REGION
Jordana Marković
The Faculty of Philosophy in Niš, number of pages: 131
In the scope of the Project "Lexicological Research in Southeast Serbia",
Dr. Jordana Marković has prepared the monograph Vegetable Lexicon of the
South Morava Region, which is published as the fourth book in the edition
of the Project.
The monograph is based on the authentic material gathered in the field,
mostly in the dialects of the surroundings of Leskovac, Niš and Aleksinac,
which represent the most developed centers of gardening in the area of
Pomoravlje, and also in the surroundings of Vranje subsequently. The work
contains maps of the investigated points, with certain characteristics
that show their territorial distribution.
In the South Morava valley (from the border with Macedonia in the south,
to Stalać in the north), vegetable gardening represents the most important
agricultural economic branch. The choice of studying its lexicon is therefore
a task necessary, but worthwhile inasmuch so.
By means of the dictionary, which is the basic part of the monograph,
we get introduced to the stock of the vegetable lexicon in which different
layers and relations may be observed depending on the point of view.
There are two basic layers of this lexicon. One is phytological and
it encompasses the species of vegetable-gardening cultures and specific
types (sorts) within the species, then parts of the plants, names of the
fruits, etc. The other is technological, bringing words that designate
the preparation (cultivation) of the soil, nourishment and growth of vegetables,
and then processing, storing and conserving the fruits.
The greatest part of the stock is terminological in character. Apart
from the one-word terms, mainly in the form of nouns, syntagms are also
frequent. They bear witness to the dynamism of the vegetable lexicon, to
the fact that it is still in the creation process. Moreover, there are
also a number of words that cannot be strictly attributed to this terminological
field, but that serve to it as well.
Another aspect points out the origin of the vegetable lexicon of the
South Morava region. Apart from Slavic words, a lot of words may be recognized
as descending from various languages that it has come into contact with
in the course of history. Even the very designation of this economic activity
- baštovanstvo (gardening) is formatted on the basis of the Turkish borrowing
bahča (the word povrtarstvo - vegetable gardening - is a standard literary
word, with official usage). Alongside with Turkish borrowings, there are
the words from Greek, and a lot of Near Eastern words, while words from
other European languages have started to enter more recently, together
with market communication.
Due to this, there are differences in the levels of adaptation of numerous
words to the Serbian language and its South Morava dialect.
Naturally, there are mostly nouns amongst the terms. Adjectives are
the modifying parts of numerous syntagms, showing that true terms have
not been achieved as yet in such cases, while verbs are connected to the
technology or processes in the growth of plants.
The author's task was not to compare this lexicon with the lexicons
of the same type from other regions (or languages), yet, however, the appearance
of this monograph has facilitated such comparisons to a significant extent.
We hope that this work shall enable organized gathering of vegetable-gardening
vocabulary in other economic regions, as well. We are also expecting further
improvement of the methods for gathering and processing of the thematic
lexicon on the basis of the existent experience.
The Vegetable Lexicon of the South Morava Region by Jordana Marković
(assistant professor of the Serbian Dialectology and the History of Language)
represents one of the whole series of tasks that the collaborators of the
Faculty of Philosophy in Niš have been accomplishing within the Project
"Lexicological Research in Southeast Serbia", with its major topics related
to the cattle-breeding and the farming lexicons.
Nedeljko Bogdanović
