Assessment of a human through nominations and comparisons in Pskov dialects (a case study in presentive vocabulary)

The article contains a comprehensive analysis of all nominations of a human being related to the empirical world which are described in the published issues of Pskov regional dictionary with historical data. The use of presentive vocabulary in relation to people usually marks an apparent deviation of a person’s appearance or behavior from the norm. Most often, figurative nominations of this kind emphasize differences that can be visually detected. Some of them are permanent (a very tall person, an obese person, etc.), while others are situational (a person who is not moving, who has got soaked, etc.). Less common are figurative nominations with sound motivation (the one who is grumbling, screaming, etc.). It is quite often that figurative nominations based on a subject→person model are used to assess behavioral or mental features of a human being. Visual associations are based on the names of objects that have an outstanding feature compared to the similar ones, i.e. tall people are nominated with the names of lengthy objects, fat people - with the names of large and extended objects, and so on. Quite regularly, figurative nominations or comparisons of a person with certain objects are supported by several motivations, e.g. tall and slim people are compared to something lengthy and thin. The article shows cases where figurative nominations and comparisons based on the names of objects relate to groups rather than individuals, for instance when it comes to a large number of children in a family, which was typical for the Russian peasantry of the mid-twentieth century. Here we find a double motivation: a large number of young children is compared to or nominated figuratively on the basis of a large number of small objects (berries, mushrooms, nails, etc.). Due to the fact that the objects might have several characteristics at a time, their names can serve as a basis for creating several figurative nominations of a person given according to different motivating features. So, the word that means a ‘worn bast shoe’ can refer both to an uneducated person and to a woman who hasn’t got married; a word that means a ‘digging bar’ or a ‘timber stake’ can refer to a very tall person, as well as to the one who works a lot, and, on the contrary, to a lazy person. The facts considered give grounds for the conclusion that both linguistic methods of comparing a person with an object - metaphors and comparisons - are used equally often. A person can be called with a name of an object (a metaphor) or compared to it (a comparison); and these are equivalent ways of assessing a person through a marked feature.