Motivational model “to laugh → to witchcraft” (in the case study of vocabulary of mythological texts)
Abstract
Research in the vocabulary of folk magic has led to the conclusion about motivational peculiarity of its units. For instance, a signi cant amount of verbs denoting actions of people with supernatural abilities in mythological texts has been formed with the semantic transferring method: these units have originated from another thematic eld. The motivational model to laugh → to witchcraft is considered in the article in the case study of data from Russian dialect dictionaries and myths. We have revealed that the semantic development of words with the roots -smekh-/-smesh-, -gul-,-gra-, -deck-/-deg-/-dick-/-dig-/-gig- may lead to the emergence of “magical” meaning among contemporary derivatives depicting the branch of sorcery and healing. It is uncovered that the semantic transferring to laugh → to witchcraft isconsidered to be regular since it characterizes not a single root but rather a whole group of roots in both common Russian and its dialects and is detected in mythological texts of various territories: the Russian North, the Urals and the Cis-Ural region. The origin of this transformation lies in the semantics of sound or laughter, which can be transformed in the direction of laugh → mockery → causing harm by sorcery. It is possible to involve verbs with other initial meanings in the studied process, due to the so called “mythological” potential of these verbs. Thus, designation of phenomena, opposed to culture or man, with the root -dick- may easily lead to the use of this root for nominating phenomena from the demonic sphere. Contamination is also considered to be signi cant in the semantic transferring. For instance, phonetic similarity of the roots -deck-/-deg-/-dick-/-dig-/-gig- may lead to a convergence of their meanings, including mythological ones.
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