This study started from the observation that the analysis of language facts from a functional perspective can be adequately complemented by the analysis of semantic motivation, as advanced and documented by Dmitrij Dobrovol'skij and Elisabeth Piirainen (2018) (s. the ample use of this approach as a working method in prestigious lexicographic works, such as The Atlas of the Languages of Europe). The object of investigation is the set phrases featuring the lexeme dog, an important figure of the linguistic and cultural mind in Romance languages such as Romanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, by evaluating the linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts that marked the meanings of these structures. The results highlight, on the one hand, figurative phraseological patterns that cover in the nomination process different fields of knowledge with a universal character, which refer to fundamental aspects of life, and on the other, particularities specific to each investigated collective mind.
The article focuses on culturally motivated microtoponyms of the kielecki district. A classification based on semantic motivation was used to organize the collected names. The onymic material extracted for the research (over 500 microtoponyms) was divided into categories in terms of the motivating basis. The author distinguished three basic groups of field names: (I) farm names (motivated by the quality and character of the object, animal breeding, plant cultivation, the functional values of the object or their lack, indicating settlement forms, traces of ancient social and legal relations and the history of the object’s development), (II) occasional/memorial names, (III) cultural-locating names. The microtoponyms recreate the former cultural landscape of the Świętokrzyskie village whose essential element was work. They keep traces of former legal and ownership relations, acquisition and division of property. The microtoponyms commemorate events from the past of the researched region’s inhabitants. They are a testimony of their faith, religiosity and attachment to tradition.
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