Names of 'RUBEL' and 'KACHALKA' in the Eastern Polessian Dialects

The article investigates the structure and spatial variation of the names of tools for rolling laundry and clamping hay, straw on a wagon in the Ukrainian Eastern Polessian dialects.

Scientific investigation bases on general scientific (synthesis, observation, analysis) and traditional methods for dialectological studies: an interview was used to collect material; a descriptive method was used to organize and summarize the facts; a linguistic-geographic method was used to find out the spatial variation of dialect units; a method of modeling was used to analyze the semantic variation of words.

The author's own records collected by the expeditionary method during the 2010 – 2016 years in the Ukrainian Eastern Polessian dialects have become the source base for study.

It has been found that in the studied linguistic continuum, the meaning of ‘a tool to clamp bundles, straw on a wagon’ is manifested by a nominal rubel, in single dialects – zherd’, palka, udav, kachalka. The laundry machine was consisted of two parts (‘rubel’ and ‘kachalka’), which in the most of Eastern Polessian dialects had the same names as in the adjacent dialects of Ukrainian languages. The exception is the northern dialects of the area, in which the whole appliance for rolling linen is called ‘kachalka’. In this case, its components may be refined, or, conversely, considered as a single mechanism, so the noun for denoting of the instrument may not have the full numerical paradigm – pluralia tantum. Various phonetic variants of the name ‘kachalka’ were found, due to the subtle reflection of the suffix vowel [a]: ‘kachálka’, ‘kachílka’, ‘kachýlka’, ‘kachólka’, ‘kachúlka’, ‘kachu͜ólka’, ‘kachu͜ýlka’.

The names of ‘rubel’ and ‘kachalka’ in the most of East Polessian dialects are filled with their direct meaning, appropriate to the literary language and related dialects. However, the items they designate may have other names.

It has been found that to avoid the polysemy of a word, ‘rubel’ may change its structure or accent.

Features of housekeeping serve as an extraspeech factor of development of the lexical system of dialect: they determine the presence / absence of nominations of the corresponding devices.

The names of ‘ruble’ and ‘kachalka’ gradually become passive due to obsolete things they mean.