The article gives the review of “The Dictionary and Reference Book of the Old and Dialect Names of Dishes, Foodstuffs and Kitchen Utensils in Different Ukrainian Regions” (hereinafter referred to as the Dictionary) compiled by Hanna Vivat. First of all it is stressed that the dictionaries of that sort are the basis of people’s naïve picture of the world, the keeper of collective memory as well as rich spiritual and practical experience. In addition, emphasis is placed on significance of this study for the experts (dialectologists, lexicologists and the ones employed in the field of nutrition) as well as nonexperts. The article enumerates and defines the Dictionary basic elements. Thus, the macrostructure is defined as the aggregate of all the auxiliary parts of the Dictionary; the mediostructure deals with establishing relations between the dictionary entries, i. e. the principles of representation of words and homonymy. The Dictionary microstructure consists of the register and the interpretation parts. Hereunder each structural element of the Dictionary is characterised.
Therefore, the preface proves importance of collecting and disclosing vocabulary related to food and nutrition. As to the register of nominations, it is noted that the Dictionary contains over 9000 units collected in different regions of Ukraine that are placed in 24 parts and 3860 dictionary entries. All this is evidence of the immense vocabulary stock of the Ukrainians and at the same time confirms the author’s expertise in the raised questions who resorted to field research; consequently, approximately one third of the names are first published in this study. The “Conclusions” contain certain generalisations concerning history of the Ukrainians’ nutrition development. The “Bibliography” part comprises 81 positions with most of them (60) referring to poetry and the rest being dialectological as well as ethnographical and linguistic studies.
It is generally known, that the dictionary mediostructure characterises relations of the nominations between themselves. The Dictionary arranges them topically in 24 parts placing them in alphabetical order in every part. The study contains a rather big amount of homonyms (15%) that emerged mostly as a result of splitting the meanings of a certain polysemantic word. This is the way the couples are formed on different grounds, e. g. different vocabulary strata (the dialect word “студенець” in Guzul region means “холодець”, i. e. jellied minced meat, and also “криниця”, i. e. a well, as an obsolete word). Homonymy elaboration gives the chance to comprehend the complicated semantic processes and find out the reasons why they emerged that draws the researcher closer to reconstruction of conceptualisation and categorisation of the Ukrainians’ world. In addition, the mediostructure involves easy and reliable way of finding every word that is why it is considered reasonable to develop the corresponding system of cross-references in which references would be used as an addition to the interpretations given in various forms, therefore this part of the Dictionary needs some improvement.
The dictionary microstructure contains traditional and innovative components. In the register part there are such traditional components as the notes defining phonetic and morphological peculiarities of the headword. Furthermore, there are also the status notes indicating the certain unit territory of use, passive use or its stylistic colouring, e. g. «Жльоґанити …(Буковина) – зневажливе…» (“Zhlioganyty… (Bucovina region) – pejorative…”), «Юхá, ж. (архаїзм)…» (“Yukhá, f (obsolete)…”) e t. c. It should be stressed on the fact that the dictionary comprises plenty of multiple variants which is its wealth and provides for its cultural significance. For instance, just in two parts, i. e. “Baked Products” and “Flour Dishes”, 119 out of 507 articles (i. e. 24%) contain some variants.
The interpretation part of the article just as the register one consists of a few sections: the interpreting section, the section where semantic connotations are reflected and the illustration section. In the interpreting section words are represented on the basis of description, definition, brief comment or a synonym. In the semantic connotation section there are over 5% of ambiguous words that are frequently realised in two meanings. In the verbal demonstrative section save for proverbs and sayings, excerpts from the folk and fiction works of literature, in particular, from the Ukrainian poetry, are used as the examples, like in concordance dictionaries compiled on the basis of works by Seneca, Shakespeare e t. c. This is the way the headwords are used in 436 (i. e. 11.3 %) articles which is unique for dialectological dictionaries and the Ukrainian ones in particular.
Therefore, resuming the above we should acknowledge that among all the challenges the dialectologists are dealing with there is one which can be considered as one of the most urgent, i. e. using the word as a tool to restore the broken cultural generation bond. Unfortunately, the gaps in dialectology are rather tangible even now, that is why we believe that it is the group researches in dialectology that will be the most reasonable one in future as they would result in compiling an electronic dictionary of the Ukrainian dialects, i. e. the UDDB (the Ukrainian Dialect Data Bank).