НАИМЕНОВАНИЯ ДУБОВ В ЗОНЕ АЛБАНО-ГРЕЧЕСКИХ КОНТАКТОВ НА ЮГЕ АЛБАНИИ (ХИМАРА)
THE NAMES OF OAK SPECIES IN THE ALBANIAN-GREEK CONTACT ZONE OF SOUTHERN ALBANIA (HIMARA)

Summary/Abstract: The paper is based on the unpublished materials of the linguistic and ethnographic field expedition of RAS (2019, research programme № 19-18-00244) to Southern Albania (Himara) and describes the names of oak species in bilingual Albanian–Modern Greek villages. These plants are: holly oak (Quercus ilex), downy oak (Quercus pubescens), sessile oak (Quercus petraea) and Austrian oak (Quercus cerris). Their phytonyms are examined as elements of popular botanical nomenclature, which demonstrates the peculiarities of the conceptualization of the information about green environment in both local varieties – Albanian and Greek. The bilingual situation is made here more difficult by the great influence of the standard languages. We have included a table which gives a clear picture of the semantic microfield “The oak names of Himara region”. The discussed phytonyms are: βαλανίδι, σκαρπί, dushk, elke, lis. We have found that the popular botanical classification in the patois of Himara bilingual villages differs from the standard one and especially from the scientific one. In the naming system of both Greek and Albanian local varieties, there is a clear demarcation line between evergreen and deciduous oaks. One can notice the cases of lexical indistinguishableness between Greek (downy oak = sessile oak = Austrian oak = βαλανίδι) and Albanian (sessile oak = Austrian oak = lis). The lexical lacunae of the semantic microfield “The oak names” are filled through Alb. standard dushk ‘common oak Quercus robur’ both in Albanian and Modern Greek. All possible etymologies are given. Only one real contact induced borrowing was found – σκαρπί.

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