The Project of a Nonstandard Mineral Vocabulary Dictionary

In: Vestnik Permskogo universiteta: Perm University herald. Rossijskaja i zarubežnaja filologija = Russian and foreign philology, Band 15, Heft 2, S. 40-52

Abstract

The article discusses in detail thepossibilities for lexicographic description of nonstandard mineral vocabulary, i.e. those names of minerals, colloid minerals, geological materials and related objects and phenomena that do not fall under official international mineralogical terminology.The author is develop-ing a project of an explanatory dictionary based on field materials from the card index on stone vocabulary, toponymy and ethnography (the index is created by the staff of the Department of Russian Language, Gen-eral Linguistics and Verbal Communication, Ural Federal University).The material was collected in2019–2023 during expeditions in the Middle and South Urals. It was gathered through interviews with geologists, stonecutters, jewellers, and other groups of stone lovers. The article describes the advantages of the explana-tory dictionary as the type of dictionary appropriate for the vocabulary in question, explains the objectives of the dictionary and special aspects of material selection, describes the dictionary contents and the structure of dictionary entries, provides sample entries. These are devoted to the following thematic groups: 'low-quality mineral, non-precious mineral', 'imitative, artificial mineral', 'non-productive, barren lode'. Special atten-tion in the dictionary entries is paid to motivational and etymological data. The article appears to be an im-portant contribution to lexicography and to the study of the new, little-explored vocabulary layer. The card index will further be supplemented. It is hoped that the nonstandard mineral vocabulary dictionary will be published and prove to be useful both for specialists (linguists and geologists) and for the general reader, cur-rently having poor access to verified academic information on stone vocabulary.