Національна Академія Мистецтв України Інститут культурології

It is essential that in these cases etymological simulation comes to secondary onomatopoetic effects and other phenomena of idiosemantic nature that always accompany macaronis. The proverbial locutions in question resemble and approach charades. One can very vividly trace such process in the following riddle (the answer – a face): “Ой на горі гай, під гаєм мигай, під мигаєм сапай, пад сапаєм хапай” (Oh, there’s a grove on a hill, blink under grove, dig under blink, catch under dig). The verbs in imperative here resemble interjections: хапати (to catch, the cognates Latin capere, German haben) is reduced to expressive interjection хап, мигати (to blink, the cognate to могти (= may) in its primary meaning “to stretch” by Melnychuk) is reduced to миг, гай “grove” (from гоїти “to heal”) also resembles interjection in such a row. It is worth admitting that even the ontological verb бути = to be also contains an etymological possibility of such a transformation due to its kinship with бухнути “to grow” (as, for instance, German bin reveals to have kinship with Bö “a violent wind” and further to Slavic буйний “ferocious”) and with the reduced form бух. Here monosyllabic devices are used for onomatopoetic effects so that one can trace the common sources of all these effects.

A special problem arises with the adoptions at a large scale exemplified with the baroque style of macaronis. An exclusive case here can be found in the line “Чєловhчєска в нєго видим вс# структура / а нє зрозумhємъ що то в нєм за натура” ‘He shows human structure but we can’t understand his nature’ (К.Зиновіїв, “О людєх тых которыє не хотят женитися”). Not to mention the motifs of “elusive outward countenance” the very confrontation “structure vs. nature” that belongs to the conception of XXth century is not only surprizing but attests the particular selectiveness of adoptive process. In the adage «карти не жарти» ‘cards (for game) aren’t jokes’ the two loanwords are combined the first being adopted from the Greece, the second from the German (via Polish). In this connection a curious case can be found in the development of the word халтура ‘hack-work’ (from карти ‘cards’) that has been conceived in vulgar etymology as хаптура from хапати ‘to grasp’ [Боровой, 1974, 227-229]. A set of proverbs is associated with the adopted names of plants. In particular the Slavonic designation for ‘cabbage’ капуста (from Lat. compositum) has numerous vestiges in proverbial images. In the Polish “Kapusta tłusta / sama lezie w usta” ‘thick cabbage goes itself in the mouth’ the rhyme promotes reshaping the primary adopted form. Such examples as “Gospodarz bez kapusty / miewa brzuch pusty” ‘A master without cabbage will have empty stomach’, “Dobra i kapusta / aby tylko byіa tіusta” ‘Cabbage will also be good let it only be thick’ [Krzyzanowski II] demonstrate the full reshaping of the adopted word. The similar issues of rhyming effects are to be noticed in цибуля ‘onion’ (from Germ. Zwiebel) that is couple with the verb of existence: «Ще про цибулю голоду не було» ‘there was no hunger with onion’. It is interesting that the international music (from Greece) is constantly combined with язик ‘tongue’ attesting thus vulgar etymology: «музика без’язика» ‘music without tongue’, «як не будеш на музиці, то не будеш на язиці» ‘not to be on music – no to be on tongue’, «їж, язик, та не ходи до музик» ‘thou, tongue, must eat without going to musicians’. A particular case of adoptive transformations is to be encountered within the proper names that are changed unrecognizably. Rhyme in regard to adoption becomes the tool of vulgar etymology that reshapes lexical forms and provides etymological simulation. Alliterative devices further what M.M. Makovski has called combinatorial reactions where the hew meanings arise and new semantic transition are accepted⁶⁸².

Special sporadic heterogeneities are thus intensified with eclectic phenomena. Games with etymology entail the risk of trespassing the boundary between lexeme and charade. Therefore the mentioned “diachronic games” with etymology concern not only separate etymological nests but also whole languages (namely when it goes about borrowed lexical stuff) so that a syntactic unit becomes the field of diffusion at the scope of dialects (creolization) and not only of separate loan-words as in macaronis’ style. Idioms are constantly generated from colloquial speech due to semantic transitions in occasional collocations that are playing role of the rudiments of future phrasal neologisms. Aphorisms contain conditions for the generation of potential future idioms due to multiple semantic transitions. In its turn a collocation as an “expansion” of a word (a key word especially) exerts influence upon its inner form thus confronting them with the relics of history witnessed in etymological nests. The opportunity of the reconstruction of potential idiomatic locutions involves the very foundation of etymology.

There arise the opposition of etymological regeneration vs. etymological simulation. It is to be observed that the etymological regeneration is constantly accompanied with the other tendency of purposely avoiding etymological motivation, i.e. of deetymologization, or, as it would be more convenient to call it, etymological simulation. The grounds for such preference are determined with the fact that as far as deetymologization is regarded one should take into consideration its secondary nature in the sense that it paves the way for further attempts to build an autonomous system of imaginary etymological nests, in particular, in vulgar etymologies⁶⁸³. Thus Rus. гнездо (corresponds to Lat. nidus) is the result of a contaminative influence of Old. Slav. гнhтити; Rus. глухомань (primarily from глухомень) appears as the result of contamination with манить; in the same manner the mistakenly identified etymological nest made улизнуть (‘to slip away’ from лезть, лазить ‘to climb, to clamber’) attach to лизать ‘to lick’; one could add that Fr. roi de rats (literally ‘the king of rats’, the designation of a rare phenomenon of some rats interlacing their tails) was primarily rouet de rats ‘the wheel of rats’. One can recollect numerous samples of the word formations of the kind in the works of N. Leskov. It is here that the “imaginary words” by M.M. Makovski belong to: especially one should underline that class of them where the divergence between the concocted form and genuine source becomes evident⁶⁸⁴. All such cases belong to the realm of simulation and mimicry. Bright examples are here to be found in poetry where etymological regeneration and simulation come together in derivative procedures⁶⁸⁵.

Rhyme as the device of delineating etymological regeneration and giving ground for building collocations in the manner of etymological figures can be exemplified with the stable confrontation of the adopted шкода ‘harm, damage, hurt’ with the derivations of the root represented in гідний ‘worthy’, годити ‘suit’ (that comes to German gut = good, Gattung ‘a kind’, the last giving the loan-word гатунок ‘sort’): “Де нема згоди, там буде шкода” ‘where it lacks concord the harm will come’, “давні пригоди боронять від шкоди” ‘old adventures prevent damage’, “не так шкода, як невигода” ‘not so this damage as the inconvenience’, “йому таки зашкоджу, а собі догоджу” ‘I’ll injure him and enjoy myself’. Another example of purposeful confrontation of the adoptions as the antonyms can be found in “одному на дяку, другому на шкоду” ‘for one to thank, for another to harm’ (the first from German danken = thank). Rhyme promotes the destruction of etymology in the proverb “пішов жебрати, а не мав у що брати” ‘’ where жебрак ‘beggar’ comes from Old High German sefer but is here newly conceived as the derivative from the verb брати (to take) with an indefinite prefix. Examples of the kind are numerous where the proper names are concerned (Катерина + картина, Хома + кума). Very demonstrative can be here the already mentioned paired collocations especially those where the verbal rhyme can be found (as in proverbial taxis of the confronted verbs).

Etymological simulation becomes especially observable within the adoptive processes entailing transformation of the adopted elements so that they acquire perfectly new meanings. In its turn being reconceived such adopted & adapted elements give rise to charades that are further used as the products of secondary onomatopoetic effects: it can be exemplified with a known case of L.N. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” where the famous refrain from the French royalist hymn «Vive Henry Quatre» is perceived as an interjection «Виварика!». The cases of the kind became even stylized in show-booth’s plays where the German “Donnerwetter” is transformed in the perception into «Дунул ветер» as well as “was” into «квас» [Оболенская, 1991, с. 175], N. Leskov’s neologisms are of the similar origin (such as «мелкоскоп» < микроскоп, «клеветон» < фельетон)⁶⁸⁶. Moreover even the native tongue’s locutions can be used with purely onomatopoetic effects⁶⁸⁷, so that the effects of nonsense (in the manner of Dadaism or futurism) can find here their substantiation. This way of transforming words into interjections is attested with the famous R. Kipling’s line: «We’re foot - slog - slog – slog – slogging over Africa». Another onomatopoetic effect betraying overt blasphemy is represented with the alliterative alternation h/m: «If I were hanged on the highest hill, / Mother o’mine. O mother o’mine!».

And reversely onomatopoetic units are comprehended as the words of incomprehensible language: this effect has been called “alienation” or “denudation” of a word⁶⁸⁸: there are such famous examples as the “deciphering” of the door’s squeak by N.V. Gogol (where «слышалось: «батюшки, я зябну!»» in “Old World Landlords”) and by M. Gorki («как будто спорили двое» in “Cemetery”). Thus the paradox of “incomprehensible comprehension” arises. It gives grounds to trace onomatopoetic consequences of the devices of “macaronis” and of creolized dialects. Eloquent examples of the kind are to found in V. Mayakovski’s rhymes as in «Убрали весло. Мотор заторкал / Пошла весело к «Алмазу» моторка» (the poem “Good!”) where the international motor is reconceived as alliterated with the onomatopoetic ‘to crack’. That such approach is applied preponderantly can be seen in «Вот посадили, как дуру еловую»… И слышится девушке: «Ай лав ю»» (“A Girl and Woolworth”)⁶⁸⁹. A very eloquent pattern of converting proper name in interjection through inner rhymes is attested with the Ukrainian proverb вартий палац Паца, а Пац палаца, the more persuasive that it implies also the opportunity of the word to be reconceived as цап ‘a goat’ with the metathesis of the consonants. Within this set of mixture one has to discern also the effects of genuine homonymous coincidence of the words of different languages that gives grounds for poetical reflection as in the case of M. Tsvetayeva: «… как по-русски / Nest? Единственная, и все гнезда /Показательная рифма: звезды… как места / Несть, где нет тебя, не есть: могила» [Зубова, 76 – 77].

That etymological regeneration comprises much wider scope of diachronic references than a mere etymological figure of tautological structure does can be seen in the examples where the reproduction of semantic development is represented without even reference to a certain etymon. The proverb «хлеб спит в человеке» ‘bread sleeps in man’ [Даль, 528] almost exactly repeating Hegelian metaphor of an ear contained in a grain generates the idiom of [*sleeping bread] and therefore implies the comprehension of sleep as the state of gathering forces. This allegory refers to etymological development where the common root (sleep = Germ. schlafen) is connected with the Slavonic adjective слабое ‘weak’ that can be conceived as ‘the possible, the virtual’. Such broadly conceived etymological figure in opposite to common tautologies (сиднем сидеть, лежмя лежать) is to be revealed through the restoration of etymological layers concealed from immediate observation. It is already in the simplest case of «за чем пойдешь, то и найдешь» ‘one finds what one goes for’ that the verb находить betrays its common origin with the first predicate.

The benefits of an etymological analysis of formulae can be demonstrated with the following example. The investigation of the formula “ferocious animal” (лютый зверь), that is to be met in archaic discourses, has given ground for a hypothesis as to its being an epitheton constans for the name of lion [Сумникова, 77]. Meanwhile the records of spiritual verses give us an overt explication of such a formula (underlined with the final alliteration): Лютось в зверех пременили /Един другому не вредили, /Лев ловцам, лев ловцам (The ferocity of brutes was changed and one didn’t hurt another – lion and hunters) [Киреевский, 239]. It is worth mentioning that here still another semantic element is introduced, namely ловец in its etymological meaning of “hunter”: there arises a situational antonymy лов – лють “hunt (domestication) – ferocity”. Etymological motivation here is to be found in the relationship of the first element (its cognates - German Lohn = Lat. lucrum “prey, loot, reward”), while the second element has no reliable cognates (the primary meaning of the respective root would be that of “to cut”).

These phenomena of involving etymology promote reconsidering alliterative verse as the device of profile-making procedure in regard to etymons. A bright sample of such involvement is attested with the proverb <загоїться, доки весілля скоїться> where <коїти & гоїти> are synonyms taken with their primary etymological meanings (the common semantic link being present in <спокій>). Another eloquent paragon of the etymological consequences of alliterative devices is to be found in <молитва матері з дна моря рятує> where the coupled alliteration <м & р> intensifies the etymological antithesis <матір – море>. The proverb <собором і чорта поборем> gives a sample of etymological figure built up with the reflections of the homonymous etymons <*bher>. The proverb <краще своє латане, ніж чуже хапане> refers to the old kinship of <хапати> with the old Romano - Germanic designations of possession (Engl. have, Lat. habere, capio = хапати). Alliterative effect of etymological simulation is to be seen in <що було, бачили, що буде, побачимо> where the both labial consonants are used in the manner of the initial elements of root morphemes whereas in reality in the second word it goes about the prefix (бачити < обачний < об + око). Another example of alliterative etymological simulation is to be found in <вогонь палить, вода студить> [Пазяк, 1984, 88] where the initial labial consonants promote reciprocal rapprochement of the roots (attested in particular with Lat. ignis – unda). In another case of the proverb <у глеку молоко – та голова не влазить> such alliterative rapprochement <глек – голова> detects a possible etymological regeneration (the both coming back to the Indo- European *gel ‘something rounded and convex’). Vice versa in <чує кіт у глечику молоко солодке, та морда коротка> such rapprochement of <молоко – морда> entails simulative effect (морда is of Iranian origin). One can therefore suggest the metathesis with the substitution of <морда → мудрий> in the lines <Наша киця дуже мудра, способу добрала / У той кухличок вузенький хвостик умочала>. Thus one can say of distant diachronic vestiges of purely local alliterative devices.