An abstract word in subdialects of the old believers of Perm krai as a way of expressing the ideas of the world and faith

The article studies the peculiarities of abstract words related to religion that have been recorded in the speech of the Old Believers living in Perm Krai. It describes the specificity of etymology of folk terms related to religious faith, analyzes their semantic and stylistic characteristics. It is noted that abstract nominations of religious content perform an intellectual function in the Old Believers’ culture. It is established that the peculiarity of this vocabulary consists in the representation of religious notions through reference to rituals. Capturing abstract knowledge, abstract vocabulary is devoid of emotional coloring, though quite often being full of religious-philosophical, ethical and moral content, bookish connotations. It contains characteristics of such notions of faith as God, holiness, righteousness, temptation, sin, slander; it conveys the ideas of the proper attitude to labor, wealth, obsession with money, deception. Abstract nominations represent typical of the Old Believers ritual practices and forms of worship, ritual episodes connected to the main stages of human life (christening, church wedding, death, burial, commemoration). The subdialects preserve an explicit system of abstract faith notions, which is mainly explained by religious literacy of the old generation of tradition bearers, by weak contacts of the communities with the outer world. The article demonstrates the consistency of abstract nominations and their being included in word-formation patterns existing in the language to express abstractness. This consistency is based on the use of productive Old Russian and dialectal word-formation patterns and formants with the meaning ‘abstract action, state, attribute, quality’. The paper concludes that certain nominations act as religious concepts reflecting the specific nature of linguistic and cognitive consciousness of the Old Believers.