Cultural semantics of phytonyms in Komi-Permyak phraseological units and paroemias

This article attempts to determine the cultural semantics of the names of plants being part of phraseological units and paroemias in the Komi-Permyak language. The sources of the research comprise field materials from the archive of dialectological expeditions and educational practices of students of the Komi-Permyak Department of the Philology Faculty at Perm State Humanitarian Pedagogical University, information from the field archive of A. S. Lobanova, Komi-Permyak literary texts, and data from the Komi- Permyak Phraseological Dictionary. The signs that form the image of pu ‘tree’ in the Komi-Permyak traditional culture are those denoting various anomalies: a tree with two tops - vozha pu; with a shoot coming from the root - piyana pu; an unusual color - chochkom köz ‘white spruce’; a tree that was struck by lightning - charӧtӧm pu. The presented material reflects the real, primarily external signs of trees and grasses: the height of the spruce, the round-shaped crown of the pine, the white bark of the birch, the elasticity and freshness of the young grass, the limpness and lifelessness of the old grass. In addition, some properties of trees and grasses are noted - the ability of the bark to separate from the trunk of the tree and the hardness of the wood, the stingingness of nettles, the ability of burr fruits to stick to human clothing, and the unpleasant smell of hellebore. Among the ‘cultural’ properties of plants, there can be noted the sign ‘feminine’ for willow, which acts as a symbol of girlhood in the traditional culture of the Russians and Komi-Permyaks. The analyzed materials show the main development vector of figurative semantics of dendronyms and phytonyms in Komi-Permyak paroemias and phraseological units: tree → person, plant → person, that is, the names of trees, shrubs, wild and cultivated herbaceous plants denote persons with various characteristics (both social and physical). Less often, phytonyms included in phraseological units and paroemias denote various actions and states of a person.