Wartości i wartościowanie a ludowe nazwy roślin .......... 121
Synopsis
VALUES AND VALUATION VS FOLK NAMES OF PLANTS
Folk names of plants are a example of evaluative vocabulary and vocabulary that expresses values. They usually provide indirect information about people’s positive or negative attitudes towards individual elements of the plant world. The plant lexis is also a valuable source of knowledge about the nominating subject, his or her experiences and conceptualisation of the surrounding reality. The article therefore shows selected ways of valuing plants by giving them specific names and the values that are preserved in these names: existential, material, economic, religious, etc. The material basis of the analysis are phytonyms and their folk etymologies, collected in the north of Podhale in 2016–2017, cf. e.g. prawdziwy dzwonek (Campanula patula), głuchy owies (Avena fatua), psica (Nardus stricta), piorunica (Alchemilla pastoralis). The first part of the text presents several types of names, distinguished by the way in which they express evaluation. Attention is also given to the relationship between the types of naming structures and the positive (e.g. medicinal, economic) or negative (e.g. intoxicating, poisonous) properties of herbs. The second part of the sketch presents the values of the community “stored” in the meanings of the folk names of plants.
