The grass of wetlands in northern Sweden has been utilized for mowing and pasture even in our time. There are a large number of words and expressions, expecially in the dialects, to denote and describe the various types of wetlands.The chief aim of the thesis is to investigate some 40 wetland terms in a limited area - the old parish of Luleå, Norrbotten, in northern Sweden - in order to establish their distribution, meanings and use. The aim of the study is also to illustrate different semantic aspects, such as semantic features, semantic fields, the relationship between common nouns and place-names, as well as explanations based on the appearance of the wetlands. The material consists of words that derive from archives, the literature on the subject and interviews with 43 informants, and has been supplemented with studies of the wetlands themselves.Three semantically similar words, drävj, dröla and dovei, are scrutinized and compared with reference to their frequency and distribution, position, humidity, vegetation, form and depth of the ground. To illustrate the relationship between words and referents the author investigates what words are used about (small) muddy pools in a swamp (mire) and about the dry parts of a swamp (in technical language called flarkar and strängar, respectively). The words drävj and dröla are compared with five other words for 'depression/hollow' etc. and 'small pool' etc. Similarities and differences are illustrated in three figures on the basis of criteria like depression/hollow, humidity and size. The words are often explained with reference to special places in the area or to adjacent places, the names of which contain the word in question. With two pairs of words as examples, grande and skärpa, and drävj and dröla, respectively, the author investigates the meanings of the words and their referents and the explanatory strategies of the informants.The author stresses the dependence of word explanations and the learning of words on their contexts and functional situations. This aspect is illustrated in a chapter which summerizes how the author's semantic views of dövel, dröla and drävj have been formed. This is done with reference to the so-called prototype theory.
Diss. Umeå : Umeå universitet, 1992