The Agricultural Lexis of The Border Village of Medana (the Goriška Brda Region, Western Slovenia) from the Point of View of the Slavic-Romance Language Contact

This paper presents the borrowed agricultural lexis in the local dialect of Medana, in the Goriška Brda region. This is a border region in western Slovenia, in which the Slovene population has coexisted with its Romance neighbours, the Friulians, for centuries. A survey conducted in the village of Medana using two specialized questionnaires revealed that one-third of the total vocabulary collected was of Romance origin, with most lexemes being taken from Friulian, less so from Italian. Some of the lexemes are of German origin, borrowed from German linguistic varieties in different historical periods. All the borrowed lexemes belong to the group of so-called cultural borrowings which name previously unfamiliar concepts (in comparison to borrowings which replace elements which were already present in the language). That clearly indicates where innovations in agriculture (new tools, machines or methods of cultivation of land, new crops, etc.) came from at different periods of time.