This collection of essays brings together work devoted to little-known minority cultures represented by endangered, and in some cases disappearing, languages. Each chapter investigates and analyses how bears are perceived in the languages and customs of a culture from an ethnolinguistic perspective. The chapters in Part One explore the way bears are perceived through oral and literary traditions in Western Europe, Siberia, the Russian Far East, Iran and Central Asia. In Part Two, contributors examine stories told by people who have directly encountered bears in Alaska, Greenland, Europe, Central Asia, Siberia and the Russian Far East, and analyze what these stories reveal about their cultural beliefs and environment, as directly expressed in their languages.
Chapter 1 : The Linguacultural Image of the Bear : Introductory Notes.- Part One : Oral Narratives and Literature.- Chapter 2 : Bears in Yupik Folklore Tradition.- Chapter 3 : Bear in the Nenets Worldview.- Chapter 4 : The Beast Who Slept Through Winter -The Structure of a Song from the Bear Festival of the Kazym Khanty.- Chapter 5 : The Image of the Bear in the Oral and Literary Traditions of the Iranian Linguacultural Area.- Chapter 6 : A Yazghulami Folktale about Animals: Areal Elements in Pamir Languages.- Chapter 7 : The Image of the Bear in the Traditional Culture of Italy.- Part Two : Life Stories from the Field : Encounters with Bears.- Chapter 8 : Upper Kuskokwim Bears, Explicit and Implicit.- Chapter 9 : Qaanaamitun (North-west Greenland): An Encounter with a Polar Bear.- Chapter 10 : The Role of the Bear in the Life and Culture of the Koryak.- Chapter 11 : The Role of the Bear in the Life and Culture of the Even in Kamchatka.- Chapter 12 : Bear in the Northern Selkup Tradition: From Bear Hunting to Bear Ceremony.- Chapter 13 : Bears in the Tuvan Language and Worldview.
Tatiana B. Agranat is Associate Professor, Leading Researcher, and Head of Group for Finno-Ugric Languages at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Professor in the Department of General and Comparative Linguistics at Moscow State Linguistic University, Russia.
Leyli R. Dodykhudoeva is Senior Researcher in the Department of Indo-European Languages, Section of Iranian Languages, at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
