On the Principles for Spelling Dialectal Dictionary Entries (Based on Terminology of Weaving and Braiding with the Roots -цен-/-цин-/-чен-/-чин-)

<jats:p>This article examines the problems of choosing the spelling of headwords in a dialect dictionary. The author refers to terms related to weaving and braiding with the roots -цен-/-цин-/-чен-/-чин-, the question of representation which is solved based on etymological and historical data. Also, the article lists the various spellings that were used for the words of this group in the period from the eighteenth century to this day, presenting various versions of the origin of these words. It is established that such lexemes are rare in the literary language, where only the spelling -цин- is used for the root, but they are numerous in Russian dialects, in which they were fixed in the four indicated variants of the root. Historically, the primary spelling is with це-/ чи-, however, on Russian soil, the original variants probably interacted closely, which was facilitated by the history of ѣ. This conclusion is supported by the preservation of semantic links between the terms of weaving with etymologically related words that go back to the *činъ form, but with the meaning of ‘structure, row, order, rank, rule, method’ (чин (chin) ‘rank’ and its derivatives), which early became homonymous in relation to the words of the group under consideration. Based on modern etymological and dialectal data, it is concluded that for the system of Russian dialects, in accordance with the morphological principle of spelling, it is necessary to recognize the legitimacy of spelling all four historically originated root variants, while the spelling of word циновка (‘mat’ and its derivatives) in the literary language corresponds to the traditional principle and is one of the possible ones. The differences in approaches to the lexicographic representation of the data of the Russian literary language and dialects are emphasized.</jats:p>