DERIVATIVES OF THE VERB *VELKTI IN THE TERMINOLOGY OF SLAVIC FUNERAL CEREMONY

Stages оf the Slavic funeral ceremony are united by the idea of movement of the deceased (his / her soul) from below uphill. Thus a more probable motivation for Russ. dial. волок ‘cemetery’, rather than ‘wood / forest’, is ‘(elevated) site, location to where the deceased is brought’. Funeral terminology of many Slavic languages serves as evidence for convergence of terms related to different stages of the ceremony (such as use of the word *grobъ to refer to either ‘coffin’, ‘grave’, or ‘cemetery’). It therefore seems possible to propose a derivation of Pol. dial. vełk ‘coffin’, beside Russ. dial. волок ‘cemetery’, from the verb *velkti ‘draw’.