The lexicon of qualities and its polysemy in an online dialect atlas of Yamal:
the concept of ‘slippery’

The article raises some issues of creating dialect maps which could illustrate lexical polysemy in the Uralic languages of Yamal (Komi-Zyrjan, Nenets, Selqup, Khanty). We discuss four maps dealing with the concept of ‘slippery’. They show (1) the lexemes describing slippery surfaces; (2) the patterns of categorizing the situation in which an object is slipping out of sb’s hands; (3) the presence of a dominant lexeme ‘slippery’; (4) the presence of a special lexeme ‘slippery’ (about an icy bearing surface). The parameters typologically relevant for the domain of ‘slippery’ are: (1) the type of a contact with a surface (bearing surface vs. the surface of an object slipping out of hands); (2) the type of a surface which is slipping on another surface; (3) the presence of lexemes drawing some fine-grained distinctions between slippery surfaces.