In the recent years the employees of the Research Center for Areal Linguistics at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts have been working on a new approach for the description of the word formation system in the Macedonian language. The approach consists of researching groups of lexemes derived from the same root attested in the Proto‑Slavic language. According to Markovikj and Topolińska (2019), one of the most important processes that present the systematic transfer of information from the semantic continuum to the lexicon of the language is the semantic derivation. This process allows the observation of the associative sequences, which retain the basic, initial semantic components, transmitted from the man and from the real physical world to the human mental world. In this paper, the author analyzes the formal and the semantic derivation of the Proto‑Slavic root * gor‑ in the Macedonian language, which has developed several variations since the Proto‑Slavic period. The analysis of the initial semantics of the word forms derived from the root * gor‑ and its variations, showed that they all share a common semantic concept ‘covered by fire’, which refers to the inseparable relationship between man and nature.

In this article, the author analyzes the terms for ‘woodpecker’ in the dialects of the Slavic languages, using the materials of the General Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA). The analysis contains two parts: the fi rst refers to the geographical distribution of the terms for ‘woodpecker’ in the Slavic-speaking area according to the stations covered by the OLA – about 850 settlements in the Slavic-speaking territory; the second part includes etymological and semantic analysis of the individual terms. From the analysis, it can be concluded that there is a great lexical diversity of these terms in the dialects of the Slavic languages, although the term dětьlъ is dominant in the Slavic-speaking area. Lexical diversity largely depended on the surrounding. Other factors, such as the contacts with other linguistic populations, infl uenced too. Recognizing the origin of the individual terms, we can establish that the forms are most often processed by onomatopoeia. But apart from the audacious perception, the motives for naming the woodpecker arose from the visual perception – the color of the feather, as well as the abilities characteristic of this kind of bird.