Dynamics of Semantic and Word-Formation Subsystems of the Russian Language: Historical Dynamics of the Word Family

The article provides comprehensive justification of the principles and methods of the synchronic and diachronic research of word-formation subsystems of the Russian language. The authors also study the ways of analyzing historical dynamics of word family as the main macro-unit of word-formation syst...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Olga Ivanovna Dmitrieva, Oleg Igorevich Yankovskiy
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Volgograd State University 2015-09-01
Series:Vestnik Volgogradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta. Seriâ 2. Âzykoznanie
Subjects:
Online Access:http://l.jvolsu.com/index.php/en/component/attachments/download/1132
Description
Summary:The article provides comprehensive justification of the principles and methods of the synchronic and diachronic research of word-formation subsystems of the Russian language. The authors also study the ways of analyzing historical dynamics of word family as the main macro-unit of word-formation system. In the field of analysis there is a family of words with the stem 'ход-' (the meaning of 'motion'), word-formation of which is investigated in different periods of the Russian literary language. Significance of motion-verbs in the process of forming a language picture of the world determined the character and the structure of this word family as one of the biggest in the history of the Russian language. In the article a structural and semantic dynamics of the word family 'ход-' is depicted. The results of the study show that in the ancient period the prefixes of verbal derivatives were formed, which became the apex-branched derivational paradigms existing in modern Russian. The old Russian period of language development is characterized by the appearance of words with connotative meaning (with suffixes -ishk-, -ichn-), as well as the words with possessive semantics (with suffixes –ev-, -sk-). In this period the verbs with the postfix -cz also supplement the analyzed word family. The period of formation of the National Russian language was marked by the loss of a large number of abstract nouns and the appearance of neologisms from some old Russian abstract nouns. The studied family in the modern Russian language is characterized by the following processes: the appearance of terms, the active semantic derivation, the weakening of word-formation variability, the semantic differentiation of duplicate units, the development of subsystem of words with connotative meanings, and the preservation of derivatives in all functional styles.
ISSN:1998-9911
2409-1979