On Some Processes in Forming the Lexical Fund of the First Literary Language of the Slavs: Multi-word Nominations, Phraseological Calques, Phraseologisms

Abstract

Old Church Slavonic language emerged in a narrow elite circle of bookmen. It is a literary language of the medieval type, and this fact in many respects determines the peculiarities of its lexical inventory. The lexical fund of the language consists not only of words but also of multi-word names, which are lexical units-designations. The method of nomination by multi-word names was not alien to the Slavic folk speech of the time, however, most of the Old Church Slavonic multi-word names were created by Slavic bookmen themselves in the translation process (mainly from Byzantine Greek). The appearance of quite a large number of phraseological calques with multi-word names in the Old Church Slavonic lexicon is due to the need of nominating concepts related to the adoption of Christianity and “medieval encyclopedism”. The repeated use by bookmen of phraseological calque in different translated works led to the phraseologization of this phraseological calque. The author assumes that the main and defining property of phraseologisms is the possibility of extracting them entirely by a native speaker from his memory (in the case of the Old Church Slavonic language, mainly by a bookman). Thus, Old Church Slavonic phraseologisms are the results of processes that could take place in the language both over the centuries and in the period of the first Slavic translations but from a synchronous point of view, these results are already built into the lexical system, ready for use by a bookman. This is the fundamental difference between “phraseological calque” and “phraseologism”.