Lexical and semantic features of the verbalization of the Russian concept of «Fate–Promysel» in diachrony

Abstract

The subject of the study – the concept «Fate–Promysel» and its lexical-semantic field in diachrony. The relevance is due to the key position of the idea of fate in Russian culture, the frequency of use of verbalizers of the concept. The concept is analyzed from the point of view of its lexical and semantic representation in different eras: the period of the spread of Old Church Slavonic writing – modern times. The purpose of the article is to determine the original semantic parts of the main verbalizers of the concept, study their constancy and changeability in diachrony. The methods of semantic analysis and of semantic experiment were used. Conclusions: 1) the main semantic parts of the concept in the Old Church Slavonic / Church Slavonic languages are designated as primordial, 2) changes in verbalizers and their meanings are traced: the predominance of verbalizers with the semes «random», «share», «fate» in the 19th century, the disappearance of the verbalizer «providence» and the rarity of fixation in the semantic field of dictionary definitions of the meaning «care of God about man» in the 20th century, 3) the semantic experiment made it possible to determine that the verbalizer «fate» is fixed by the participants mainly in the meaning of «destiny», while the idea of the randomness of events, their independence from the will of a person is inferior among modern native speakers to the understanding of fate as a set of cause-and-effect relationships, personal choices and influence of external circumstances that can be predicted and influenced by humans. There is a significant semantic shift in the lexical-semantic field of the concept «Fate–Promysel» from the main seme «Divine care for man» to the seme «coincidence of circumstances» (controlled or not by a person).