On Etymological and Semantic Correspondences of the Russian Lexeme "Гордость" “Pride” in Slavonic Languages

Abstract

The article analyses the Slavic vocabulary denoting “pride”. The author examines lexemes that convey this notion in different Slavonic languages along with their value characteristics; next, the author looks at the semantic processes which caused the words ascending to the Proto-Slavic root *gr̥d- to change their meaning in a number of Slavic languages.

The material for the study was collected from parallel texts (originals and translations) and national corpora of Slavic languages. Comparative, comparative-historical, and system-structural methods were used.

The analysis showed that only in the Russian and Bulgarian literary languages the root *gr̥d-did not develop enantiosemy. In West Slavonic languages, the enantiosemy of the root *gr̥d- has developed towards the semantics of disdain, but this root continues to be actively used to denote positive pride. At the same time, the root *pych- is used in these languages to convey negative pride. Ukrainian and Belarusian languages have developed an enantiosemy similar to West Slavic languages and adopted the root *pych- as a central means of denoting negative pride, but retained, as in Russian, the root *gr̥d- to convey both negative and positive pride. The Serbian, Croatian and Slovene languages have developed the enantiosemy of the root *gr̥d- towards the meaning of “ugly”; they use the lexeme ponos and its derivatives to indicate positive pride; negative pride is expressed using the root borrowed from Russian -gord-.