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Cartilla practica (1862) was one of the most important technical manuals in colonial Cuba. In addition to providing a detailed description of sugar mills, it is one of the few works that addresses the issue of slave management. This study investigates the latter feature from a lexical perspective, through the morphosemantic analysis of terms used in the manual and examination of their visibility in the lexicography and texts of the time. The analysis reveals the presence of features typical of a diatechnical lexicon at an advanced stage, including nominalization, the tendency toward syntagmatic composition, and attention to precision. It highlights the need to consider the links between language and the extralinguistic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is dedicated to the analysis of competition between modal predicates in constructions with an infinitive clause in Middle Russian writing. The focus is on the constructions with modal predicates (verbs, nouns, adjectives, predicatives) podobati, nadlezhati, nalezhati, dolzhenstvovati, iměti, dolzhenъ, dolzhno, nadobě, nadobětь, nadobno, nado, nuzhno, nuzha, nuzhda, combined with an infinitive. The data were collected from the Middle Russian Subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus, from the 15 th – 17 th century sources. Frequency, se- mantics, distribution in various writing genres, and dynamics of change are studied. It is shown that the systems of modal predicates in higher and lower code writing were significantly different, the literary language had a broader system, while in lower code writing the predicates of the group nadobě, nadobětь, nadobno were predominantly used, and the predicate dolzhen was employed occasionally. At the same time, the group nadobě, nadobětь, nadobno does not have a clear semantic specialization and is quite often used to express different types of necessity, while constructions with podobati show deontic necessity, and constructions with iměti express ontological necessity. In the late Middle Russian period, the process of gradual restructuring of the Middle Russian system of modal predicates begins: new types of predicates emerge and start to compete with the old ones.

The paper explores the origin and semantics of the word karachun (korochun) having a vast specter of meanings in East Slavic languages (including Russian). It could mean ‘death’ (especially sudden and violent); serious illness’, ‘the end as a negative result, cessation, exhaustion of something’, ‘evil eye’, ‘evil spirit’; something that carries the idea of “crookedness, bentness” (‘crooked leg, stoop’ in Belarusian dialects, ‘hunched posture, crawling’ in Russian); ‘miser’ and material meanings — ‘crooked tree’, ‘old broom’ (Belarusian dialects). Apart from that, karachun and its phonetic variants have calendar semantics (‘day of the winter solstice’, ‘Christmas holidays (in general)’, ‘Christmas bread’, ‘Christmas tree’, etc.), however, these are mostly spread in the Carpathian-Balkan area and seldom occur in Russian. The authors hypothesize that Karachun1 ‘death, etc.’ and Karahun2 ‘calendar term’ go back to two heterogeneous homonyms: Karachun1 < Proto-Slavic *kъrčiti ‘to bend, to writh’ < *kъrčь / *kъrča ‘convulsions, spasm’; karachun2 < ? Albanian kёrcun (< *karcun) ‘block, stump of a tree’. In addition, the article examines the word karachun from the onomastic perspective — as a name of the mythological character that occurs both in scientific and popular literature and is believed to be an ancient Slavic deity. However, the authors argue that this one is a product of “armchair” mythologists (researchers of the 19th–21st centuries) and the result of an uncritical attitude to sources. In fact, this name belongs to the antagonist of the novel by Mikhail Popov (1770), that was replicated in the popular tales of the 18th century, from which it then migrated to the oral folk tradition (but did not become “active” there).

Goals. The study attempts etymological analyses of several rare military terms attested in 17th-century Mongol chronicles. The following terms are specifically touched upon in the article: aγuraγ ~ aγuruγ ‘base camp’, bayirildu- ‘to battle each other, fight a battle’, bulγaldu- ‘to fight each other or together’, čaγuraγul- ‘to send on a military campaign’, ide- ‘to capture and plunder (a city)’, nengde- ‘to attack unexpectedly’, niγtarqa- ‘to be in close order’, toyin ‘(military) camp’. All these terms are either totally unattested in the dictionaries of written Mongolian, or used with unique or rare meanings in sources, and reflect important features of military structure in the era of the Mongol Empire. Materials and methods. The paper analyzes three Mongol chronicles of the 17th century, namely: Quriyangγui Altan tobči ‘Brief Golden Summary’ (ca. 1604 to 1634, or mid-to-late 17th century), Erdeni tunumal neretü sudur ‘The Jewel Translucent Sūtra’ (ca. 1607), and Altan tobči ‘Golden Summary’ by Blo-bzaṅ bstan-’jin (ca. 1651 to 1655, or late 17th – early 18th century). The work employs a number of research methods inherent to comparative-historical linguistics and textology. Results. The article presumes the Mongol Empire’s military structure still remained more or less efficient — with some modifications — when the examined Mongol chronicles were being compiled, but completely lost its relevance in subsequent times. In view of this, only a small number of medieval military terms have survived in modern Mongolic languages, sometimes greatly changed in meaning (aγuraγ ~ aγuruγ), used only as obsolete forms (bulγa/bulγaldu-) or bound morphemes (ča’ur). Conclusions. The paper suggests some of the terms are of foreign origin and bear obvious traces of the intensive areal contacts between Mongolic and neighboring languages, notably Turkic (aγuraγ ~ aγuruγ, bulγa(-), toyi/n), Tungusic (nen(g)de-), and Khitan (ča’ur) ones. Some are attested as hapax legomena in individual chronicles (bayirildu-, čaγuraγul-, niγtarqa-), while others articulate highly specific meanings that have no parallels in our sources, and thus either correspond to the semantics of the donor forms (toyi/n) or possibly reflect the influence of local dialects of that time (ide-).

The present article investigates the problem of the etymology and development of the Latin word vir, ‘man,’ usually assumed to have descended from the Proto-Indo-European form *u̯ih1 -ró-, ‘man’, but with somewhat irregular and not commonly accepted pretonic shortening of the vowel in view of the cognates in Indo-Iranian and Baltic. The shortening is usually explained as an effect of Dybo’s Rule, but it is pointed out that there might be a simpler solution to explaining the change, namely, the socalled Osthoff’s law, which occurred in the prehistory and history of Latin at least three times.

This contribution uses a set of documents dealing with the case of a fugitive slave named Samuel Johannes in Upper Lusatia in 1754 to demonstrate the merits of a historical semantics-inspired approach. Not only does the studied case present evidence of the extension of colonial slaveries into the Holy Roman Empire, it also provides a snapshot of the language of subservience spoken in mid-eighteenth-century Germany. By revealing a striking indifference towards defining and explaining categorisations of dependency, the sources analysed here defy simple juxtapositions like 'enslaved' versus 'free'. Labels like 'slave', 'serf ', or 'Moor' were employed to enforce and legitimise authority and proprietorial claims over Samuel Johannes. But these labels had to be constantly translated into actual practices and filled with meaning, as they did not readily convert into established, closely circumscribed positions or categories of status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Linguistica Copernicana is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Among the highlights of Professor Janusz Siatkowski’s scholarly activity in the field of Polish and Slavic studies, there are his consistent development of the areal paradigm of linguistic research and his establishing and interpreting correlations between the areal distribution of linguistic phenomena and their chronological features, as well as between language‑internal and extralinguistic factors influencing language evolution processes. The method of topochronographic analysis, which primarily emerged in Siatkowski’s numerous studies of Slavic dialect lexis, was then adopted and further developed by other linguists. Using exhaustive synchronic and diachronic linguistic data, and also taking into account the specificity of every linguistic item under scrutiny have resulted in the efficiency of his reconstruction and interpretation of structural, areal, and functional changes in linguistic inventories, their variation within individual Slavic languages and the common Slavonic area. Siatkowski’s analysis of a wide range of structural elements of various languages, differing in their genesis and history, testifies to the high informative value of all kinds of linguistic items, something that, while not denying the existence of general regularities of language development, brings into clearer relief their shared as well as exclusive properties. From the viewpoint of their content, Siatkowski’s works are twofold: firstly, they involve detailed analysis of linguistic items, and secondly, they employ a rigorous theoretical and methodological apparatus, which includes a set of relevant analytical procedures and is fit to be applied to other linguistic objects and in other research areas. Many studies in the 2019 volume “Prace Filologiczne” demonstrate the further proliferation and development of his ideas and methods – of what may be termed Siatkowski’s approach. Heuristically, many papers in this volume are valuable for the new material of Slavonic dialects and languages they bring, as well as the way this material is structured and interpreted. The inventories of linguistic items presented in dialect descriptions then turn into a matrix applicable in checking up other Slavonic linguistic areas, finding their common and distinctive elements, and establishing cross‑dialectal and cross‑linguistic isoglosses of various structural levels as well as exclusive features. The authors of the papers arrive at new theoretic generalizations concerning the regularities and scale of structural and functional changes in the common Slavonic dialectal area, effectively elaborating the areal paradigm of language study as an important direction in modern linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The next (and not yet the last) issue of the second volume Plants of the Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols, published in Lublin under the editorship of prof. E. Bartminsky and S. Niebrzegowska‑Bartminska, contains the topics Shrubs and Little bushes. The ethnolinguistic “portraits” of the plants are given at the broad Slavic and European background. Like the previous issues, it is a significant contribution to the study of Polish and Slavic folk culture. It also provides various material for linguistic studies of Polish and Slavic phytonymy thanks to a rich dialect corpus of plant names and related folklore and ethnographic contexts. Moreover, the Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols provides a new method of ethnolinguistic lexicography, which can be successfully applied to the study of other Slavic and non‐Slavic languages and cultural traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evliya Çelebi’s Seyāḥatnāme, i.e. ‘Book of Travels’, contains, among others, a handful of Slavic words that are marked as Ukrainian. As a matter of fact, some of them display mixed features, probably resulting from the contamination of Ukrainian and Russian variants. Such hybrid words (e.g., [9] below) are attested together with purely Ukrainian (e.g., [2]) and purely Russian (e.g., [18]) forms. This situation prompted this author to classify Evliya Çelebi’s lexical materials as surzhyk vocabulary and, thus, antedate the emergence of surzhyk (see section 3). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses selected dialect lexis from the Polish questionnaires for the German Language Atlas from Masuria, Warmia and the Neighbouring Areas, then in Eastern Prussia. The 19th‑century records are a valuable source for the study of dialect lexis, offering a comparative basis for inquiries into the contemporary state of dialects in the area under study. The text analyses words that, according to the authors, bring interesting data to the collection of dialect lexis or confirm occurrence in the area under study. These are words meaning ‘many’, ‘peasant, man’, ‘those, others’, and ‘to crush, knead, squeeze, press, strangle’. The text is supplemented by a compilation of source material for the appended map, illustrating the equivalents of German Andern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper discusses the anthroponymy of Białystok region in the late 19th and early 20th century with the focus on patronyms (otchestva) excerpted from the church registers of the Orthodox parish in Łapy dated 1898‑1915. It was established that the majority of the patronyms were derived from the Orthodox (Church‑Slavonic) variants of proper names (e.g., Dionisiyev, Emilіanova), although the study confirms the presence of the cases where non‑canonical variants of baptismal names were used (e.g., Denisov, Emel’yanova). Moreover, the graphic notation of the patronyms reflects the rules enforced in the period prior to the final spelling reform; simultaneously, the observed trends point to the removal of doublets and the deviation from the Church‑Slavonic pattern. Despite the commonality of patronyms in their short forms (e.g., Yakovlev, Kirillov, Ivanova), the full forms of otchestva in the parish registers (e.g. Yakovlevich, Kirillovich, Ivanovna) were detected as well. Their occurrence can be explained by several factors, such as an effort to differentiate between identical surnames, or the social origin of the name owner and his profession. Nonetheless, the discussed dependencies between the short and full forms are not unconditionally consistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the semantic development of Proto‑Slavic *lichъ. This adjective has many disparate meanings in Slavonic languages which have predominantly developed from the Proto‑Slavic meaning ‘odd, uneven’. The concept of ‘oddness, unevenness’ was mostly viewed as something undesirable and harmful which is reflected by meanings like ‘needless, futile, vain, wretched, evil, ominous etc.’. There is, however, also a group of positive meanings in Slavic languages, such as ‘free, daring, high‑spirited, skilful, famous’. The semantic shift to these meanings has not been satisfactorily explained. We suggest a development via the meanings ‘free from sth, singular’ (partially attested in Old Church Slavonic and some other Slavic languages) as one of the possible directions of semantic development of *lichъ from which the aforementioned positive meanings could be explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the question from the Lexical volume 9 – “Man” of the General Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA). It is about the terms for the ‘footprint, track’ (‘stapalka, traga’ in Macedonian) in the Slavic dialects covered by the question L 1575 (‘след стопы’) according to the Questionnaire of OLA. The aim of the analysis is to show the geographical distribution, etymology and semantic motivation for the terms of ‘footprint, track’ in Macedonian dialects (which are based on the material from the OLA) in correlation with the equivalents on the Slavic linguistic territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the Etymological Dictionary of the Old Church Slavonic Language, which was completed at the end of 2022. It is the first extensive scientific etymological vocabulary of Old Church Slavonic, consisting of a total of 21 volumes, of which 19 volumes contain entries (there are 2483 entries on 1164 pages). The last two volumes are registers of all words listed in the dictionary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the etymology of three Polish words: przyzwoity, wyśmienity and rubaszny. All three should probably be considered native formations. Przyzwoity (in the older version przywoity, also przyzwoisty) in genetic terms should probably be combined with the verb wić: *przy‑wić > *przy‑wój > *prz‑woj‑ity. Wyśmienity – according to A. Brückner's hypothesis – derives from the hypothetical preform of pol. *wyśmień ‘height’. Rubaszny, on the other hand, is also the result of native derivational processes and derives from the Polish adjective gruby in the sense of undelicate, simple, unsophisticated, uncouth, coarse, rude’: *(g)ruby > *(g)rubacha > *(g)rubaszny [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the results of a linguistic analysis of three early sources on Oirat historical dialectology, Rashīd al-Dīn’s Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh (Compendium of Chronicles, completed between 1306 and 1311) and the Mongol chronicles Sir-a tuγuǰi (Yellow History, between 1651 and 1662) and Erdeni tunumal neretü sudur (The Jewel Translucent Sūtra, c. 1607). The author concludes that these sources substantially differ in terms of their linguistic value and reliability. The early historical accounts of Oirat lexical differences, provided by Rashīd al-Dīn and the unknown author of the Sir-a tuγuǰi, are most likely to have been obtained from unreliable external sources and based on hearsay evidence, orally transmitted by non-Oirats, at best, only passingly familiar with the Oirat language and its actual features. Both authors probably heard something about distinctive lexical features of the Oirat dialects of their time, but they hardly had a clear idea of what these features were and how to explain them in an adequate manner. On the contrary, the ‘Oirat fragment’ contained in the Erdeni tunumal neretü sudur seems to be much closer to fact than to fantasy. It presents a deliberate and quite reliable attempt to introduce some features of the Oirat dialects spoken at the turn of the seventeenth century. In the absence of earlier internal evidence of the linguistic differences between the Mongolic languages, this may be the oldest known representation of dialectal data in the Mongolian literary tradition. The evidence is of special importance because it includes morphophonological (an innovative colloquial shape of the clitics ni ~ n̠i < *inu and la ~ =la < *ele) and morphosyntactic (the progressive/durative in ‑nA(y)i), rather than lexical, features, which seem to have been considered Oirat by the early seventeenth-century author(s) of the chronicle. These features look more genuinely Oirat, at least for the early 17th century, although their modern distribution is certainly rather wide and non-specific. It may be assumed that the information on Oirat dialects that the Erdeni tunumal neretü sudur contains may have been obtained from an Oirat, or, at least, from an individual well-versed in the language of the time. Thus, one cannot overestimate the importance of the chronicle as a highly valuable source on historical dialectology of Mongolic languages.

This article focuses on those modern and historical Latvian words that, in addition to the main component of the meaning ‘adult woman’, also include the components of respect and/or social status, namely, gaspaža, madama, dāma, and kundze. The article discusses the emergence and change of use of these lexemes in the 16th–19th century with a special focus on the processes of the middle and second half of the 19th century. In less than a century, the semantic field of the honorific female designations in the Latvian language has undergone significant changes. From one word gaspaža to four in the 1870s, but the most significant changes took place in the last twenty years of the century. In formal and neutral use, kundze and dāma were strengthened, each occupying a different part of the semantic field, competing synonymously only in the general sense of ‘honorable woman’, as well as in the function of address. However, even in this case, kundze is more often used in the context of the singular and dāma in the plural. In turn, lexemes gaspaža and madama have become characteristic of colloquial language and fiction; they often have an ironic or negative connotation.

Spiders have long been part of the circle of creatures that frightened humanity. In Europe and Russia, a tarantula occupied a special place among such phobias. For the first time the word “tarantula” in the spelling “tarant” appeared in the translated Herbalist between the 16th and 17th centuries. Thanks to the “Cosmography” of the 17th century, a Russian bibliophile encountered an Apulian specimen of this spider. The lexeme “tarantula” appeared in the papers of Peter I, in the translation of works by P.S. Pallas we find the word “tarantula”. The bizarre appearance of the creature and the word itself, the vagueness of its meaning gave rise to prejudice and prejudice. In the 18th-19th centuries superstitions about “terrible” and “harmful” creatures were replicated, which were eventually replaced by more balanced assessments. The image of the “terrible” tarantula is now known for the most part only as a means of artistic expression.

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The author states that a “biography” of a language presents de facto its capability to adapt to natural and/or man‑made changes in the environment of the community speaking the language in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, we would like to underline the relevance of international digital media as a corpus of research that contributes to our understanding of the history of the Spanish lexicon. We present tools such as corpora and word banks, especially elaborated for the Hispanic tradition. For example, we would like to examine some research projects in Romance or Hispanic linguistics that are in the Anglo-Saxon, French or German university networks or accessible in online libraries. Particularly, in this essay, we present some cases where research in historical lexicology was complemented with data provided by the whole digital ecosystem. For this research, we will only focus on two áreas of Hispanic lexicology: that of Romance etymology and that of the history of the Spanish-American lexicon.

The paper discusses the Russian deanthroponymic gemstone name Maryino steklo (Maria’s glass) which refers to mica (more often), leafy Gypsum (less often), or fulgurite (in isolated cases) and has a dubious origin. Subject to a historical-lexicological and semantic-motivational analysis, this name happens to have multiple equivalents: Lat. glacies Mariae, Ger. Marienglas, Frauenglas, Fr. glace de Marie, Eng. (St.) Mary’s glass, and others. In Western European languages, the corresponding terms can also refer both to gypsum, usually of the fibrous type (selenite), and mica, and likewise to talc. It is also noted that there is another term, the “stone of Jesus” (Fr. pierre à Jésus), that forms a binomial with the “Mary’s glass.” The authors conclude that the studied lexical group should have originated from a gemstone name related to selenite, with an internal form “the glass of Mary” or “ice of the Virgin,” which appeared in Germany before the mid-15th century. The motivation is probably due to the special properties of the stone (purity, transparency), making it either “pleasing to the Virgin,” “created by the Virgin,” or “protected by the Virgin”. Further, the internal form has changed in line with the cultural practice of using selenite: it served as a replacement for glass in front of icons and in reliquaries. From the 18th century, the “glass of Mary” is mentioned in Russian-language literature: first as a German and/or Latin “quote,” and then as a calque. The Russian tradition gave two major shifts as compared to the West European: 1) a “cultural” shift (Russian religious practices, similar to those of Western Europe, focused mainly on mica which was an important export item to Europe), and 2) a “linguistic” shift (in Europe, people often used the same nomenclature for Russian mica and gypsum). With the named object exported from Russia to Western Europe, the “Russian bias” anchored in some European languages, leading to the “cultural remotivation” of the loan word.

Russian plant names are a semantic group poorly represented in historical dictionaries. During the project "Russian phytonyms in diachronic aspect (11th-17th c.)" (2017-2020), the PhytoLex database was created, which contains plant names recorded in Russian texts of the 11th-17th centuries. The population of the database was accompanied by research work devoted to various issues relating to the representation of plant names in the Russian language in general, and in particular in relation to some specific genres: herbals, documents of the Apothecary Chancery, business documents, church literature and lexicons. Some earlier unknown plant names were identified. These database materials will be the basis for the dictionary of Old Russian plant names, draft word entries for which have been compiled. Technical solutions will be used during the creation of a further database representing plant names recorded in later periods of the Russian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces the history of the Histdict system, which turned into a basis for the new Electronic Research Infrastructure for Bulgarian Medieval Written Heritage, which was included into the National Research Roadmap at the end of 2020. Through this act the state declares its support to our resources, that have been so far created and supported by project funding. And of course, it is a big recognition of our efforts and achievements. On the other hand, this act coincided with two other events: the inclusion of RESILIENCE (Research Infrastructure on Religious Studies) in which Histdict is taking part, in the European Research Infrastructures Roadmap and the start of the updating and upgrading of the system. Given the situation the Infrastructure is now facing new challenges--not only the successful improvement of the services it offers, but also the inclusion of the Orthodox Cultural Heritage into European research exchange, which will promote and popularize the history and culture of Southeastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines some of the sources of Pamvo Berynda's Church Slavonic-- Ruthenian lexicon. Identifying the sources of the dictionary and all the hidden quotes is an important task for the correct presentation of the content of this lexicographical monument. The quoted content presented in the Lexicon is divided into two groups: material that did not indicate the source (an example is the Interpretation of words difficult to understand) and materials that indicated the source. For the second case, a non-exhaustive list of such examples is provided. Such quotations show that, for his Lexicon, Berynda mainly used works in the printing of which he himself participated. These are the Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and the Homilies on the 14 Epistles of the Holy Apostle Paul, both belonging to John Chrysostom, along with the Didactic Gospel. The use of dictionary entries in the Interpretation of words difficult to understand, a lexicon based on the vocabulary from the Ladder of Divine Ascent, and from Interpretation of words in alphabetical order by Maximus the Greek confirms Berynda's interest, indicated by other researchers as well, for the previous lexicographic tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A partir de la reflexión en torno a la polisemia, he querido hacer un rastreo textual y una posterior tipologización de los sentidos que la palabra americanismo ha tenido en la lengua española. Algunos de estos sentidos, claramente, se han instalado en la codificación oficial como acepciones, pero otros han devenido en conceptos o son sentidos que la lexicografía oficial tiende a generalizar, en una suerte de acepciones más genéricas. Otros sentidos, a su vez, han dado cuenta de momentos específicos de la historia y no siempre han estado trabajados de una manera lexicológica y lexicográfica clara. En este ensayo busco, entonces, hacer un cruce entre lexicología histórica y filología para celebrar el americanismo en sentido, en acepción o en concepto, sea este perdurable o efímero. Abstract From the reflection on polysemy, I have wanted to make a textual search and a subsequent typologization of the meanings that the word Americanismo has had in the Spanish language. Some of these understandings, clearly, have been installed in the official codification as meanings, but others have become concepts or are understandings that the official lexicography tends to generalize, in a kind of more generic meanings. Other understandings, in turn, have accounted for specific moments in history and have not always been worked on in a clear lexicological and lexicographical way. In this essay I seek, then, to make a nexus between historical lexicology and philology to celebrate Americanism in sense, in meaning or in concept, be it enduring or ephemeral.

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This paper deals with the semantic evolution of the adverb absoljutno ‘absolutely’ in the Russian language from the 18th to the 21st century. Coexisting and interchanging meanings of this word are defined using the Russian National Corpus, and the chronology of its various semantic shifts is specified. The author analyzes how, under the influence of the philosophical discourse of the 19th century, the modern meaning of the term absoljutno has been formed as a marker of the highest degree of attribute.

This paper deals with the semantic evolution of the adverb absoljutno 'absolutely' in the Russian language from the 18th to the 21st century. Coexisting and interchanging meanings of this word are defined using the Russian National Corpus, and the chronology of its various semantic shifts is specified. The author analyzes how, under the influence of the philosophical discourse of the 19th century, the modern meaning of the term absoljutno has been formed as a marker of the highest degree of attribute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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On Matthew the Grammarian and the 16th Century Spoken Bulgarian Language: The paper examines some peculiarities of Matthew the Grammarian’s language. The famous representative of the Sofia Literary School from the 16th century is the author of an unique work – The Life of St. Nicolas the New of Sofia. The author proposes lexical-semantic classifications of word groups. The basic aim of the paper is to prove that – contrary to popular opinions about Matthew’s strong rhetoric character and distance from the spoken language – his hagiographic work contains visible signs of vernacular language. In addition, the final passage with the miracle of the saint, which has not been included in the most popular new Bulgarian version, is reproduced in original and translation together with commentaries about one rare appellation of disease.

The article is devoted to the diachronic description of genetically close vocabulary of the East Slavic languages on the basis of the study of its origin and semantics in the context of the urgent problems of historical derivatology, lexicology and lexicography of Slavic languages. A lexical family and its variants are considered to be the main complex unit of the lexical-semantic system of language: the family of words – in certain synchronous sections in the history of each language; the root and etymological families – in the history of kin languages development. The author introduces the notion of lexical-semantic paradigm (LSP) – a system-forming unit which includes etymological nests connected with deep semantics underlying the internal form of roots. These roots represent the families' top which got development in the history of the East Slavic languages. The possibility and necessity for LSP allocation is proved on the basis of morphemic and word-formation analysis, semantic analysis of the vocabulary of reconstructed etymological families *dō- 'давать, дать' ('to give'), *ber- 'брать' ('to take'), *em- 'взять, иметь' ('to take, to have'), *nes(ti) 'нести' ('to carry'), reflecting the chronological stages in the development of genetically close lexis from the Proto-Slavic language to the modern language. The top of these families forms an LSP the key words of which (давать // дать – брать – взять – иметь – нести – давать) are united by the sequence of values they express, and contain common semes – 'attached object' and 'subject's action aimed at attached object'. Semantic intersection of these lexemes is conditioned by the syncretism of values of Proto-Indo-European roots to which they ascend, and the influence of paradigmatic suppletion (O.N. Trubachev's term). The author of the present article confirmed this fact by Belarusian-, Ukrainian- and Russian-language examples (literary and dialectal lexemes, word-formation pairs and chains, component names, idioms and contexts). The author believes that consideration of the dynamics of complex etymological families during the whole period of their existence as part of the LSP is one of the ways to solve the problem of creating a complete and systematic essay of East Slavic historical lexicology.

Agent Nouns with the Suffix -čí from a Diachronic Perspective This article deals with agent nouns formed with the suffix -čí (lovčí m.), attested both in the Old Czech and the Middle Czech period. The study provides their formal and semantic description and compares their word-formation development. In particular, it further examines the relations between agent nouns formed by the suffixes -cě, -ec (lovec) and adjectives ending with -í derived from those nouns (lovčí adj.). Nomina agentis z przyrostkiem -čí w ujęciu diachronicznym Artykuł omawia nomina agentis utworzone za pomocą przyrostka -čí (lovčí m.), poświadczone zarówno w okresie staroczeskim, jak i średnioczeskim. Autorka charakteryzuje te jednostki z punktu widzenia formalnego i semantycznego i porównuje ich rozwój słowotwórczy. Analiza koncentruje się na relacjach pomiędzy nomina agentis utworzonymi za pomocą przyrostków -cě, -ec (lovec) a przymiotnikami z końcówką -í, które są ich derywatami (lovčí przym.).

The author in this research article analyses the names of witnesses in the period from Ancient Russia to the end of the 17th century. Vocabulary is analysed from the point of view of origin, semantics and sphere of usage. Russkaya Pravda (Rus’ Justice), birch bark manuscripts and business documents of the 15–17 centuries were used as research sources.

The main aim of the paper is to offer a lexicological and semantic study of the Mexican prison slang at the end of the 19th century that appears in the text of the novel of manners La Chaquira (Belen por dentro), by Francisco Garcia Gonzalez, published in instalments in a Mexican newspaper El Reldmpago during 1894 and 1895. Attention will be paid to its structure (patrimonial vocabulary, Nahuatlisms, Anglicisms, etc.) and to principal word formation processes and patterns of semantic change that can be found there. Another aim of study will comprehend its comparison with other Hispanic prison slangs, mainly the Spanish one, from the historical point of view. This historically focused comparison and analysis will show directions of evolution that would allow us to interpret this jargon as properly Mexican, or "national". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudis Romànics is the property of Institut d'Estudis Catalans and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studia z Filologii Polskiej i Slowianskiej is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slavic Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Annalistic oikonymy as a source for reconstruction of the Old Russian vocabulary Among about 1,000 place names mentioned in the Old Russian chronicles (within the borders of contemporary Russia), there are 19 ones that are derived from stems non-attested as apellatives in the Old Russian written sources. The vast majority of them can be reconstructed by comparison with words of modern East Slavic languages or their dialects, but several are not known in the East Slavic zone, and have parallels in the West and (or) South Slavic languages only. Almost all of these words are geographical terms. The places in whose names they are preserved are located mostly in Novgorod Ruthenia and the Upper and Middle Volga basin. Ojkonimia latopisów jako źródło dla rekonstrukcji słownictwa języka staroruskiego Wśród około 1000 nazw miejscowych wymienionych w staroruskich kronikach (w granicach dzisiejszego państwa rosyjskiego) jest 19 pochodzących od podstaw, które nie są apelatywnie poświadczone w źródłach staroruskich. Zdecydowaną większość z nich można zrekonstruować na podstawie wyrazów należących do zasobu leksykalnego współczesnych języków wschodniosłowiańskich lub ich dialektów, ale kilka z nich ma analogie tylko w językach zachodnio- i południowosłowiańskich. Prawie wszystkie te słowa są terminami topograficznymi. Miejsca, w których nazwy są zachowane, znajdują się głównie w Rusi Nowogrodzkiej i dorzeczu Górnej i Środkowej Wołgi.

The existence of the Greek term μυρμηκολέων in Job, 4, 11, in the biblical text of Orthodox tradition, on the steadfast line of the Septuagint, has seemed—time and again—bizarre, and has intrigued enough as to be approached as a textological problem in several articles and studies, some of them extended and well documented, during the last hundred years; it seems that we face an ordinary translation mistake: the Hellenised Hebrew translator of the Septuagint has missed the equivalent of the Heb. ַׁל ֭י ִש (layish [lah’-yish]) ‘a lion’ from the original story of Job, and has produced, consequently, what appears to be a hapax legomenon in the sacred text, an odd and obscure term. Reopening the case, the present study argues in favour of a different reading of the word μυρμηκολέων, which precludes the translator’s presumed mistake. Moreover, it reminds the researcher of the necessity to question, in a lucid manner, the arguments that seem to support a certain conclusion.

Introduction: the article substantiates the necessity of studying the grammatical structure of the modern Russian language in terms of its history, considers methods of explaining difficult spelling cases using elements of historical and linguistic commenting, as well as data of historical Phonetics and historical lexicology.Materials and methods: materials for commenting were selected from Russian studies approved by the Ministry of education and science of the Russian Federation. In the course of working on the article the following methods were used – analysis of scientific sources, comparative analysis, methods of comparison and generalization.Research results: the article substantiates the role of knowledge of the history of the language in the scientific study of the language. The necessity of addressing to the history of the Russian language is also connected with the increased interest in the characteristics and roots of the Russian mentality, and the language is considered to be its custodian. Therefore, the history and linguistic approach at the lessons of the Russian language at school is so important. The authors determine the particular importance of lexicology in etymological analysis of words, as well as historical phonetics - in the study of spelling of full-voice and corresponding non-consonant combinations, as well as in the presentation of rules related to fluency of vowel sounds. The study is accompanied by specific examples from the school curriculum of Russian language studies.Discussion and conclusion: the appeal to the considered aspects of the history of the native language (phonetics, lexicology) in close unity with the studied material, reflected in the school curriculum, allows students to penetrate deep into the native language, to feel its various nuances, it promotes the development of various forms of logical and associative thinking, awareness of national identity.

This paper stems from two different perspectives—that of the Latinists, and that of the Romanists—upon the concept of ‘Vulgar Latin’, perspectives that have given rise to a friendly debate between Pierre Flobert and Eugeniu Coșeriu. We try to highlight a number of lexical elements that are common to Classical and Vulgar Latin. Our approach leans upon the idea (found also with Maria Iliescu) that the diachronic vision upon language must take into consideration the sum of the histories of the words that belong to that language. Observing several lexical items excerpted from texts belonging to various epochs of the Latin culture (Archaic, Classical, Late), to various authors (Cicero, Vergilius, etc.), and to authors whose works contain elements of spoken language (Plautus, Petronius, etc.), from works of a high level language (epics, discourse, dissertation), and from texts with strong marks of orality (comedies, letters, sermons), we were able to see the semantic evolution of several Latin words preserved in the Romance languages. Our conclusion endorses the notion of a “common language”, which explains the parallel existence of words like casa, pauimentum, caballus, formosus, uetulus, auricula, gula, bucca, manducare, incendere, draco both in the Classical and Vulgar Latin, without notable differences.

Copyright of Diacronia is the property of Revista Diacronia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Diacronia is the property of Revista Diacronia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of the paper is to offer a lexicological and semantic study of Mexican prison slang during the Porfirian era as it is appreciated in the "Prison Slang Vocabulary" that is included in the costume novel La Chaquira (Belén por dentro), by Francisco García González, published in instalments in a Mexican newspaper El Relámpago during 1894 and 1895. Attention will be paid to its structure (patrimonial vocabulary, Nahuatlisms, Anglicisms, etc.) and to principal word formation processes that can be found there. Another aim of study will comprehend its comparison with other Hispanic prison slangs, mainly the Spanish one, from the historical point of view. This historically focused comparison and analysis will show directions of evolution that would allow us to interpret this jargon as properly Mexican. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]