Authors
- Alekseev Alexander V. D. Sc. (Philology), docent
Annotation
The relevance of the study of the word smerd is due to the use of this nomination in modern ideological discourses. The study aims at considering the diachronic conditionality of the modern connotation the word under study possesses. The article employs a comparative historical method used for reconstructing thesemantic components. There are also contextual and structural-semantic methods applied. The article reveals the contradiction between the Old Russian and modern connotative properties of smerd: the modern language sees smerd belonging to the group of pejorative vocabulary, while the Old Russian word smerd possessed a nominative meaning. The issue to be tackled prompted studying the etymology of the word smerd at the Proto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-European levels. It is established that the hypothesis about the origin of the word connects the noun smerd with the verb smerdeti. The article proves that this hypothesis is not entirely convincing. The article substantiates another hypothesis that defines the inner form of the word smerd as a ‘suffering person’. The study results in reconstructing the cultural significance of the common Slavic and Old Russian word smrd — ‘a stranger, an inferior person’. The latter leads to the following conclusions as follows: the transformation of cultural connotation in the history of the word leads to forming an emotional connotation; the emotional assessment expressed by the word smerd in modern linguistic culture should be studied taking into account its etymological meaning.
How to link insert
Alekseev, A. V. (2024). THE ORIGIN AND CONNOTATION OF THE OLD RUSSIAN WORD SMERD Bulletin of the Moscow City Pedagogical University. Series "Pedagogy and Psychology", 2 (54), 95. https://doi.org/10.25688/2076-913X.2024.54.2.07
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