Personal male suffix nouns with the meaning of the patient in the 19th-century Russian language (according to dictionaries and Texts)

Abstract

The object of the study is the dictionary interpretation of masculine nouns with the meaning of the patient, taken from a variety of dictionaries that record the vocabulary of the 19th century, as well as from texts of this period. The article discusses various semantic processes in the content of names with the meaning of the patient. First, the author describes derivation model which include personal masculine nouns with a passive meaning using the data dictionaries of the period. Then she shows that the downward trend in the names of persons with a passive meaning is expressed not only in the small productivity of models with this meaning, but also in the semantic processes in the content of words with the meaning of the patient. In general, the author describes these processes as the inclusion of non-passive semantics into the structure of the name meaning with passive semantics, which is observed in both dictionary definitions and texts of the time. Further, the author identifies the types of inclusion. First, she describes the combination of passive and agent meanings in the structure of a polysemantic personal name, which, in the opinion of the author, is due to the dynamics of the meaning of such words. Passive semantics of words reflects a “retrospective view” of the native speaker, emphasizing the starting point in the characterization of a person as the object of an action. The “view” of the native speaker stresses a non-initial point in the characterization of the complex state of the person, especially in the absence of pretext or mentions of the subject of an action, and is expressed in definitions that characterize the person as a bearer of a state. The second type of inclusion of non-passive semantics in the content of the name with a passive meaning is the combination in the meaning of a monosemantic personal name of passive and non-passive components. The author believes that this type of combination suggests the possibility of a dual view of the language user on one and the same person, which, in general, is due to the complexity of the denoted realia and communicative intentions of the speaker. The choice of one or another semantic component reflects changes in the intentions of the speaker rather than changes in the real world situation. Next, the author focuses on the third type of inclusion: the combination in the content of a monosemantic noun of the “patient” and “agent” semantic components, differing in the presence/absence of the indicator of the official position in its content. The component “agent” in the meaning of words of the given group expresses the basic features of the named realia - a person by his occupation. The component “patient” reflects the ideas of the 19th-century native speaker on centralization, hierarchy of the state apparatus and the economic structure of the country; it is socially conditioned. Based on the above, the author concludes that in dictionaries and texts of the 19th century, the definition of names of a person with the meaning of the patient reflects processes that enrich the content of names under study and reduce passive semantics