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SEMANTIC POTENTIAL OF BODY PART NAMES IN DIACHRONY // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2018. Issue 5 (194). P. 51-57

This article provides an evolutionary approach to the linguistic problem of encoding and interpretation of a conceptual content by means of body part names in the Old Russian and the Old English languages. Applying the category analysis to word semantics in diachrony enables us to decode the primary links between words and concepts that these words denote. The diachronic study of lexical semantics provides explicational potential, revealing recurring tendencies and the prospects for meaning generation and development. The lexicographic data of the Indo-European proto-language create the necessary basis to determine the ways semantic categories of objectivity, quality, quantity, space, and time can adapt and transform in the Slavic and the Anglo-Saxon linguistic consciousness. The comparative analysis of the Old Russian and the Old English body part names and their proto-Indo-European roots adds clarity to the processes of category transition and semantics formation. The semiotic complexity of human body contributes to the expansion of the objective space of body part names by means of incident semantics. The conducted research correlates the inventory of the Old Russian and the Old English somatic fragments with their Indo-European reflexes. The results testify to the dynamic nature of categories in the evolution of lexical semantics, indicating the vectors of semantic change.

Keywords: body parts names, semantic categories, diachrony, interpretation