Универсальное и «национально-специфическое» в лексике, обозначающей внутренние качества человека (на материале славянских языков)
Universal and “nationally specific” in vocabulary denoting person’s internal qualities: A study of Slavic languages

Summary/Abstract: The present article examines a number of lexemes, which are the constituents of the lexical-semantic group “Character qualities, mental characteristics of a person”. In terms of its functional and pragmatic (in particular, emotional and evaluative, expressive, stylistic) meaning, this LSG can generally be considered as one of the most significant in the language, because it is with the help of the lexical units belonging to this LSG, which have a rich palette of meanings and their shades, that various mental qualities, properties and characteristics of a person are designated in the broadest sense (thinking abilities, peculiarities of character and behavior, etc.). Besides lexical universals, which denote general phenomena and properties of human nature, among the lexis that characterizes the qualities of character, mental abilities of a person, and the characteristics of behavior, there are also words that, to a degree, can be classified as “nationally specific”, i.e. expressing a concept that is generally universal in its meaning, they turn out to be marked with certain connotations that arise in the minds of speakers of a given language. Such lexemes reflect character traits and behavior patterns that are important from the point of view of speakers of a given language and mentality in the general cultural system of values and the picture of the world. (As an example, we can cite such Russian characteristics and concepts that have already become “classical”, such as душевный – душевность, женственная – женственность, смекалистый – смекалка, халатный – халатность, пошлый – пошлость, etc.) Sometimes these qualities are directly related to national concepts and contain important moral criteria, behavioral norms, religious and philosophical views and other important ethno- and sociocultural characteristics that form the linguistic picture of the world of a nation – in particular, when it comes to the such concepts as the Russian “душа” and “совесть”, the Serbian and Croatian “obraz”, the Ukrainian “свiдомiсть” and “щирiсть”, etc. The semantics of such words, as a rule, combines several qualities at once, combined by a common meaning. Frequently such lexemes represent interlingual gaps (lacunae), i.e. they are either non-equivalent, or are only partially translated, mainly descriptively or with the help of a characteristic similar in meaning and sense. An important role in this regard is played by the context: its communicative and pragmatic properties, characteristics of the communicative situation (sometimes taking into account extralinguistic parameters as well). The problem addressed in given article requires a comprehensive study within the framework of inter-Slavic linguistic (resp. conceptual linguocultural) parallels. The analysis is carried out on the lexical material of three groups of Slavic languages: East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian), West Slavic (Czech, Polish), and South Slavic (Serbian, Croatian).

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