Правда и истина: о языковой кодификации «веритативных » концептов
Правда и истина: on the language codification of veritative concepts

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with two aspects of the semantics and the categorial potential of language entities encoding various concepts of TRUTH in Russian in comparison with several other I.-E. languages. The first one is the conceptual origins of both Russian key nouns in question, namely правда denoting, among others, true sentences, right solutions, an honest behavior, etc., and истина referring to the truth in its scientific, philosophical, religious etc. sense. It is shown that each lexical item is based on different source concepts, respectively NORM and ESSENCE, so that the two different target concepts of the ‘truth’ are to a huge degree influenced by them. The second approach is devoted to the grammaticalization potential of Russian and other lexical entities with “veritative” semantics. Since the source concept of NORM (as well as, in other languages, one of an observed REALITY) is non-specific and widely poly-semantic, it is per se predestinated to semantic change including the loss of semantic autonomy and grammaticalization. On the contrary, the ESSENCE concept prohibits or at least strongly restricts both semantic change and grammaticalization of the items based on it.

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