Животъ, житиуе и жизнь в Учителното евангелие на Константин Преславски

Abstract

In the article the use of the three lexemes for ‘life’ in Constantine of Preslav’s Didactic Gospel from the end of the 9th is analysed. The focus lies on their distribution, especially considering their contextual meaning. The systemised data are compared to those of the SJS and of the First Epistle against the Arians translated by the same Constantine. It is established that the Didactic Gospel – unlike the early Slavonic texts included in the Prague dictionary that show a higher degree of variation in the correlations between lexeme and meaning, but also unlike the First Epistle against the Arians, where жизнь dominates – presents a rather clear lexico-semantic differentiation in the translation correlates for Greek ζωή: for life as opposed to death животъ is used, for earthly life it is житиуе, and жизнь for eternal life. The distribution of the synonyms in the Didactic Gospel coincides to a large degree with that described in general diachronic analyses. This tendency may be observed in both the translated and the original parts of the Didactic Gospel, deviations occurring mainly in biblical quotations, probably due to the direct influence of the well-known sacred text. The material analysed shows that Constantine of Preslav understood very well the semantics of the words used in the language of the original, but also the semantic nuances of closely related words in the target language and used them according to the textual meaning.