Lexical Greekisms in the Slavic Translation of the Byzantine Life of St. Athanasius of Athos

Abstract

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the use of lexical Greekisms in the language of the Slavic Life of St. Athanasius of Athos, which belongs to the new Svyatogorsk translations from Greek of the late 13th century. By comparing the translation of the list NBKM 307 that is the closest to the archetype with the Byzantine original, it is shown that, along with observing the general Athos-Tarnovo tendency to replace Greekisms with Slavic equivalents, borrowings are very actively used in the translation (more than 40 units). It has been established that lexical Greekisms not only act as a striking sign of the book style, but also perform three important functions. Firstly, they serve to nominate a new phenomenon, object, concept (колиба, красѡволъ, солинарь), for which there is no Slavic equivalent. Secondly, they make it possible to differentiate similar concepts that are different in the cultural and linguistic environments of the 13th–14th centuries (киновїа and монастырь). And fi nally, they have a signifi cant impact on the evolution of paradigmatic and syntagmatic connections between the lexical units of the Church Slavonic language.