Old Church Slavonic Phraseological Calques in the Aspect of their Further Phraseologization

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of phraseological calquing in the Old Church Slavonic language. Phraseological calques of nominal phrases, which were formed by Slavic bookmen in the process of translations (mainly from Byzantine Greek), are considered part of the Old Church Slavonic lexical inventory in the aspect of their further phraseologization.The author proceeds from the idea of the lexical fund of the language as consisting not only of words but also ofmulti-wordnames, which are lexical units-designations. A large number of multi-word names-phraseological calques joined the Old Church Slavonic lexicon due to the need to transfer concepts related to Christianity, although there are also phraseological calques related to thestratumof ordinary vocabulary. Part of the phraseological calques could “take root” in the lexicon and become phraseological units.The author considers the possibility of extracting phrases entirely from memory by a native speaker (in the case of the Old Church Slavonic language, mainly by a bookman) as the main and defining property of phraseological units. Phraseologisation of phraseological calques occurred not only over time in the Church Slavonic receptions, but already in theperiodof the formation of the Old Church Slavonic language proper in the second half of the 9th – 10th centuries. The author demonstrates examples of variation of phraseological calques in this period. The further use of phraseological calque without the support of the Greek construction testifies to its phraseologization.