On the linguistic nature of etymological doublets

The work studies one of the oldest and largest lexical-grammatical categories of linguistics - "etymological doublets”. It discusses the linguistic nature of this phenomenon from the semantic and phonetic points of view of various scientists. Special attention is given to the ability of etymological doublets to form different semantic fields. The study examines the etymology of word meaning, as well as its evolution in separate semantic groups in different periods of historical development of society. It gives the comparative analysis of etymological doublets, word variants, homonyms and paronyms, studies the causes of word form splitting, gives the opinions of different linguists on determining the "etymological doublets" concept, discusses the tendencies of world languages development which lead to the formation of etymological doublets. The work presents the definition of "genetic etymon" concept and discusses the disagreements between linguists connected with defining the linguistic phenomenon of "etymological doublets".