On the influence of the Greek language on the formation of the system relations in the vocabulary of the church Slavonic language (on the material of lexical variants of the Slavonic versions of the Akathistos hymn)

The present paper deals with the certain issues concerning the process of the formation and the further development of the vocabulary of the Church Slavonic language as a system as well as the role of the Greek language in this process. As opposed to the previous investigations we studied the lexical variants of the different Slavonic versions of the text together with the comparative analysis of the variants of the Slavonic translation of the same or synonymic Greek words. The investigation was performed on the material of the Church Slavonic translation of one of the most popular masterpieces of Byzantine hymnography - the Akathistos Hymn. Seven different Slavonic versions of this translation which appeared as a result of the translation corrections by the Greek origin dating from the 9th up to the 17th century were compared. Specifically we analyzed the lexical-semantic groups of the verbs of vision and the verbs of speech. The first group in the text under investigation consisted of three verbs: βλέπω, θεωρῶ and ὁρῶ, which up to the 14th centery were translated by the same Church Slavonic âèäýòè. Starting from the 14th century the second Slavonic verb çüðýòè is used on the place of Greek θεωρῶ. As for the verbs of speech the Greek lexical-semantic group of the text consisted of 7 elements: λέγω, φημί, ψάλλω, ὑμνῶ (ἀνυμνέω), κράζω, κραυγάζω and βοῶ. The corresponding Slavonic verbs were firstly used as lexical variants without differentiation of their meaning, however from the 14th century and later scholars tried to find for each of the Greek verb specific Slavonic «equivalent», specifying their semantics. The comparative analysis of the lexical variants formed by the different translation of the certain Greek verbs, as well as of the cognate words of the other parts of speech, demonstrates the main stages of the development of the Church Slavonic vocabulary. The certain process took a rapid forms on the former stages of history of the Church Slavonic language (9th - 14th centuries) due to the intensive interlingual communication with the Greek language. The rich vocabulary of the Greek hymnographic texts was difficult to transfer to the language without long writing traditions. The vocabulary of the early Slavonic translations was much poorer in comparison with the original texts, the words of one lexical-semantic group being often translated with the same word or several words without the lexical differentiation in the meaning. The situation changed in the process of the so-called Athonite corrections when the main goal of the correctors was to find Slavonic lexical equivalents to the every word of the Greek text. Slavonic scholars tried to reproduce in this way with the means of the other language the system of the original language for the maximum accuracy in the transfer of the meaning and the form of the holy texts of the Christianity. The lexical system of the Church Slavonic language was enriched in two ways: by the differentiation of the semantics of lexical variants and by the creation of new synonymic relations. However this reproduction did not result in the «duplication» of the lexical system of the Greek language since the recipient language forms the other systematic relations between elements, substantially changing their characteristics. Generally the study of the unique features of the Church Slavonic language in the whole and of the every single element of it can be performed only diachronically and with the reference to its source - the Greek language.