Этимологическая память слова

Abstract

The article is a synthetic survey of etymological research of the last half century, which has revealed important areas of Old Slavic spiritual and material culture, connected with people’s lifestyles, economy, farming, hunting, fishing, gathering, craftsmanship, social relationships, and religious values. The semantic map of Old-Slavic culture has been supplemented with new information thanks to the etymological methodology that goes beyond the word as an isolated unit and takes into account its contextual space. Special attention is paid here to publications that aid the reconstruction of the worldview of ancient Slavs in three areas connected with the social organization of life, the names of kinship and generally human relationships. These are: (i) the system of legal concepts and terms; (ii) the opposition of US vs. THEM in the context of the etymology and semantics of Old Slavic kinship terms; (iii) Old-Slavic axiology (derivatives with the prefix bez- ‘non-, un-’ and such key concepts as dola ‘fate’ and mera ‘measure’).