A Corpus-Based Study in Diachronic History of"язык"

Wang Lijie

School of Foreign Language,Dalian Maritime University,Dalian,Liaoning

Email:wlj9980228@163.com

Ding Xiaomei

School of Foreign Language,Dalian Maritime University,Dalian,Liaoning

Email:wyxydxm@dlmu.edu.cn

Shan Yongyan

School of Foreign Language,Dalian Maritime University,Dalian,Liaoning

Email:981553871@qq.com

[Abstract] This study extracts all the data of the Russian noun "язык" before 1730 and from 1730 to 2021,from National Corpus of Russian Language(Национальный корпус русского языка- НКРЯ)and supplements the artificial statistical corpus,and analyzes its semantic generation,expansion and evolution,which strong supports the study of its grammatical path,and validates the reality and reliability of the research methodology of corpus combined with statistics.The findings of this study not only validate the grammaticalization development of lexical semantic evolution,but also highlight the rationality of the existence of lexical polysemy.

[Keywords] National Corpus of Russian Language (NCRL);Russian noun "язык";semantic development;diachronic study

Introduction

Linguists have proved the rich semantic meaning and varied syntactic positions of"язык",from semantic-syn?tactic and syntactic-semantic perspectives,which is worthy of in-depth study.However,scholars have only limited"язык" to the similarities and differences of two basic meanings,"tongue" and "language",with a timeline only about a few decades.The corpora resources are not supportive.Few scholars have paid attention to other interpreta?tions of its semantic meanings and the motives of their semantic relatedness,not to mention that no scholars have placed all semantic meanings on a complete timeline for a comprehensive observation,making the study of its seman?tic evolution relatively lagging behind.Therefore,this study adopts a corpus-driven methodology to observe and sum?marize the data,and then finds out the rules of linguistic representation and explores the grammatical path of"язык"diachronically,which offers great insights to future studies.So it is necessary for the improvement of seman?tic study of "язык" to improve the data collection,add up corpora resources and semantic interpretations,broaden the time span,and adopt scientific statistical methods in order to summarize the semantic evolution stages,and ex?plore the semantic evolution law diachronically.

Researching vocabulary from a diachronic perspective is of great importance.The famous linguist Saussure pro?posed that"the opposition between two perspectives,synchrony and diachrony,is absolute,without any compromise."However,А.И.Смирницкий,the linguist in Soviet Union,complemented:"The language of a certain age,the lan?guage existing in the world,contains the element of diachrony.Because,by its very nature,the element of time per?meates the language.In this way,language in synchronic system needs to be examined during a time inevitably."Lexical research is also like this.On the one hand,from the perspective of the whole semantic system of vocabulary,the historical word forms and meanings accumulated since ancient times are still used in synchronic language sys?tem;on the other hand,most basic words,and some of their specific meanings in synchronic vocabulary system have historical inheritance.Words or meanings lack historical inheritance are mainly jargons,new words,loanwords,etc.

Usually,it is difficult to do diachronic research on word meanings,because of data retrieval and example collec?tion.Then,the coming corpus has greatly facilitated us to conduct a diachronic research.During the past three de?cades,corpus linguistics has mainly focused on synchronic researches,"but researches in recent years have revealed that a new paradigm for diachronic research is rising."(Wei,2009)We will take the Russian noun"язык"as an ex?ample,and use National Corpus of Russian Language (NCRL) to view its semantic change from late 17th to early 21st century.

Semantic Meanings of"Язык":Before 1730

First,we open the homepage of NCRL(www.ruscorpora.ru),click the link"поиск в корпусе"on the left to go to the search page,type"язык"into the Lexical-grammatical(Лексико-грамматический поиск)search box,and click on"искать"to retrieve.

Figure 1:How to search for terms in NCRL

Figure 2:How to search for Russian nouns"язык"

On the search results page we can see texts of different types,such as the specialized scientific and technical magazineComputer World,Information Technology(Информационные технологии),the film "Everything Will Be Fine!" (Все будет хорошо),the forum,the documentary "Live Journal",etc.It also shows that in the corpus the word is used 337,025,184 times,appearing in 126,901 texts,which means that"язык"may appear multiple times in one text.

Figure 3:Number of texts obtained

As we are searching the usage of"язык"from the 18th to the 21st century,we need to find out the earliest ex?ample of "язык" in the corpus.Click the option "настройки" at the top of the examples page,and select the se?quence form of sentences in the pop-up window.We will select"by creation date"(по дате создания)and apply it.So all the compliant examples in the corpus are presented in order from the earliest to the most recent according to the creation date.

Figure 4:Click to sort

The first text to use"язык"in the corpus is"Day Notes"(Дневные записки)by I.А.Желябужский in 1632,ranked the top of the list.For example:

1.В том же году пытан и казнен,по извету Филиппа Сапогова,ведомый вор и подыскатель Московского всего государства бывший окольничий Федька Шакловитый.Аведомый же вор и собеседник его,Федькин,полковник Сенька Резанов биткнутом,и отрезан ему язык,и сослан

в ссылку.А иные товарищ и их стрельцы,Оброська стоварищ и,казнены,а иные их товарищ и

сосланы в ссылку.А казнены у Троицы в Сергееве монастыре.

In order to clarify the meaning of"язык"in the early 17th century,we can click the arrow to open the extended context and find that it is related to the body and the punishment.The word "язык" had existed in Russian before the meaning "language" appeared.Looking upТолковый словарь русского языкаa(bǔ)ndСловарь русского языка,we can find that "язык" has three meanings:tongue,language,and nation.The "язык" in this example means"tongue",from which we can find that the earliest meaning of"язык"in the history is"tongue".

According to the context,texts 2 and 4 of search results mean "tongue",and are related to penalties,religious punishments.It is clear that"язык"is not just a body organ,but reflects the history of Russian punishment as well.

Texts 3 and 5-7 are from the declarations of Archbishop Феофан Прокопович to his followers in 1709,1717 and 1718.In the text,"язык" meant "discourse",and after that "язык" began to express the meanings like "dis?course" and "speech".It can be viewed that the religion is important to open up the meaning "speech" of "язык".For example：

2.Дело воистинну неслыханное,дело преславное,дело,его же изрещ и не доволен есть всяк язык,всякая быстрота ветийская! (Слово похвальное о преславной над войсками свейскими победе,пресветлейшему государю царю и великому князю Петру Алексиевичу,1709)

3.Однако же буди не в образец нам,яко Христианом,и вышшей и не суетной небесной бо славе простираю щ ымся,не в образец,не в приклад нам,глаголю ,буди обычайязыкславы истинныя непознавших.（Слово похвалное о баталии Полтавской,1717)

4.И от свящ енных убо писаний и Ветхаго завета мочно было знати,яко мессиа грядущ ий бог есть;обаче во времена Христова было уже у иудей слепая богословия,многими баснями наполненая,такожде и мессии ниже по ипостаси,ниже по деле ведущ ая;царство мессиино мнилося им быти земное и избавление не инное,точию рода единого иудейского от областиязыкосвобождение.(Слово о власти и чести царской,1718)

Semantic Meanings of"Язык":Around 1730

It is noteworthy that in 1721 Peter I issued "Rules or Regulations of Spiritual College" (Регламент или устав духовной колллегиии)

5.Не подобе исперва многих учителей,но первый год довольно единого или двоих,которые бы учили Грамматике,сиесть,языкправильно знать Латинский,или Греческий,или обаязыка.

The concept "language" of "язык" was officially introduced from then,and it was used together with other na?tionalities as nomenclature for foreign language subjects.From this on,the usage frequency of"язык"entered a peri?od of explosive growth,and according to the corpus analysis,the frequency of "language" is far beyond that of"tongue".

Figure 5:Frequency analysis

It was also from this period,in the 1830s,that"язык"collocated with verb"перевести"showed the translation between nations.For example:

6.Також и чины,доднесь по-немецки именованные,перевели на русский язык,понеже нам в русском языке недостатка нет.В.Н.Татищ ев.Письмо А.С.Маслову(1735)

The sentence,"some names of public office given in German were translated into Russian."This showed that in?terchanging,learning,and translating in languages had already existed between Russia and Germany in the 1830s.

Our search is conducted in the main corpus of NCRL,and the use of"язык"can also be seen in other corpora.In particular,the poetry corpus(поэтический корпус)will have poets chanting about the language.By clicking the link"поискать в других корпусах"on the example page,we can go to the poetry corpus.The window opened will present the poems sorted by the creation year.In the poem "Early Editions.Satire I.On Blasphemous Doctrine.To your Mind" (Рание редакции.Сатира I.На хулящих учение.К уму своему) by А.Д.Кантемир in 1731,the poet used"язык"to mean"language",which was recorded for the first time.For example：

7.Живали мы преж сего,не зная латыне,

Гораздо обильнее,чем мы живём ныне;

Гораздо в невежестве больше хлеба жали;

Переняв чужойязык,свой хлеб потеряли.

From this we can conclude that the meaning"language"of"язык"began to be widely used after 1730.

Semantic Meanings of"Язык":Other Meanings in 17th Century

Back to the search page of"язык",we found that"язык"does not just mean"language".The word has another meaning"nation",commonly used in plural form"языков".For example：

8.Она воспитала ещ е отца — Анатолия Егоровича (сына французского эмигранта,застрявшего в России),но и тогда она уже была не первой молодости;теперь же ей было за девяносто лет.Она хорошо помнила ?нашествие двунадесятиязыков?...（А.Н.Бенуа.Жизнь художника(1955)

In this case "язык" means "nation",referring specifically to the twelve national armies that invaded Russia in the First Patriotic War of 1812,led by Napoleon.Here "язык",often together with "нашествие двунадесяти",is used as a terminology,serving as a specific reference role.

Semantic Meanings of"Язык":after the Mid-18th Century

The word frequency of язык in the corpus search results shows that язык was used very frequently in the 18th century,and fluctuated greatly,reaching a peak around 1760.After that until the 2010s,"язык" is in a relatively stable frequency of use.Then in the latest decade of the 20th century,the use of "язык" again shows a steep in?crease in trend.To see the contemporary examples of"язык",we can choose"by creation date in reverse order"(по дате создания в обратном порядке) from "настройки".The examples in 2020 in the corpus are listed first.For example:

9.Отчитавшись за прохождение трех онлайн-курсов,студенты могут и дальше пользоваться этой подпиской,и Федор продолжает изучать язык R уже не в качестве домашнего задания,а для самообразования.（Аркадий Соснов.На дистанции,но вместе//?Поиск?,2020）

Here "язык" in modern times has been very steadily used as "language" and "tongue",with occasional exam?ples of"nation"which are often used to describe past historical events.

Conclusion

Through empirical analysis in corpus above,it could be founded that in the 17th century and early 18th centu?ries,the Russian noun"язык"was first referred to"tongue",which is the original meaning of the word,i.e.,the first meaning in the modern Russian dictionary,and this meaning was mostly associated with Russian ancient penalties and religious beliefs.In early 18th century,the second meaning "language" of "язык" began to be applied by the archbishop in the church's proclamation.Peter I officially began to apply the laws and regulations of the seminary in 1721,since then"язык"was of great use.In the history,in addition to"tongue"and"language","язык"could also refer to"nation".

The analytic results of the semantic evolution rules of Russian noun"язык"are in line with results of domestic and international researches:most of the semantic evolution laws are well-founded,motivated,and mechanistic;and investigating the vocabulary diachronically can situate the progressive and unidirectional features of semantic evolu?tions.The internal systemic adjustment of vocabulary and the understanding of language users in a specific context will affect the semantic changes of vocabulary,i.e.,the dynamic development of semantics is due to both the change of category attributes and the context of language use.The fluidity of category attributes is the objective reason for dy?namic categorization,which provides the possibility for the diachronic construction of categories;while the conceptu?al understanding of cognitive subjects is the subjective reason for semantic changes,which provides the possibility for the construction of grammatical functions and semantic meanings in vocabulary.

Acknowledgement

This paper is part of the project of National Social Science Foundation of China,Research on compilation of Russian-Chinese academic dictionaries based on parallel corpus(grant#17BYY220).