«Человек — мужчина — муж»: к динамике и-.е. * - в романских и германских языках

Индоевропейское языкознание и классическая филология. 2024. Т. 28. № 2. С. 1136–1151.

Михайлова Т. А., Volkonskaya M. A.

The paper discusses the semantic and historical-cultural motivations for the gradual loss of the Indo-European designation of man, husband (*u̯ǐro-), which took place independently and in parallel in the Romance and Germanic languages, as well as its partial replacement with the lexeme having a general meaning 'human being.' The loss of Lat. vir during the transition to Vulgar Latin is often ascribed to phonetic reasons: apocope, which shortened polysyllabic words, also sought to "level out" monosyllabic lexemes and replace them with either semantically close ones or suffixal derivatives. Another interpretation of the loss of this lexeme is based on the hypothesis that it belonged to the elevated vocabulary, which was not preserved during the transition to Vulgar Latin. Furthermore, vir in Classical Latin was part of the oppositions vir – mulier 'man – woman' and vir – uxor 'husband – wife.' In the latter, vir was replaced by maritus, which became the designation of husband in all the Romance languages. It could have affected the system as a whole, causing a partial loss of the lexemes uxor and mulier. As in the Romance languages, descendants of Proto-Germanic *wira- formed part of the system of oppositions 'man – woman' and 'husband – wife.' Moreover, the development of PGmc *wira- was further complicated by poetic tradition as it became part of the system of synonyms for MAN, WARRIOR in alliterative verse. In Middle English, for instance, the subsequent loss of epic connotations led to wer being replaced by more common designations (or by designations that retained their elevated semantics, for example, Middle English wīe < Old English wiga 'man, warrior'). Thus, this paper traces the use of lexemes with the meaning 'man' in the curse tablets against thieves (in the formula "be it a man or a woman"), using them as a source on Vulgar Latin, mainly in Britain, as well as in the Germanic languages, focusing on the Gothic translation of the Bible and Old and Middle English corpora.

Keywords: индоевропейские языки, семантические переходы, semantic shifts, Indo-European languages, alliterative verse, аллитерационный стих, poetic synonyms, поэтические синонимы, термины родства и свойства, kinship terminology