Protosl. *pluča, *pleče: semantic and word‑building history in the Russian language

The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of the lexems pl’uche (pl’ushche) and pleche (pleshche), ascending to *pluče and *pleče, their origin, semantics and functioning in the history of the Russian language. Both lexemes are included in the semantic field of chеlovek with the meanings ‘parts of the body’ and ‘internal organs’ and originally belong to the basic vocabulary. However, their fate has significant differences: by the beginning of the Middle Russian period, pl’ushche was replaced by the noun l’ogkoye, and pleche has been function -ing throughout the history of the Russian language, acquiring more and more new derivatives. This process is carried out especially intensively in a dialect language. An attempt is made to determine the reasons for such a discrepancy in the history of two words which are similar both in semantics and in word‑formation structure — both nouns in historical retrospect belonged to the verbal nouns and were formed by the single‑phonemic suffix ‑č(е). Derivatives demonstrate the process of changing their structure, turning into a root morpheme.