Vocabulary Items with Roots -blag- and -dobr- in the Russian Literary Language of the 18th Century: Semantics and Peculiarities of Functioning

The article discusses the problem of semantic evolution of “nests” (word families) as exemplified in the history of the words blago, dobro ‘good’ and their derivatives in the Russian literary language of the 18th century.  We argue that the initial underlying idea (the so called etymon) determines all subsequent semantic development of these words.  This idea determined both the possibility of synonymous convergence of the stems blag- and dobr- as well as the main borderline along which their semantic and stylistic demarcation went.

In the course of the semantic development of etymons, synonymous relations are established not only between the lexemes blago and dobro, but also between other derivatives: blagij–dobryj, blagost’–dobrota. But, despite the establishment of the fact of inter-nest synonymy, in general, the studied nests have a different structure: in the nest of "dobr" there are only words with positive semantics, whereas in the nest of "blag" there is a group of words and lexico-semantic variants with a pejorative meaning; the meanings developed by the derivatives of the  stem dobr- are mainly related to the semantic components ‘benefit’ and ‘bodily beauty’, whereas the meanings developed by the derivatives of the stem blag-  are mainly related to the characteristics of moral, spiritual and mental qualities. Stylistically, the nest of "blag" is generally characterized as "Slavonic" (since more than half of the words of the nest have sl.), and the nest of "dobr" is neutral. Slavism and its derivatives develop predominantly "ideal" meanings, and this trend persists even in the new secular culture emerging in the XVIII century. On the contrary, "material" meanings develop in the nest of "dobr": dobro 'property, possessions', dobryj 'high-quality, skillfully made, suitable', 'skillful'. Although the main range of meanings of "blago" and its derivatives had already been determined by the XVIII century, some important semantic and stylistic transformations were taking place in this nest. They are primarily connected with the formation of a new secular culture. The source of earthly goods is not only God, but also the monarch, and then (in educational literature) society itself, the state. In the second half of the XVIII century, the word blago developed a socio-political meaning of ‘everything useful for society, the state’, the compatibility of the adjective blazhennyj ‘blessed’ and the noun blazhenstvo ‘bliss’ significantly expanded. The nest “dobro” in the XVIII century was more conservative and less derivationally active in comparison with the nest “blago”. However, gradually, with the development of literary genres of the middle style, there is an intensification of the use of derivatives with the stem  blag - in the literary language.