Trends in replacing Russian nominations of persons with diminutives

Abstract

This article discusses the Russian nominations of persons that are diminutives that have lost their diminutiveness, for example, tenant, bespectacled, beginner, girl. Some of these units at different times supplanted their usual correlates, cf. “I on spokojno uchilsya, etot bezzabotnyj ochkar’…” (“And he calmly studied, this carefree bespectacled…”), Boris Gorbatov, “My Generation” 1933. Lost correlates can be identified with the help of dictionaries and sources. The other part continues to compete with them, cf. a competing grandfather-grandfather pair. In the replacement of nominations of persons by diminutive correlates, certain tendencies can be identified: such a replacement correlates with a certain semantics of denotation. Specifically, the vocabulary under consideration refers to terms of kinship, designations of children, women (cf. the word granddaughter, which is included in all these groups), persons with a reduced status for one reason or another (cf. beggar). For the terms of kinship, designations of children and women, one can assume endearment, including, perhaps, etiquette, as a shade of expression (connotation) that is lost now, but inherent in them in the past. For the designations of persons with reduced status, one can assume an initial condescension and disdain.