Visions of lexicography of a semantic European

In this essay, it is assumed that the languages of Latin Europe do have many semantic features in common, which contradicts the prevailing view of a general semantic particularity of every individual language and thus the exploitation for national-political purposes arising from that view. However, the proposition made here requires a summary and the assessment of different semantic concepts led by the idea of commonality. By means of individual cases that can be understood as relevant examples, a vision of lexicography will follow that aims at replacing the biologistic concept of a genetic explanation for contrastive semantics by the concept of a comparative semantics that is based on socio-historical, cultural-historcial and textual-historical arguments. In doing so, a historiography relating to the subject-matter of “semantics” will be suggested that assigns a semantic bridging function to Late Antiquity / Early Medieval Latin in relation to all languages of Latin Europe. The logic of the argument implies that a new era of semantic history begins upon the development of a structure of national languages in Europe, whose historical basis can still be recognised in the semantic communalities.

LEXICON RELATED TO RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND RELIGIONS IN THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE OF THE 16th – 18th CENTURIES

In the article religious vocabulary is studied in the diachronic aspect based on the material of different genres and different styles of Ukrainian written monuments of the 16th – 18th centuries (act books of city governments, city and provincial courts, village councils, privileges, land lustration, books of income and expenditure, wills, deeds, descriptions of castles, universals of hetman offices, documents of church and school brotherhoods, chronicles, works of religious, polemical and fiction literature, monuments of scientific and educational literature, liturgical literature, epistolary heritage, etc.), included in the sources «Dictionary of the Ukrainian language of the 16th – first half of the 17th century», “Mapping of the Historical Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language”, edited by Ye. Tymchenko and their lexical card indexes, which are stored in the Department of the Ukrainian language of the Ivan Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Lviv). In particular, names related to religious teachings, religions, and names of persons according to their attitude to a particular faith or religion are reviewed. The article focuses on the etymological analysis of religious names, which was primarily focused on the clarification of their semantic etymon. It has been established that the words of the studied lexico-semantic group are not genetically homogeneous, as it includes tokens of different origins, including borrowings from the Greek language, Church Slavonic, Latin, Polonism, etc. Some Church Slavonic names originated as a semantic calque from Greek words. It is observed that the semantic history of some studied words in the Ukrainian language dates back to the early monuments of the Kyivan Rus period. The historical fate of names associated with religious teachings and religions is not the same. Mostly, these names have survived in the modern Ukrainian literary language and liturgical practice. Others were archaized or preserved in Ukrainian dialects. In some religious names, there are vivid features of the Ukrainian language of the 16th – 18th centuries. It has been found that some of the studied tokens act as core components of various two-membered or three-membered stable and lexicalized phrases.

Donosheniye as the Petitionary Document Type in Russian Legislative Acts and Regional Business Writing of the 18th Century

The purpose of the article is to describe some genre and stylistic features of the 18th-century regional report, or donosheniye. The research is also focused on the semantic history of the term donosheniye reflected in the legislative acts of the 18 th century that regulated the language style of regional clerical work and determined the main trends in its systematization. It is pointed that the term donosheniye was used in the legislative documents of Peter the Great period as a synonym for doklad, raport (report) and chelobitnaya (humble petition). The research results show that the term donosheniye had lack of genre "purity" and was functionally polysemantic in regional business writing, which explains the original conceptual syncretism of the term. The author characterizes the petitioning type of donosheniye that emerged in the 18 th century simultaneously with establishment of the chelobitnaya. The analysis of the documents circulating in the Russian regions discovered that donosheniye, being integrated into the petitioning documents system, functioned as a petitioning statement in the cases which did not require judicial consideration. Conversely, chelobitnaya was a kind of lawsuit claim. It was proved that the petitioning type of donosheniye slightly changed the form, which was characteristic of this type of petitions; its genre features move closer to the reporting type of donosheniye.

Semantic evolution of the word “Law”

The article uncovers the semantic history of the word “law”. In ancient Russian manuscripts the word “law” combined both secular and religious meanings. Semantic structure of the word “law” broadened based on its meanings, used in natural and social sciences. Specialization of this word in jurisprudence facilitated the use of the term “law” for stipulating a normative act. Semantic evolution of the word “law” lead to broadening the area of its usage. Key words: law, custom, inner form of a word, norm, limit, jurisprudence, evolution, semantic structure of a word

Many Voices in China’s Legal Profession: Plural Meanings of Weiquan

Figuring prominently in prevailing portraits of activism and political contention in contemporary China are weiquan [rights defense] lawyers. Outside of China, the word weiquan emerged in the early 2000s and had achieved near-hegemonic status by the late 2000s as a descriptive label for a corps of activist lawyers—who numbered between several dozen and several hundred—committed to the cause and mobilizing in pursuit of human rights protections vis-à-vis China’s authoritarian party-state. This article challenges the dominant nomenclature of Chinese activism, in which weiquan in general and weiquan lawyers in particular loom large. A semantic history of the word weiquan, traced through an analysis of four decades of officially sanctioned rights discourse, reveals its politically legitimate origins in the official lexicon of the party-state. Unique survey data collected in 2009 and 2015 demonstrate that Chinese lawyers generally understood the word in terms of the party-state’s official language of rights, disseminated through its ongoing public legal education campaign. Because the officially-sanctioned meaning of weiquan, namely “to protect citizens’ lawful rights and interests,” is consistent with the essential professional responsibility of lawyers, fully half of a sample of almost 1,000 practicing lawyers from across China self-identified as weiquan lawyers. Such a massive population of self-identified weiquan lawyers—approximately 80,000 in 2009 assuming that the sample is at least reasonably representative—makes sense only if local meanings of the term profoundly diverge from its dominant English-language representations. Concluding speculations consider and call for further research on why this word was appropriated and redefined by activist Chinese lawyers in the first place.