There are witty people...": formation of the semantic structure of the word wit in the context of the XVIII century

The study of particular cases of polysemy development in one word within Russian XVIII century vocabulary revealed the connection of this phenomenon with the fundamental problem common to the whole philological science - that is the problem of interaction of language and culture. The authors pay attention to the changes in the semantic structure of the word wit in the modern Russian language. Analyzing the texts of the XVIII century by F. Prokopovich, V.N. Tatishchev, V.K. Trediakovsky, M.V. Lomonosov, A.P. Sumarokov, D.I. Fonvizin, and others, the authors conclude that the original meaning of the word wit was rational, denoting the breadth, depth of mind, vastness of knowledge. The modern meaning has become rhetorical: it is the quality of public speech, in which the speaker uses logical, linguistic and other techniques that make a statement funny, decorated with a language game that is aesthetically designed. The aesthetic and poetological position of the XVIII century writers was influenced by the concept of "wit" of early English Enlightenment, which was reflected in the articles by Joseph Addison. The English publicist not only pointed out the polysemicity of the word "wit", but also proposed to distinguish "true wit" and "false wit" within one of the key concepts of the English poetic thought. Dictionaries of the modern Russian language do not fix the original meaning of the word wit. We can conclude that the primal meaning has become a semantic archaism in the modern Russian language. Here is a brief history of the semantics change of the word "wit". In the Russian language the word "wit" appeared as a result of simple replication. Time of its origin is the beginning of the 20-ies of XVIII century. The original paradigm - sharpness of the mind as the ability to penetrate into the depths - was set by F. Prokopovich. However, already in the early 30-ies of XVIII century in the works of Tatishchev there appears an understanding of "wit" as prickliness. The word begins to develop polysemy, and the situation when one and the same author depending on the genre and context chooses one of two meanings, becomes typical, for example, in the epistolary genre Lomonosov supplies "wit" with negative connotations, but in high style he continues to call "wit" the depth of mind. The first reflection on the differences in meaning of the word is connected with the article by A.P. Sumarokov "About the difference between a passionate and a sharp mind", published in the April book of the magazine "Hardworking Bee". Since the early 60-ies of the XVIII century two values entered into competition between each other. Rapidly developing satirical genres and fabled creativity rooted understanding of "wit" as the property of speech (or text - in its broadest sense), and not the mind. The rational value began to fade and was almost replaced by the rhetorical one. The confrontation subsequently ended with the complete displacement of the original semantics.

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