Syncretsemy and onomatopoeic nomination

The problem of semantic syncretism understood as indivisibility of values characteristic of ancient linguistic periods was updated in the 1970s by linguists of the Leningrad / St. Petersburg School, in the works by V.V. Kolesov, his colleagues and students. In historical perspective, semantic syncretism finds its resolution (destruction), on the one hand, in the word's polysemy and active formation of synonyms; on the other hand, in word formation: in the growing number of derivatives of lexical units that gradually fix this or that component of the original diffusive meanings (L.P. Yakubinsky, B.A. Larin, E.S. Kubryakova, V.V. Kolesov et al.). The method of analysis of syncretsemy resolution was basically developed by historians of language based on Old Russian material within historical lexicology. In this article the authors consider the case of syncretsemy resolution at a deeper historical level, using reconstruction on the material of cognate languages. This approach to syncretsemy analysis has been chosen, because in this case reference to dialectal facts and the facts of the history of the Russian language was insufficient: the analyzed derivational-etymological word families of onomatopoeic type were formed at a deeper historical level, and only of the use of the facts of other Slavic languages could clarify the picture of the formal semantic relations and diverse semantic changes of derivatives of derivational-etymological word family of Slavic *drezg-, *dr^zg-, *druzg-. The analysis has shown that the development of the semantics of the considered onomatopoeic formations holistically (through sound, visual and tactile perception) reflected the situation of man's walking in the woods, carr accompanied by sharp sounds (crackling of dry twigs, mud "champing") and, as a result, by the appearance of pieces of brushwood, chips. Further development of the meaning "splinter, chip" went through the generalization of the reference zone of "small, unnecessary things" and through metaphorical development: "small, unnecessary quarrels". The integrity of the situation in the linguistic representation was expressed in a series of metonymical and metaphorical transfers, which determined the different directions of the semantics development often represented in the semantic structure of the same word (cf. Old Rus. dr#zga "forest", "chip, splinter", "fog, haze", where the meaning "fog, haze" derived from "something unsteady, staggering like a bog, morass").

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