The Word “Person”: Its Semantics and Functioning in the Russian Language

The article is devoted to the study of semantic transformations of the word “person”. The need for the research is determined by the fact that currently the semantic group “personality”, which includes this lexeme, is actively developing. A complete description of the semantic group is necessary for constructing an integral structure of the HUMAN concept and a better understanding of the processes taking place in society. The research was carried out on the basis of data of the Russian National Corpus (texts of the 18th-21st centuries) using lexical-semantic and contextual methods. The word “person”, known from the 16th-17th centuries, began to be actively used in the first third of the 18th century and had two main meanings: “a person who holds a prominent position in society, an important person” and “a person, individual” with a touch of “a person as a member of society”, which was used to refer to the privileged classes. The latter meaning was new to the 18th century. Its appearance marks the expansion of the semantics of the word. In the 19th century, the semantic processes weaken, the meaning “a person who holds a prominent position in society, important person” acquires an ironic meaning. The meaning “a person, individual” came to the fore, which then referred to any individual. In this sense, “person” was often used as a substitute for personal pronouns, the reflexive pronoun “oneself” and the definitive pronoun “sam” [on one's own]. There were attempts to use the word to refer to the female person. In the 20th century, the meaning “a person, individual” retained its position. The word “person” began, on the one hand, to be applied to a person as a carrier of individual qualities and properties, on the other hand, to denote the body image of a person, drawing closer to the lexeme “figure”. The meaning “a person who holds a prominent position in society, an important person” is deprived of an ironic connotation. Currently, the meaning “a person, individual” has two meanings: “a person as having some qualities, properties” and “a person as a member of society”. Thus, the lexeme “person” tends either to the word “individual”, or to the words “personality”, “individuality”; with the latter most close in meaning. There was a rapprochement with the word “figure”, which was also used to refer to a person as a carrier of individual properties and qualities. In the meaning “a person who holds a prominent position in society, an important person” there was a variation between two shades of meaning: “a significant person; a prominent representative of something” and “a person occupying a high position”. The latter was more preferred. The frequency of this meaning was low. This meaning gradually passed to the word “osoba” [lit. person] and was realized, first of all, in fixed phrases “VIP-person”, “important person”, “high-ranking person”, “influential person”. Thus, by the 21st century, the word “person” returns to the group of words with normal semantics, it interacts with the words of the semantic group “personality” and actively participates in its development.

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