AXIOLOGEME OF «HUMILITY» IN THE GREEK EARLY CHRISTIAN AND UKRAINIAN LINGUOCULTURES: DIACHRONIC DIMENSIONS

Abstract

The paper addresses the verbalization of the axiologeme of “humility” in Ukrainian linguoculture based on the Corpus of the Ukrainian language. The semantics of the “tokens of humility” in Early Christian literature and Ukrainian fi ction of the 19th and 20th centuries is analyzed in the comparative aspect. It is shown that the axiologeme of “humility” belongs to the central values of the early Christian axiosphere, being defi ned as obedience to God and diminishing one’s own value. The paper identifi es new evaluative connotations in the semantics of “tokens of humility” in Ukrainian language and describes the evolution of the axiologeme of “humility”. It is established that “tokens of humility” can acquire negative semantics in Ukrainian language (“complacency”, “weakness”, “insignifi cance”, “pity”, “despair”, “apathy”), as opposed to extremely positive connotations of Greek lexemes in the New Testament and Early Christian literature. As the study showed, the variability of the semantics and the palette of evaluative connotations of the “tokens of humility” can only be established through the use of corpus data in comparative and diachronic studies, as vocabulary data do not show the depth of semantic changes and do not allow for the identifi cation new contextual meanings.