The semantics of the nominations "cainism" and "sinfulness" in the poem "Humanity" by the 19th-century poet V. Benediktov
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The aim of the study is to describe the semantics of the nominations "cainism" and "sinfulness " in V. Benediktov's poem "Humanity." The article presents the results of a linguistic analysis of the poem "Humanity." Semantic and associative components that make up the lexical meaning of the nominations "cainism" and " sinfulness " in the aforementioned poem are described. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that the linguistic analysis of the text and key words of the poem "Humanity," conducted by us for the first time in this article, contributes to the identification of individually-authorial meanings, the description of the mechanisms of their occurrence, and the perception of the literary text in its entirety. For the first time in a 19th-century poem, we discovered and described the nomination "cainism." It is an author's neologism formed from the biblical name Cain by analogy with the opposition "man – humanity," the purpose of which the poet tries to comprehend in his work. As a result of the research, we found that the lexemes "cainism" and "sinfulness " have different semantic components, although they are in a privative opposition in the text. The nomination "cainism" is a hyperonym and incorporates the entire semantic complex of the lexeme "sinfulness." All negative semes in the individually-authorial occasionalism "сainism" are hyper-intensified.
Source: Philology Theory & Practice
Author: Irina Borisovna Fomenko
Institution: Pacific National University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4407510264