Transformation of the combinability of the lexemes strast' and prelest': a cultural linguistic analysis

The paper presents a semantic analysis of the lexemes strast' (passion) and prelest' (fascination). A large body of material (1800-2020) has been extracted by continuous sampling from the National Corpus of the Russian Language. The functioning of the lexical units in question is compared in terms of the Russian world picture transformation in the texts of two periods: 1800-1959 and 1960-2020. The analysis examines the structures strast' + k + Dat. and prelest' + Gen. These historically derived nouns have been found to have similar semantic features, namely, negative evaluation components. Both periods witness strast' being viewed as a subject of action (agent) and a person being perceived as a patient being led by strast'. During the first period, strast' is conceptualized as a strong feeling that cannot be controlled, while during the second period, it is perceived rather as ultimately insuperable. The semantics of the word prelest' in both periods involves the idea of seduction being stronger associated with the physical attraction to women during the second period. A corpus analysis of the most frequent context prelest' zhizni has revealed the speakers' attitude to change from the elevated one to ironic and sarcastic. Moreover, within the second period, prelest' begins to be perceived as hypocrisy. In summary, the study has revealed that strast' came to be understood as torture over time, while prelest' was increasingly associated with the concept of deceit.