Universality in Semantic Dynamics: from ‘body’ to ‘person’, ‘self’, ‘soul’

Abstract

The research is aimed at describing a relevant regularity in semantics development tending to be universal due to the evidence in many languages. In the focus of the research, there is an identical sequence of stages of semantic evolution ‘body’, ‘corpus’ → ‘person’, ‘self’, ‘soul’and its outcome revealed in the languages under analysis. The reviewed semantic shift is presented in genetically related and unrelated languages in different periods of their history, which makes it possible to define it as a phenomenon diachronically reproduced at each chronological cross-section. The postulate of the universality of the semantic correlation between ‘body’, ‘body parts’ & ‘soul’, ‘spirit’, ‘person’, and ‘self’ is based on the reliably established regular sequence of “steps” from the etymological ‘body’ to other meanings in the languages of eleven genetic families. This correlation of sememes can be defined as a cluster of chains of semantic changes. Despite some differences, these chains still fit into the framework of the same semantic model, which was implemented in different conditions, from which these differences originate. That is, all variants of semantic shifts took place under certain conditions and were included in the “operational field” of one model.