REPRESENTANTS OF THE LEXICAL-SEMANTIC GROUP "СВЕТ" ("LIGHT") IN "THE TALE OF IGOR'S CAMPAIGN"
The paper analyzes representants of the lexical-semantic group “light” in “The Tale of Igor's Campaign”, the most famous artifact of Old Russian literature. The importance of the concept “light” as a universal category of culture, which originated in ancient times and still plays a crucial role in the human existence, affects its lexical representation in the Old Russian language. The LSG “light” contains lexemes of different parts of speech, which characterize this phenomenon from different sides. The paper identifies the features of the LSG “light” semantic content, which act as a binary opposition to the lexemes of the subgroup “darkness”. We present the cases of both direct and metaphorical use of these lexemes, and provide examples, in which the words of this LSG are used to create the symbolism of the tale. The paper notes the functional features of these lexemes in the context when they perform not only a nominative function but also more often an expressive one, and highlights the features of their syntagmatic use. Special emphasis is laid on set formulas that reflect the Old Russian language mentality, the focus being the brightest methods of literary organization of text so characteristic of “The Tale of Igor's Campaign”. The paper studies the role of the opposition “light - darkness” in the image system of the artifact and the system of associations, related to the words with the meaning of “light”, ascending to the ancient mythological mentality.