What were the russian volunteers of the xviii century (historical roots of the lexeme volunteer in russian)
The article is devoted to the history of the word “volunteer” in the Russian language of the 18 th century. Based on the combination of the text-centric and word-centric approaches proposed by E.V. Generalova, common patterns in the development of the meaning, semantics and combinability of this word are revealed - both echoing with the modern understanding of volunteerism and significantly different from it. The materials of the 18 th century show that in this case, borrowing the nomination did not mean a complete transfer of lexical meaning, because the extra linguistic factors in the 18th century Russia were different compared to Europe: the seme of participation in hostilities was involved, but the seme of voluntariness could practically not be realized. Consequently, it is possible to talk about the Russian volunteering of the 18 th century only with certain reservations, mainly in a figurative sense.