Evaluative Potential of Lexemes — Representatives of Concept TRUE in Russian

Abstract

The study of the evaluative potential of the concept TRUTH in the Russian language picture of the world has been carried out. The results of the analysis of the use of the word true in the role of a qualitative adjective with evaluative semantics and the word truly in the role of a qualitative adverb with the semantics of the degree of manifestation of a property, feature or action / state are presented based on the materials of the Russian National Corpus and the authors’ own Internet monitoring in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. It is shown that in the total semantic content of the concept TRUTH, two semantic layers of its conceptual content in the modern Russian are realized: correspondence to reality; compliance with the norm in the world of people, the highest ideal. The following varieties of uses of the qualitative adjective true and the qualitative adverb truly as a secondary assessment based on the general meaning of “corresponding to the ideal in the world of norms and values of the speaker” were found: the meaning is “ideal, exemplary, perfect”; the meaning is “full, reached / brought to the maximum degree of manifestation of the entity named by the defined word” and the meaning of a strong degree of manifestation of something. It is concluded that the words true and truly embody the subjective moral and value ideas of native speakers about how it should be in the world of human relations, and not about “how it really is”.