The Role of the Church Slavonic Tradition in the Russian Legal Vocabulary

Abstract

The article exams the role of the Old Church-Slavonic word-formation system in development of Russian basic legal vocabulary. Based on a case-study of the word-formative amily of words with the radical zakon-, the article shows that there is continuity between the old Russian vocabulary and the Old Church-Slavonic word-formative system. It focuses on the Old Church-Slavonic semantic types of legal vocabulary: “law”, “law-giver”, “lawyer”, “observance”, “criminal” and on the word-formative family of words which became the source of the modern Russian basic legal vocabulary. Refs 15.