Russian Praise Words 'molodec' and 'umnica': A Semantic and Cultural Analysis

Abstract

This paper investigates the semantics of two most commonly used Russian language-specific praise words 'molodec' and 'umnica'. The meanings of these nouns comprise the evaluation of an action of another person with the evaluation of this person him- or herself. For this reason, they can be regarded as words with culture-specific meaning. The study applies the methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage which uses simple universal concepts and the universal grammar of combinability to propose semantic explications of the words under consideration. The meanings of 'molodec' and 'umnica' are then related to several important cultural themes of Russian culture.