National and cultural specificity of lexemes with the semantics ‘curiosity’ in Russian, English and Italian languages

The subject of the study is the semantics of lexemes expressing the Russian emotional concept lyubopytstvo ‘curiosity’ and their analogues in English and Italian. Curiosity belongs to the sphere of human intellectual activity, its psychological basis is the interest in the new, unknown. Reconstructing the image of a curious person on the basis of linguistic data makes it possible to identify common features and clarify differences in lexical meaning, creating difficulties in language learning and translation. The meanings of the analyzed lexemes are clarified, their etymology and ways of translation are studied. It is noted that it is the semantics of the intensity of action of the verb pytat' ‘to torture’ that led to the development of the negative connotation of the word curious. It is established that in English, Russian and Italian languages curiosity is connected with certain somatisms, the universal component is described (somatisms nose, eye, ear are connected with curiosity in three languages), the national-cultural component is revealed (in Italian the beak can act as an ‘organ’ of curiosity). It is noted that the words lyubopytnyj, curious, curioso developed a secondary meaning ‘unusual, strange’: in this meaning the words characterize inanimate objects or abstract concepts. In Russian and Italian, the lexemes lyubopytnyj ‘curious’ and curioso have a pronounced negative connotation, while in English we can speak about the absence of negative components in the lexical meaning itself, so in those contexts in which the ‘excess’ of the attribute ‘curiosity’ is indicated, the negative semantics is conveyed by means of definitions: morbid curiosity. Differences in the semantics of the Russian lexemes lyubopytstvo and lyuboznatel'nost' provoke the appearance of errors in the speech of foreigners learning Russian. The pragmatic component, part of which is national-cultural specificity, needs detailed lexicography in language corpora, databases and active dictionaries.