ПРОЙДОХА (RASCAL), ПРОНЫРА (SNEAK), ПРОЛАЗА (SLYBOOTS): COMPARATIVE SEMANTIC ANALYSIS

The article is about the lexical semantics of conversational synonymous nouns пройдоха (rascal), проныра (sneak), пролаза (slyboots), indicating people who reach the goal dishonestly, and conveying a negative assessment on the part of the speaker. The study was conducted on the material of the Russian National corpus. We used contextual and component analysis methods, which allows us to identify common and differential semes of these nouns. The analysis showed that, according to several essential features, the synonym пройдоха is opposed to the synonyms проныра and пролаза. These features are: 1) the goal that the person strives for (often monetary gain for пройдоха; often the possession of some physical object for проныра and пролаза); 2) methods of achieving the goal (mostly deception, often relying on personal charm, for пройдоха; mainly all kinds of actions aimed, as it were, at getting around obstacles, for проныра and пролаза); 3) an assessment on the part of the speaker (although in general пройдоха expresses a negative assessment, but in some cases the speaker may treat the person with sympathy); 4) the ability to indicate females (exists for проныра and пролаза, but is practically absent for пройдоха). Проныра and пролаза do not have semantic features that would contrast them with each other. The only noticeable difference is a stylistic one: пролаза is the outgoing word, it is found in the main subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus approximately six time less often than the synonym проныра.