names of supernatural beings

This article presents the study of the mechanisms of semantic derivation based on the lexical-semantic group "Supernatural beings" in the Russian language from a diachronic perspective (from the 11th to the 21st centuries). The object of the study comprises four lexical-thematic associations: beings from religious cultures (angel, demon, etc.), Slavic mythology (leshy "forest spirit", rusalka "mermaid", etc.), European and classical mythology (nymph, cyclops, etc.), as well as extraterrestrial beings and superheroes (alien, superhero, etc.).

The article considers the thematic group "Supernatural beings" in the associative-verbal network of Russian native speakers. Russian associative dictionaries, as well as the texts of the Russian National Corpus (the main subcorpus, the period from 1950 to present time), were used as the research material, which allowed us to compare associative data with discourse, to establish correlations between the functional features of the group's units and their associative connections in the minds of Russian native speakers.

The study deals with the synchronous-diachronic analysis of the thematic group “Supernatural beings in religious cultures”, formed on the basis of Semantic dictionary edited by N. Y. Shvedova and including lexical units denoting the names of God and the Mother of God; angels and saints; persons with magical abilities performing occult actions; evil forces hostile to man; animal characters in religious cultures.