On Two Barbarisms in Essays on the Journey by I. A. Goncharov ‘Frigate Pallada’

There is an unjust scientific understanding of barbarisms as a phenomenon which is peripheral in the language system and does not deserve attention, having quite a limited functionality in the real use. This opinion is unjust due to several reasons: 1) it is a group of words which is constantly submitted to changes, which makes it the marker of dynamic processes in the language of a certain epoch, 2) the language has nothing peripheral, nothing which cannot become an instrument of forming a feature of author individual style or a single genre.

Special attention must be paid to the cases when a genre involves the usage of barbarisms (for example, in travels), but the author limits their use. In such circumstances every single case may pose an interest. The article offers the historical and cultural analysis of two barbarisms from the text of travel reviews by I.A. Goncharov ‘Frigate Pallada’ – sugarbird and broomtree. Their use is not common for the book (there are no Russian variants of the names, the first case is a calque and the second one is partial translation). The first barbarism is of interest because it reflects the stage of scientific terms appearance (the author offers his own variant of terminological naming). In the second case it is not the word which is interesting, but the subject behind it because here we deal with one of the first references to a Bible tree in the Russian literature (rhetheme).