When Did It Become Possible to Razbolyet’sya ‘To Become Seriously Ill’ While Already Ill, and Survive?

The article examines the evolution of the semantics and syntactic compatibility of the verb “razbotet’sya” in the history of the Russian language. Analysis of data from Old Russian texts reveals that the illness in all instances indicates the onset of a new state of affairs (‘begin to get sick’), and is almost invariably a serious and potentially fatal condition. The subject of the verb is always human. A similar pattern emerges in Russian texts of the XV‒XVI centuries, with the beginning of severe, near-fatal illness being indicated. Rarely are there accounts where recovery is not described as a miraculous event. Only since the 17th century do “optimistic” contexts begin to predominate, although the verb consistently signals the beginning of illness. Only since the 18th century does the Russian National Corpus record usage with inanimate subjects, such as contemporary “razbolyelas’ golova”. At the same time, examples of contracting a sudden and severe illness with an animate subject have completely disappeared from written records, except for historical documents related to Ancient Russia. Among the texts included in the Russian National Corpus, the verb “razbolyet’sya” with an animate object was first used in F. M. Dostoevsky's “A Nasty Story”. Accordingly, it was not until the second half of the 19th century that usage of this verb became similar to its modern usage.