Germanic-Slavic lexical parallels – imitative words ‘lecken’ – ‘лизать’ (lick): Etymology, diachrony, current state

The aim of the study is to identify common phonetic and morphological features and differences, as well as their possible determinants in the system of imitative naming of Germanic and Slavic lexical fields using the example of the correlates ‘lecken’ – ‘лизать’ (lick). The paper also pays attention to semantic changes in the lexical units under consideration as an important stage of the presented linguistic reconstruction. The scientific novelty of the study lies in taking a multi-aspect approach, involving research materials in the field of phraseology, dialectology and onomastics, in order to clarify and expand the currently available linguistic data on the formation and development of lexical parallels in distantly related languages; in revising not only the new features that the Germanic and Slavic lexical systems have acquired, but also those which have been lost in the process of linguistic ontogenesis, starting from the single Indo-European foundation. The studied correlates were considered from the diachronic perspective in the context of the similarity/difference of the presented phonetic transitions, morphological transformations and semantic shifts. As a result of the analysis, the vectors of formation of these lexical parallels from the common Indo-European archetype in the Germanic and Slavic language backgrounds were determined applying certain postulates of the theory of imitative words.