SEMANTIC TREASURES OF THE RUSSIAN WORD

Abstract

The article presents the results of the semantic analysis of words of different lexical fields in present-day Russian: kinship and military terms, names of professionals, domestic and wild animals, etc. A conclusion is made that semantics of lexical units is not bounded by their dictionary descriptions based on most frequently actualized contextual meanings but express a great amount of properties (perceptive, behavioural, locative and others) characteristic of objects and entities represented which are not registered by lexicographic sources. Made explicit in various contexts, extracted from the National Corpus of Russian and other corpora, these properties constitute the semantic potential of lexical units and form the information language base in Russian as the richest treasury of knowledge and beliefs about the surrounding world.

Extended abstract:

The present article outlines the outcomes of a semantic analysis that has been conducted on diverse lexical fields in present-day Russian, including kinship and military terms, professional titles, as well as animals’ names. The study rests on the constructivist doctrine that the significance of a word is a construed knowledge coalesced with conceptual structures that obtain contextual actualisation via the speaker's intentions. Being a component selected from an essentially dynamic cognitive structure, contextual meaning reflects the speaker's perception of the communicative situation. It leaves all other components of the conceptual structure involved latent. It can be concluded that the semantics of lexical units are not limited to their dictionary definitions based on the most frequently occurring contextual meanings, but rather express a multitude of properties (perceptive, behavioural, locative, and others) that are characteristic of the represented objects and entities and not recorded by lexicographic sources. The conclusion is based on the findings obtained from the analysis of polysemous words' metaphoric meanings and their related derivatives. The employed methods and examined data permit the clarification of the conceptual blend and the identification of the object's features which constitute the foundation for the name's transfer, thereby indicating the speaker's awareness of the environment. Extracted from the National Corpus and other corpora of Russian, these properties comprise the semantic potential of lexical units, forming the informational language base in Russian. This base is the richest treasury of knowledge and beliefs related to the surrounding world. On the example of the Russian word 'sparrow', it is evident that Russian speakers adhere to the prototypical formula that includes the fundamental features of the bird category, such as head, beak, feathers, and legs. On one hand, they modify it by identifying the species of the bird through indicating its size, shape, colour, and other similar characteristics, extending the cognitive matrix with information regarding its behavioural, sound, and other properties. The openness of semantic constituents, which are based on the conceptual structure and constitute the entirety of the semantic potential of lexical units, suggests that the construals represented by words and phrases are rule-governed and follow specific semantic patterns. A comprehensive explanation of these patterns will enable linguists to uncover the hidden semantic complexity of the language lexicon.