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Melnychuk Natalia Alexandrovna, Chernivtsi National University, Assistant Professor, the Faculty of Foreign Languages E-mail: [email protected]
Emotional component in the structure of English emotive adjectives
Abstract: The research is devoted to the problem of emotive component in the structure of English emotive adjective. An attempt was made to explore the features of the functioning of emotive adjectives in English language and to consider their lexical and semantic characteristics.
Keywords: lexical meaning, emotiveness, connotation, emoseme, semantic structure.
Modern linguistics is characterized by the increased interest of researchers in the problems of speech embodiment of emotions which are an integral part of communication. In the process of verbal communication language is not only a means of transmitting and receiving intellectual, but also emotional information. It is impossible to show a language in its reality and to create an adequate picture of the language system without people’s emotions. As noted by C. Izard, “in any person everything is moved by emotions, which are the motivational basis of his or her activity" [2, 87]. Therefore, emotions can not be unreflected in the language.
Any signs of human activity are accompanied by emotional experiences, because they constitute a significant part of all psychological processes and states of the individual. The primary function of emotions for a person is the ability to understand each other better. The infallible perception and evaluation of companion’s facial expressions helps us to identify such emotional states as surprise, sadness, joy, disgust, etc.
The article investigates the problem of English emotive adjectives and some aspects of their lexical and semantical meaning. The analysis of the structure of emotive adjectives makes it possible to trace the features
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Emotional component in the structure of English emotive adjectives
of their usage and to learn the dependence of emotive meaning of adjectival units on speaker’s communicative intention.
Verbalization of emotions is possible by means of two basic ways: naming emotional states as facts (when we use the word “laughter" or “death”, we do not laugh and do not die, we just name or describe these states as facts) or expressing emotional states with the help of expressions and idioms (when we use the expression “laugh to tears” we show our feeling or attitude towards the denoted concepts) [5, 7].
In linguistic science emotiveness is defined as “inherent in language semantic property to exress by the system of its means emotionality as a fact of mentality and to reflect in the semantics of linguistic units all social and individual emotions” [6, 24]. When exploring the phenomenon of language emotiveness, V. Shakhovskiy found that it has two plans: a plan of content and a plan of expression; through them speaker’s emotional attitude or state is manifestated. In addition, during the study the author found out three types of emotiveness: emotiveness actually, emotiveness as one of the implementations of word semantics and contextual emotiveness. Accordingly, there were determined three levels of expression of emotiveness: 1) emotional meaning; 2) connotation as a component connected with the logically-objective component of the word; 3) the level of emotive potential.
The emotional meaning as a major nuclear component of the semantics of a word is the basis of the first level; on the second level emotiveness is expressed through connotation which may not always be implemented as a component of the word in a variety of its usages; in its turn, the level of emotive potential changes nothing in the semantics of the word, but it shows its hidden connotations during realization in the text. That is, only the first level of expression ofword emotiveness can be correlated with the language system, while the latter two depend directly on the context of their usage and that’s why they come out only as a periphery of speech component.
While studying the nature of emotion in linguistic science, it is important to examine the problem of the place of emotive component in the semantic structure of a word. The correlation of components of the lexical meaning of a word is only a partially solved problem in modern linguistic paradigm. Various lexical definitions of a word are somewhat different, but their common principle is that they describe this phenomenon as the realization of the concept by means of language system. V. Levitsky notes that concepts such as semantics, pragmatics and syntactics can be grouped according to
the formula “the knowledge of a set of possible applications in linguistic and non-linguistic situation”. Therefore he offers the following academic definition of the lexical meaning of a word: “... lexical meaning is the acquired through experience knowledge about a set of linguistic and nonlinguistic situations in which the word can be used” [3, 68-69].
That is, a lexical meaning of the word is a holistic and complex phenomenon, which is based on the reflection of obj ective reality in the human’s mind. By virtue of lexical meaning a person can understand a word and use it in his or her speech.
The inner form of the word (its meaning) is a complex semantic structure which contains a number of components [1, 130-131]. Different researchers singled out in the semantics of a word either two (denotation and connotation) or three (connotation, denotation and figurative component) macrocomponents which belong accordingly to logically-objective, emotive or function-ally-stylistic areas.
Some scholars distinguish in the structure of the lexical meaning such components as significative (“specific linguistic reflection of obj ective reality”), structural (“formal description of the properties of a lexical unit that determines its place in the language”), emotional (“specific language expression of evaluation of a signified obj ect by means of stylistically marked lexical units”) and denotative (“objective meaning of a lexical unit”).
Some linguists [4, 27] believe that “within the meaning of a word there are two parts: logical part that corresponds to the concept and additional (connotative) part that reflects the subjective elements of a human perception of some concept”. With this understanding denotation is characterized by a clear contrast to connotation and completely covers the subjectively-logical part of the meaning. Thus, denotative macrocomponent forms the conceptual part of the lexical meaning and expresses the primary sense of the linguistic unit, because owing to it as “the central meaning of linguistic form” [9, 45] one of the main functions of language is embodied, mainly description of objects and concepts for language speakers who have a shared knowledge of the objects of reality.
In its turn, connotation is considered as part of the lexical meaning that is different from the subjectively-logical content because it doesn’t display the features of a denotate, but shows a certain speaker’s attitude to it and also the characteristics of a communicative situation, its members, etc.
Denotative and connotative macrocompompo-nents in the structure of a word semantics are closely
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connected: denotation displays basic conceptual features of the peculiar object and connotation gives a speaker’s evaluation and emotional attitude to them which creates a special pragmatic effect from the meaning of a word. Thus, denotative and connotative aspect of meaning interact with pragmatic, because they all have the same function — to characterize the participants of communication and their attitude to the object. And even if they own differential features, components of these categories are integrated into the structure of a lexical meaning.
The structure of a connotative aspect of meaning is quite complex: different linguists select various components such as emotive, stylistic, expressive, emotional, evaluative, intensive, figurative in its framework. Some scientists distinguish within connotation such components as pragmatic, national, ideological and cultural
which are specified by social, cultural and situational aspects of communication.
Structural elements of connotation perform their function in speech: emotiveness reflects person’s emotional experience of a certain phenomena, expressiveness has the ability to enhance the impact on the recipient of communication, evaluation is responsible for speaker’s positive or negative reaction, stylistic element is intended to identify words belonging to a particular sphere of communication, intensity has to reflect a certain degree of manifestation of the object. Thus, connotation as part of lexical meaning has polistructral seme character and interacts closely with extralinguistic factors, because all additional semantic, stylistic or pragmatic shades of meaning are built on its basis. Let us consider the main characteristics of emotive component of connotation, as far as it is related to the field of an individual’s emotional and sensory perception and, according to some linguists [6], is “a semantic core of connotation.”
Emotional component is the result of display of emotions in the process of their verbalization and semantiza-tion. As it is generalized, it serves for the individual expression of the emotional evaluation of the world [6, 30] and demonstrates the correlation of two important linguistic categories — emotiveness and evaluation. Thus, emotiveness as linguistic formation is a part of the semantic structure of the word meaning as one of its components. It has the ability to actualize in appropriate contexts or is a part of a meaning that is not determined by the context, situation or subjective use.
Often the presence of emotive connotation in the semantics of a word is determined by the formation of oppositions of some words with their neutral correlates. In this case logical component of denotation correlates with
connotative aspect which is manifested as co-meaning and expresses the subject’s emotional attitude to the object which he or she perceives. However, there also exists a denotative localization of emotive component of the word which is characteristic for lexical units that describe certain mental experiences. V. Shahovskiy notes that the status of obligatory (denotative) emotivess is characteristic primarily for such words as affectives (whoops, emotional and evaluative adverbs, adjectives, vulgarism, etc) in which the actual emotional sense is the only component of their lexical meaning: “I'll swear you do, you damned old miser,’ said Mr Gooch offensively’’ [7, 71].
The basic structural element of the emotive component is a seme of emotiveness or an emoseme, the concept of which was introduced in linguistic terminology by V. Shahovskiy [6]. He defined it as a separate type of a seme that correlates with a speaker’s emotions. In the semantics of the word emoseme serves as a totality of specific semantic feature “emotion” and its certain concretized unit (such as “love”, “hate”, etc). Emoseme can display an emotional process for both the speaker and the listener, and even for a stranger. The status of an emoseme is defined not only by its place in seme structure of the word, but also establishes the character of manifestation of emotive senses. Thus, an emoseme is a combination of such elements of a model as “the idea of feeling” and “the exact name of certain feeling”.
During the study of an emoseme in the lexically-semantic structure of a word it is necessary to clarify the status of its emotive meaning that is based on an emoseme. Emotive meaning is defined in linguistics as “obligatory semantic sense that coincides with the lexical meaning of the word and serves only for expressing the emotional state or attitude to the world. Denotates of emotive meaning are speakers’ socialized emotions” [6, 26]. Thus, an obligatory condition for the functioning of emotive meaning in the language is the presence of an emoseme in its structure due to which an explicit emotive content is shown.
Emotional component of Engish adjectival lexemes actualizes directly the subject’s positive or negative attitude to the object which he or she perceives and consists of semantic feature and its concretized unit. Emotions appear in two main categories, that’s why a certain kind of emotion has positive or negative colouring. Let’s consider how emotiveness is shown in adjectival units with the help of analysis of dictionary definitions using lexicographical data from modern dictionary of English language [8]: abominable — extremely unpleasant and causing disgust; aghast — filled with horror and
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Emotional component in the structure of English emotive adjectives
surprise when you see or hear sth; arrogant — behaving in a proud, unpleasant way, showing little thought for other people; cocky — too confident about yourself in a way that annoys other people; ecstatic — very happy, excited and enthusiastic; feeling or showing great enthusiasm; formidable — if people, things or situations are formidable, you feel fear and/or respect for them, because they are impressive or powerful, or because they seem very difficult; loathsome — extremely unpleasant, disgusting; overjoyed — extremely happy or pleased.
Considering the place of an emoseme in the structure of lexical meaning, most researchers [4, 10] agree that it is a component of connotation and only accompanies denotative component. However, it should be noted that an emoseme can also be present in denota-tional macrocomponent: for example, when displaying emotions as objectively existing reality in language and speech. Thus, the position of an emoseme in the seme structure of a word determines its status and character of manifestation. In this case, the crucial role of an emoseme in studying the description of emotive layer of vocabulary is crearly viewed.
There is the proved fact [6] that emosemes can build various relations with denotative semes: in adherent contexts denotative semes may acquire another referent correlation. This causes the extension of the meaning of the word by expense of appearing of some emosemes which extend its semantic valence: “And human nature, Dr. Watson — the black ingratitude of it all! When did I ever refuse one of her requests? Was ever
a woman so pampered? And that young man — he might have been my own son... And yet see how they have treated me!” [7, 109]. In this regard, it receives new, additional emotional valence: “it is enough at least one emoseme, even hidden to be present in the meaning of a linguistic unit for it in potentia has the opportunity to ever implement it” [6, 98].
Emotional meanings are variously shown in lexical semantics, appearing at different levels of language and speech in the form of specialized semantic components, immanent for these levels and containing basic information about human emotions. Their basic function is to express the speaker’s certain emotional state or attitude to the surrounding reality: And yet see how they have treated me! Oh, Dr. Watson, it is a dreadful, dreadful world!” [7, 109]. In this case, avoiding or using of emotive meaning by the speaker is determined by his speech intention because it demonstrates an expression of his own feelings and does not always pursue specific pragmatic purposes.
Thus, emotive meaning of the adjective is a part of category of emotiveness which expresses the speaker’s emotional attitude to the subjects or to their separate characteristics. The study makes a contribution to the development of the general theory of analysis of emotional adjectives in linguistics and the theory of lexical semantics. Future research of this topic can be based on the learning of lingvostylistic peculiarities of English emotive adjectives and the deeper analysis of their semantic structure.
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