Когнитивный аспект формирования оценочного значения английских прилагательных, обозначающих моральные качества

Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Язык и литература. 2019. Т. 16. № 3. С. 367–380.

Antonova M.

The paper focuses on the cognitive foundation of English adjectives that denote moral characteristics of human beings. Word semantics is treated as two-level phenomenon that comprises the semantic (external) level and the conceptual (deep) one. The modeling of the adjectives’ conceptual basis takes into consideration their etymological data. The examples demonstrate that the semantics of the adjectives in question rests on the archetypical ideas about alive and dead, motion, elementary operations with the object and so forth. The etymological data have revealed that the conceptual basis of the English adjectival category «Moral qualities» is formed by a certain set of conceptual oppositions, such as LIFE – DEATH, MOTION – STILLNESS, FRIEND – FOE LOVE – HATRED and so forth. These oppositions differ in terms of productivity, the most productive being the opposition FRIEND – FOE; it produced 25% of the adjectives. Since the first element in the oppositions usually is marked as positive while the other is marked as negative, the first element accounts for the meaning of positive evaluation, while the other produces the negative meaning. However, each concept tends to realize two polar values, i.e. concepts tend to possess ambivalent value. The concept realizes positive or negative value due to the interaction with a frame in which it is incorporated. This peculiarity of concepts enables any concept to form polar evaluation meanings of different adjectives and within the frame of a polysemantic adjective. Both antonymy and enantiosemy are predetermined by the conceptual structures that rule the interpretation of the abstract, moral qualities in English.

Keywords: фрейм, conceptual basis, оценочное значение, концептуальная оппозиция, conceptual opposition, концептуальное основание, адъективная категория, evaluation meaning, adjectival category