Thematical organization of the metalanguage lexical-phraseological field in the Russian and English languages

Authors

  • Marina S. Gutovskaya Belarusian State University, Niezaliežnasci Avenue, 4, 220030, Minsk, Belarus

Keywords:

lexical-phraseological field, metalanguage nominative units, differences between lexemes and phrasemes in the expression of the cognitive and emotive meanings

Abstract

The paper distinguishes the thematic macro- and microgroups of the metalanguage (connected with language and speech) field in the languages consided and identifies the proportion of the macrogroups in the field, determines the ratio of lexemes and phrasemes in each group and reveals the regularities of presentation of the metalanguage sphere in lexe- mes and phrasemes. It finds out that the main directions of semantic deployment of the field – «technical» (formed by the macrogroup ‘basic components of communication’) and «psychological» (constituted by the macrogroups ‘illocutionary characteristics of speech acts’ and ‘personality-conditioned properties of speech products’) – are balanced by the number of the nominative units that manifest them, which indicates the equal importance of the technical and psychological components of communication. It notes that the nature of the relationship between the nominative units in the distinguished groups is not the same and depends on the properties of the entities they denote: the groups of names of cognitively significant phenomena are represented by rows of synonymous (in varying degree) units, the groups of names of culturally marked phenomena – by blocks of semantically less closely related units. It shows that nominative functions are devided between lexemes and phrasemes: predominantly lexemes convey general cognitive meanings (in the material of both languages among the nominative units with a general cognitive meaning the percentage of lexemes is five times as high as the percentage of phrasemes), chiefly phrasemes – more specific cognitive meanings (the percentage of phrasemes is one and a half times as high as the percentage of lexemes) and emotive meanings (the percentage of phrasemes is two and a half times as high as the percentage of lexemes). It concludes that a correlation between the type of concept held in the human mind and the preferred means of its designation is fixed in the language: general cognitive content is expressed mostly by direct and nutral one-word units, more specific content – by direct (not figurative) and nutral (not expressive) multy-word units, emotive content – by figurative and expressive multy-word units. 

Author Biography

  • Marina S. Gutovskaya, Belarusian State University, Niezaliežnasci Avenue, 4, 220030, Minsk, Belarus

    PhD (philology), docent; doctoral student at the department of theoretical and Slavic linguistics, faculty of philology

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Published

2019-02-28

Issue

No. 1 (2018): Journal of the Belarusian State University. Philology

Section

Linguistics

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How to Cite

[1]
Gutovskaya, M.S. 2019. Thematical organization of the metalanguage lexical-phraseological field in the Russian and English languages. Journal of the Belarusian State University. Philology. 1 (Feb. 2019), 49–65.