COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTING OF EXISTENTIAL PREPOSITIONAL CAUSATIVITY IN ENGLISH, MODERN GREEK AND UKRAINIAN

Abstract

This article deals with the peculiarities of cognitive constructing of existential prepositional causativity in English, Modern Greek and Ukrainian; the term “causativity”, which came to denote variant situations of cause or causative situa­tions in cognitive grammar, has been defined. Causativity is a complex multi-faceted category which originates from the philosophical category of causality and depicts real connections between the objects of the surrounding world, which are categorized by human consciousness as causal. The typology of causal situations is comprised of 5 types: 1) existential type (existence), 2) actional type (action, event, phenomenon), 3) statal type (state), 4) relational type (relation), 5) charac­terizing type (characteristic, property, quality, quantity).

In different languages, regardless of their morphological structure, syntactical constructions, the conceptual structure of which contains logical proposition of causality (X is the cause of Y) are called causal constructions. Causal meaning can be expressed by various causal constructions, which are a means of expressing cause and effect relationship. Meanwhile, means of expressing cause and effect relationship are its markers in the structure of causal constructions, which include, among others, prepositions.

From a cognitive perspective, prepositions are orienting points, which mark certain points in space or its sectors in the given coordinate system.

The peculiarities of the existential causative situation components in English, Modern Greek and Ukrainian have been analyzed in the research. Differences and similarities of causative factors as main ingredients of causative situations have been identified. Existential causative situations by prepositional constructing in English, Modern Greek and Ukrainian can be subdivided into two main groups: existential verbs and locative ones. English and Modern Greek only are character­ized by occasional predicates of having within the framework of the given causative situation. One of the most significant characteristics of the existential causative situation is phase, the representatives of which are predicates, and which char­acterizes the process of being in time, identifies the stages of its existence, namely: beginning, duration and cessation. The existential causative situation by prepositional constructing is fully represented in Ukrainian as no existential lexemes characterized by additional semes have been found in Modern Greek, while English is characterized by occasional cases, which demonstrates predominance of neutral verbs in the two languages.