“TO SPEAK” AS A PRIMARY VERBAL LEXEME OF THE SPEECH CONCEPT

  • Valeriia Mykhailivna Smaglii
Keywords: actant, nominateme, glosses, sememe, linguistic code, onomasiological focus

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to analyze the lexeme to speak as the primary form of the SPEECH concept, as well as to compare it with the further corresponding nominative lexeme. Methods. Analyzing the lexical means of verbalization of the SPEECH concept, we primarily refer to the diachronic characteristic of the corresponding nuclear lexeme. Let us turn to the defining analysis of the polysemic lexeme to speak, which in the interpretive English vocabulary collectively consists of 8 sememes, as well as the speech lexeme or in another terminology of lexico-semantic variants. Results. The English verb to speak in a combination of transitive and non-transitive forms is a polysemic lexeme that counts for fifteen hundred families; each of them actualizes its own set of sememes which are explicated through definitions in the relevant parts of the dictionary article. Our task is to isolate these sememes, combine them into semantically interconnected bunches, and identify certain correlations between the seme set of verbal and noun components of the nominative subject. In general, the nominative to speak / speech has 15 verbal and 8 nominal sememes. The cognitive perspective of our study gives rise to considering the deep content structure of this nominateme and structuring its value as a schematic imprint of a particular situation. The central link in this structure is, of course, the predicate, which, in combination with the actants (implementing the semantic valency of the predicate), forms a predicate-actant frame, to which the circonstants (or circumstances of the situation) are joined. Predication expresses the contents of an event as a process, a relation, a characteristic inherent in a particular subject. In the analyzed nominateme, the predication to speak reflects the act of speaking as a process. With all the diversity of the actants distinguished by role grammar, in our study it is sufficient to distinguish the agence and the patience, which fill the existing valencies of the predicative to speak. In the same way, from the variety of pos­sible circonstants, we consider these two ones, which are relevant to the predication under study: the circonstant of the intended purpose of action, and the circonstant of the way of action. Conclusions. Summing up, we affirm that the core of the verbalized concept SPEECH, which is one of the three components of the integrated concept WORD / LANGUAGE / SPEECH, is split into an etymologically primary verbal lexeme to speak and derived from its nominal lexeme speech. This is the structural difference between the SPEECH nuclear concept from the other two – WORD and LANGUAGE, the core of which is represented exclusively by nominative lexemes word and language.

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Published
2019-09-30
Pages
96-103