Филологические
науки/ 7.Язык, речь, речевая коммуникация.
Пеліховський
Ю.В.
Чернівецький національний університет
ім. Ю. Федьковича
Nucleus Components
of the semantic field “existence” in English
The main linguistic cultural essence
of any concept is kept not only in abilities to show in its realization
specifics of national mentality as a set of peculiarities of the world outlook
and communicative behavior of the ethnos, but also a national nature as a
rather steadfast form of internal world of the speaker, who determines its
ethnic cultural consciousness.
The domination of this or that component in the
semantic field is closely connected with the processes of conceptualization and
categorization of the world, which constantly interact and are divided only in
case when the purpose of conceptualization is a comprehension of all
sensations, the whole information, which person gets as a result of estimation
of this reality in terms of concepts.
In this article we investigate the componential structure of the lexeme
“be” in British and American English in order to find out similarity of the
representation of the concepts "existence" in two main variants of
English. First of all, we shall define the dominant components of “be” in
English investigating the use of the components of the concept
"existence", singled out in the componential analysis of the lexeme
“be”, in the works of British (Jane Austen) and American writers (Asprin) and
define the frequency of their use. We write out all the components of “be” that
we come across in texts written in British and American English separately:
British
English:
exist, live, breathe, prevail,
obtain, seem, appear, look, occur, happen, arise, develop, pass, occupy, come,
reside, inhabit, remain, stay, last, continue, stand, endure, abide, attend,
follow, escort, accompany, survive, persist, befall, betide.
American
English:
dwell, exist, live, breathe, prevail,
obtain, seem, appear, look, occur, happen, arise, develop, pass, occupy, come,
reside, inhabit, remain, stay, last, continue, stand, endure, abide, attend,
follow, escort, accompany, survive, persist, befall.
As
we can see most of the components intersect. Some of these lexemes are
registered several times in the author’s discourse. In British texts their
total number is 8646. Each lexeme has
its own quantitative characteristics.
For example, the word exist in British English:
8648
units - 100% x= (34*100) : 8646 = 0,4%
34
units - x%
0,4% is the frequency of use of exist in British English.
In
the same way we calculate the percentage of use of all the other words:
According
to our calculations we can consume that the dominant components of “existence”
in British English are the following: come (18%), look (16%), seem (10%), pass
(6%), last (9%), live
(5%), appear (5%) and continue (4%).
The
percentage of use of the words represening the
concept “existence” in American English will be according to their total number
(6647):
The
nucleus components of the concept “existence” in American English are the
following: look (26%), come (17%), seem (14%), last (7%), stand (7%), happen
(5%) and continue (4%).
According
to these data we shall form a table of the comparative usage of the components
of the concept “existence” on the basis of presence or absence of the component
in British and American English (see: Table)
Table : Comparative
usage of the components of the semantic field “existence” in British and
American English
|
Component |
English |
|||
|
British
author |
American
author |
|||
|
present
(+)/ absent (-) |
% |
present
(+)/ absent (-) |
% |
|
|
exist
|
+ |
0,4 |
+ |
0,4 |
|
live
|
+ |
5 |
+ |
2,5 |
|
breathe
|
+ |
0,3 |
+ |
0,5 |
|
prevail
|
+ |
1 |
+ |
0,03 |
|
obtain
|
+ |
0,5 |
+ |
0,18 |
|
seem
|
+ |
10 |
+ |
14 |
|
appear
|
+ |
5 |
+ |
1,74 |
|
look
|
+ |
16 |
+ |
26 |
|
occur
|
+ |
2 |
+ |
3,6 |
|
happen
|
+ |
3 |
+ |
5 |
|
arise
|
+ |
1 |
+ |
0,2 |
|
develop
|
+ |
0,01 |
+ |
0,5 |
|
pass
|
+ |
6 |
+ |
3,2 |
|
occupy
|
+ |
1 |
+ |
0,43 |
|
come
|
+ |
18 |
+ |
17 |
|
reside
|
+ |
0,2 |
+ |
0,03 |
|
inhabit
|
+ |
0,2 |
+ |
0,03 |
|
remain
|
+ |
3,4 |
+ |
0,9 |
|
stay
|
+ |
3,5 |
+ |
3,14 |
|
last
|
+ |
9 |
+ |
7 |
|
continue
|
+ |
4 |
+ |
3,6 |
|
stand
|
+ |
3 |
+ |
7,4 |
|
0,02endure
|
+ |
0,7 |
+ |
0,02 |
|
abide
|
+ |
0,3 |
+ |
0,03 |
|
attend
|
+ |
2,7 |
+ |
0,15 |
|
follow
|
+ |
3,8% |
+ |
4 |
|
escort
|
+ |
0,09 |
+ |
0,3 |
|
accompany
|
+ |
0,7 |
+ |
0,3 |
|
survive
|
+ |
0,1 |
+ |
0,5 |
|
persist
|
+ |
0,2 |
+ |
0,08 |
|
befall
|
+ |
0,2 |
+ |
0,03 |
|
betide
|
+ |
0,01 |
- |
|
|
dwell |
- |
|
+ |
0,2 |
From this table we can conclude that the conceptual meaning of “existence”
in British English has almost the same synonymous row of this concept as in
American variant and is represented by similar components. The nucleus of
“existence” in British and American English can be said to consist of the
lexemes come, look, seem, last and continue.
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Камкина
Е.О. Концепт личностного простора говорящего на английском языке // Филология и
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Козлова
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