Áàãð³é Î.Â.

×åðí³âåöüêèé íàö³îíàëüíèé óí³âåðñèòåò

CATEGORIZATION OF THE CONCEPT ’’HEALTH’’ IN ENGLISH AND UKRAINIAN

         The understanding of the world is connected with disclosing of the individual contents and originality of object.

         Expressions of commonality in individual worldviews make up the cultural worldview of the group that leads to the social culture, the way people relate to one another in daily activities and how they cooperate together for the good of the society. Each culture's worldview is self-contained and adequate in the sense that it provides a coherent view of reality as perceived and experienced by the cultural group under consideration.   

         According to the fact that the problem of categorization and conceptualization of the world are key problems of cognitive science, which developed later into cognitive linguistics, we researched the processes of categorization and conceptualization of the sphere "health" in English and Ukrainian.

The analysis of the conceptual system of the semantic field "health" in English and Ukrainian showed that this concept is included in the domain of Abstract notions that is structured in the form of the category as in English so in Ukrainian. Since this category covers the names of materials and notions, which are uncountable (for instance, water, freedom, friendship, health etc.), this category can be equal to the category of the state of human organism within the frames of English and Ukrainian worldviews, because it is this category that characterizes the abstract notion.

            The domination of this or that concept in the semantic field is closely connected with the process of conceptualization and categorization of the world, which constantly interact and are divided only in case when the purpose of conceptualization is comprehension of all sensations, the whole information, which person gets as a result of work of organs of five senses and estimation of this activity in terms of concepts. We defined the dominant components of "health" in British and American English and came to the conclusion that the dominant components of “health” in British English are the following: healthiness, lustiness, healthfulness, vigour, strength, soundness, power, heartiness [´ha:tinəs], potency [´õtnsi], hardiness [´ha:dnəs], force [´fë:s], wholeness [´õlnəs], puissance, robustness [rəõ´b٨stnəs], vitality, vigourousness, vivacity [vi´vesiti], energy [´enəd i:], liveliness, (sl) zing, pizzazz, zip, pep, bounce, stamina, well-being, euphoria, fitness; in American English: potency [´poõtnsi], hardiness [´ha:rdnəs], wholeness [´hoõnəs], robustness [roõ´b٨stnəs], vivacity [vai´vesiti], force [´fë:rs], energy [´enərd i], soundness, strength, fitness, (sl) stingo, power,  liveliness, vigor.

         The dominant components of “health” in Ukrainian are the following: ñòàí îðãàí³çìó, äîáðîáóò, æèòòºçäàòí³ñòü, ö³ëþùà ñèëà, çäîðîâ³þòü,  êîðèñí³ñòü, ñàìîïî÷óòòÿ, íîðìàëüíà ä³ÿëüí³ñòü (îðãàí³çìó), íîðìàëüíå ôóíêö³îíóâàííÿ (îðãàí³çìó), ô³òíåñ, ñâ³æ³ñòü, äóæ³ñòü, êâ³òó÷³ñòü, ñèëà, åíåðã³ÿ, åéôîð³ÿ, æâàâ³ñòü, âèòðèâàë³ñòü. In comparison with English there are not so many components of “health” in Ukrainian, but nevertheless they have something in common in English and Ukrainian. The components of health in English such as: lustiness, vigor/vigour, haleness, strength, power, potency, robustness, force, vivacity, stingo, energy correspond to one and the same component in Ukrainian such as: ñèëà; English vigor/vigour, vitality, zing, pizzaz , zip, pep, bounce, energy correspond to Ukrainian: åíåðã³ÿ; English vitality, vigorousness, liveliness correspond to Ukrainian: æâàâ³ñòü; English hardiness, stamina correspond to Ukrainian: âèòðèâàë³ñòü; English well-being, bonnyness correspond to Ukrainian: êâ³òó÷³ñòü; English soundness, heartiness correspond to Ukrainian: äóæ³ñòü; English euphoria correspond to Ukrainian: åéôîð³ÿ; English puissance corresponds to Ukrainian: ñâ³æ³ñòü; English fitness corresponds to Ukrainian: ô³òíåñ; English healthiness corresponds to Ukrainian: êîðèñí³ñòü; English healthfulness corresponds to Ukrainian: ö³ëþùà ñèëà;  English well-being corresponds to Ukrainian: äîáðîáóò; English vivacity correspond to Ukrainian: íîðìàëüíà ä³ÿëüí³ñòü îðãàí³çìó; English vitality, stamina correspond to Ukrainian: æèòòºçäàòí³ñòü; English wholeness, robustness correspond to Ukrainian: çäîðîâ³ñòü.

         Contrastive linguistics is synonymous with contrastive analysis that is the systematic study of a pair of languages in synchrony with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities. We shall use contrastive analysis in this part of the thesis to define the contrast features of lexeme “health” in English and Ukrainian.

         Contrastive analysis on the level of the grammatical meaning reveals that co-related words in different languages may differ in grammatical characteristics. From the grammatical point of view “health” is a noun in English and Ukrainian. In English a noun is a word expressing substance in the widest sense of the word. In this concept of substance names of abstract notions (health) are also included. In Ukrainian noun is an independent part of speech that has its categoric meaning of substance and is marked by class categories of gender and living beings/lifeless things, changeable categories of number and case; has its word forming suffixes and syntactic functions.

         From the morphological point of view abstract nouns do not have the category of number and case forms in English. Besides, modern English also does not mark nouns for gender, but it does axpress it through the third person singular by personal pronouns he (male person), she (female person), it (object, abstraction e.g. health, or animal), and their other inflected forms. The morphological composition of noun health in English is the following: simple: vigour, strength, power, force, energy, zing, pizzazz, zip, pep, bounce, stamina, euphoria, stingo; derivative: healthiness, lustiness, healthfulness, haleness, soundness, heartiness, hardiness, wholeness, robustness, vitality, vigorousness, fitness, liveliness; compound: well-being.

         Nouns fall under two classes in English: proper and common. Common nouns are names that can be applied to any individual of a class of persons or things, collections of similar individuals or things regarded as a single unit, materials or abstract notions. And abstract nouns denote some quality, state, action or idea and are usually ucountable. As “health is a state, it is an abstract common noun  in English.  

         The syntactic characteristics of a noun in English are the following: it can be proceded by a prepositional phrase, may be used as attribute, prepositional indirect object and adverbial modifier. For example: Let’s drink your health. I’ve read about the health of our economics. You are in bad health.

         In Ukrainian nouns have its lexical grammatical categories such as: concrete and abstract nouns, proper names, discrete nouns – names of material or countable/uncountable nouns, collective nouns. Abstract nouns denote some general notions; quality, emotions, state that are uncountable, mental notions; events and customs. Nouns denoting quality, emotions, state are always uncountable. As “health is a state it is included in the category of abstract nouns in Ukrainian. It does not have the grammatical category of number and it is the common feature of “health in English and Ukrainian. But it has the category of gender and case (seven) in Ukrainian that is different from English, e.g.: çäîðîâ’ÿ neutral, nominative case; çäîðîâ’þ – neutral, dative case. Nouns in Ukrainian have four declinations. “Çäîðîâ’ÿ has ÿ ending and that’s why it belongs to declination II. It  is used only in singular in Ukrainian as well as in English.  We destinguish also between three groups of nouns in Ukrainian: hard, soft and mixed. Lexeme “çäîðîâ’ÿ is a part of soft group, because it has ÿ ending.   

         Languages differ not only in their phonological and grammatical systems. Their systems of meaning are also different. Hence it follows that semantic structures of correlated words of the Source Language and the Target Language cannot bå co-extensive they can never “cover each other”. That’s why while investigating the common and differentiating features of lexeme “health” in English and Ukrainian we deal with its refential meaning (also called logical, denotative) that has direct reference to things or phenomena of objective reality, naming abstract notions and processes as well. Causes of lexical transformations in the rendering of referential meaning are the following: different vision of objects of reality and different usage; different semantic structure of a word in the source language and the target-language; different valency or ñollocability.

      Differences in the lexical meaning of correlated words account for the differences of their collocability in different languages. The aptness of a word to appear in various combinations is described as its lexical valency or collocability. The lexical valency of correlated words in different languages is not iden­tical. This is only natural since every language has its syntagmatic norms and patterns of lexical valency. In English a noun can be used with the following parts of speech: adjective: bad (poor) health; pronoun: your (my, his, her) health, verb: to restore the health of economics; article: the health of economics; another noun: health education;  preposition: in bad health. The change in combinability may bring the change in semantics: there is health in sunshine – ñîíöå âîëî䳺 ö³ëþùèìè âëàñòèâîñòÿìè.  Words, habitu­ally collocated, tend to constitute a cliche, e.g in English: bad health, robust health etc. The translator is obliged to seek similar cliches, traditional collocations in the target-language, e.g. in Ukrainian: ñëàáêå çäîðîâ’ÿ, ì³öíå çäîðîâ’ÿ. The key word in such collocations is usually preserved but the collocated one is rendered by a word of a somewhat different referential meaning in accordance with the valency norms of the target-language: to enjoy good health – áóòè çäîðîâèì; poor economic health – ïîãàíèé ñòàí åêîíîì³êè; regain one’s health – âè çäîðîâèòè. Different collocability often calls for lexical and grammatical transformations in translation through each component of the collocation may have its equivalent in Ukrainian, e.g. the collocation “She swims for her health” cannot be translated as “Âîíà ïëàâຠäëÿ ñâîãî çäîðîâ’ÿ” but „Âîíà çàéìàºòüñÿ ïëàâàííÿì, ùîá áóòè çäîðîâîþ”.

         In Ukrainian a noun is usually used with adjectives: ì³öíå çäîðîâ’ÿ, another noun: çäîðîâÿ íàö³¿, verb: áåðåæè çäîðîâ’ÿ, pronoun: òâîº çäîðîâ’ÿ, preposition: âïëèâàòè íà çäîðîâ’ÿ ëþäèíè. In Ukrainian the word order is not fixed and “çäîðîâ’ÿ” as a noun can have free position: Íàö³¿ çäîðîâ’ÿ – îñü, ùî ãîëîâíå! and Çäîðîâ’ÿ íàö³é – îñü, ùî ãîëîâíå; Çäîðîâ’ÿ áåðåæè çìîëîäó and Áåðåæè çìîëîäó çäîðîâ’ÿ.  

         So, English and Ukrainian have common and differentiating features and more clearly they may be pointed out while investigating the semantic field “health in both languages.