SEMANTIC DERIVATION OF LIGHT EMISSION VOCABULARY (BASED ON THE ENGLISH AND GERMAN LANGUAGES)

Abstract

The paper focuses on the mechanisms and strategies of semantic derivation of light emission vocabulary – a semantic class of words that denote the situation of light emission objects’ periodic changes, occurring in time and space. The study shows the characteristics of the development of a light emission vocabulary semantic paradigm and reveals the semantic derivation models of light emission verbs in the Germanic (English, German) languages. The semantic derivation modelling provided in the paper proceeds from the assumption that a linguistic item’s semantic paradigm develops on a par with the changes of situation and actant profiles. The change of a situation profile suggests a shift in the experiencer’s vantage point, i.e. gnoseological (either perceptual or evaluative) position from which a situation is considered. The change of an actant profile provides for the shifts at the level of situation participants and their characteristics. The changes are thought to determine the types (models) of semantic shift strategies that underlie the development of light emission verbs’ semantic paradigms. The analysis of the semantic shift strategies of the light emission verbs in the contrasted languages has revealed that the concept may extend to the boundaries of the internal (occurring within the hierarchy of person’s perceptual systems) and external (occurring within the hierarchy of person’s evaluative systems) conceptual domains. The study concludes that the differences in the extension of a prototypical situation concept in the English and German light emission verbs depend on the degree of locality of derivational relations between the source and target situations.