SEMANTICS OF POSTPOSITIVE AND PREFIX WITH PRIMARY SPATIAL MEANING INSIDE WITHIN ENGLISH PHRASAL AND UKRAINIAN PREFIXAL VERBS

Abstract

The paper focuses on the contrastive semantic study of English postpositives and Ukrainian prefixes within English phrasal and Ukrainian prefixal verbs. Such units occupy a special place in the paradigm of modern linguistic studies devoted to the problems of comparative analysis of semantics and word-formation, as being structurally different, they are similar in terms of semantic organization and functioning. Despite the structural separability of English phrasal verbs and the morphemic “cohesiveness” of Ukrainian prefixal verbs (cf. English to walk in and its equivalent in Ukrainian входити), their semantics is formed in a similar way – in the direction of combining the meanings of the monolexemic source verb in the structure of the English phrasal verb or the motivating (usually verbal) basis of the Ukrainian prefixal verb and the meanings of word-formation elements (English postpositive and Ukrainian prefix), having the primary spatial meaning. Semantic analysis of the given language units is carried out on the basis of the English postpositive in and Ukrainian prefix в-, joined by the primary spatial meaning inside. The paradigm of direct and figurative meanings of the postpositive and the prefix under consideration is established and characterized; the mechanism of forming the semantics of these derivative units in general is described; similar and differential features of their semantic organization are revealed; the meanings of English phrasal verbs with postpositive in and Ukrainian verbs with prefix в- is systematized; their functional peculiarities are qualified.