Отадъективные глаголы эссивной семантики в немецком, английском и украинском языках в сопоставительном аспекте

Abstract

The peculiarities of the semantics and structure of verbs derived from adjectives in German, English, and Ukrainian have been analyzed. The verbal lexemes of the languages compared can be defined by means of a semantic interpretation model “Subject of a Situation Is a Motivating Adjective”; they constitute a semantically heterogeneous group of “essive” verbs (from Lat. esse - ‘to be'). Within the framework of the derivational category of “essive” verbs at the level of derivational semantics subcategories, semantic groups and subgroups have been distinguished. In the semantic structure of “essive” deadjectival verbs of German, English, and Ukrainian, the opposition is reproduced on the basis of an “active/inactive state of the subject of a situation when revealing a feature denoted by a motivating adjective”. On this basis, the “essive” verbs of the compared languages are divided into two derivational subcategories: “proper essive” deadjectival verbs (inactive state of the subject of a situation when revealing a feature) and “quasi-essive” verbs derived from adjectives (active state of the subject when revealing a feature). In terms of interlingual comparison, the author notes the quantitative superiority of the two subcategories of the Ukrainian “active” deadjectival verbs over the corresponding subcategories of German and English, while within each language of comparison the quantitative ratios of the selected subcategories are different: in Ukrainian the subcategory of “proper essive” deadjectival verbs is superior over the subcategory of “quasi-essive” verbs, while in German and English the “quasi-essive” deadjectival verbs are quantitatively superior over the subcategory of “proper essive” deadjectival verbs (in German the quantitative difference is insignificant (nine verbs), and in English the group of “quasi-essive” deadjectival verbs is almost twice as big as in German). Within the selected derivational subcategories of the languages compared and on the basis of the presence/absence and nature of certain additional semantic components in the semantic structure of “essive” deadjectival verbs, semantic groups have been distinguished. Two semantic groups can be clearly distinguished within “proper essive” deadjectival verbs, depending on whether the feature revealed by the subject of a situation is necessarily visually perceptible (“expositive”) or visually imperceptible (“intra-essive”). The group of “expositive” deadjectival verbs of Ukrainian is eight times as big as the corresponding semantic group in German, while in English no deadjectival verbs of “expositive” semantics have been found. In German and English, the main way to derive essive verbs from adjectives is conversion (85% and 56%, respectively). In English, conversion is supplemented with suffix models (44%). Essive suffix deadjectival verbs make up 100% of the material in Ukrainian and 15% in German.