Dynamic models of meaning in the aspect of cross-linguistic comparison

Abstract

The article focuses on dynamic models of meaning, they being viewed in the aspect of cross-linguistic comparison (based on the Slavic, Germanic and Romance languages – Ukrainian, Polish, English, German and French languages). The models are defined as theoretical (metalinguistic) constructs that structure the content of a linguistic unit or of a class of linguistic units as a concept of situation. The concept of situation represents the dynamics of discourse world conceptualization (of a certain situation or its fragment) in the aspect of gnoseological, situational, communicative and derivational strategies of a designator. The models are supposed to reproduce the contents of linguistic units in the contrasted languages per sample of alternative, hierarchically established semantic linguistic dimensions: representative, sentential, relational and epidigmatic ones. The semantic dimensions are considered to encode information about gnoseological values of situation participants, nature of their relationships, their positional activities, as well as mechanisms and strategies of their semantic associations. It has been ascertained that languages with a poorly developed system of cases typologically tend towards the representative and epidigmatic dimensions, they revealing the priority of gnoseological and derivational strategies of a designator. Languages with an extended case system are typologically apt to the sentential and constructional dimensions, they revealing the priority of situational and communicative strategies of a designator.