NAMES OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTIONS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: WHAT DICTIONARIES WILL TELL

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of lexical units denoting various communicative actions. The material of the analysis was explanatory and bilingual dictionaries of English, Ukrainian and Russian. The subject of the research comprises semantic processes that took place in the analyzed nominations over time and when they were borrowed from other languages. From a historical perspective, it turned out that certain lexical units were not the names of communicative actions as such from the beginning, but developed them on the basis of semantic derivation (symposium). In many units there were semantic shifts towards clarifying the nature of communicative actions: evaluative semes were added, either positive or negative (panegyryc, epithet), clarifications regarding the oral / written mode of communicative action (manifesto). Dictionary sources indicate that a significant proportion of nominations of communicative actions have the character of internationalisms, which, with similar forms, have certain semantic nuances that distinguish them in different languages (presence / absence of an evaluative component, discursive features of functioning). Not all related words in different languages are the names of communicative actions, which is rooted in the diachronic path of their development (negotiate VS негоціант = trader). The productivity of the source word, which is borrowed in different languages, can vary greatly: Latin loqui = to speak in English gave rise to 7 related words, and in Ukrainian to 2. The vast majority of the considered English nominations have related words in Ukrainian and Russian. But there are also exclusively English names of communicative actions, which do not even have a one-word Ukrainian / Russian equivalent, but only a phrasal one (bromide = говорити банальності). Dictionary entries, containing historical references, serve as an interesting and valuable material for the study of nominative processes to denote various communicative actions. The obtained observations will be used in the practice of teaching English and the theory of communication to students of philology.