THE INNER FORM IN CONCEPTUAL REPRESENTATION OF THE MEANING OF A DERIVED WORD

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of revealing the regularities in the wordformative category organization as far as derivatives denoting doers of an action are concerned. The specificity of the integral structural and semantic interdependence of the individual components in the underlying semantics of a derived word is analyzed, the notion of the inner form as a connecting link between the onomasiological and semasiological characteristics of a derived word (in other words, between the outer shell of the derivative and its inner content) is taken into account. To achieve the objective of studying the systematic organization of derived words denoting doers of action, the cognitive approach is employed. The research results show that the choice of the word-formative type in the modern Russian language is determined by a combination of factors: the nature of the inner form; the variety of attributes of denotatum; the valency of the base word; specifics of the lexical semantics of the base word; specific wordformative meanings (for example, whether the doer is animate or inanimate); the presence/absence of connotation; the possibility of using a derived word in a figurative meaning. It is noted that the inner form correlates with the semantics of the word as the particular/specific does in relation to the general. In turn, in the word-formation type, groups of diverbatives are distinguished according to a common meta-attribute (inner hyperform) on the basis of taxonomic relations within the confines of individual attributes in derived words (inner hypoforms) denoting doers of action (by analogy with existing concepts of the hyponym and the hyperonym). It is emphasized that the systemic choice of the surface structure of a derived word depends on the specific originality of all the components of its internal complex. The noted aspects contribute to understanding of derivation potential for a word-formative type. The conclusion is drawn that a regular coinage of derived words can be predicted within the framework of a particular word-formati