Verbalization of positive emotions in English and Ukrainian (comparative aspect)

Abstract

Comparative language studies belong to one of the most relevant tasks of contemporary linguistics. Both related and unrelated languages are treated as open-ended systems of definite structures, and the aim of the present paper is to make a comparative analysis of adjectives in English and Ukrainian, focusing on their system and structural characteristics, to reveal their vocabularies’ specificity and discuss national as well as cultural components in the semantics of the words in question. Furthermore, much attention is paid to finding both common and distinctive features of the latter to predict their role, place and significance in the semantic space of the definite fragment of the languages’ lexical systems. The problems of emotive semantics study are closely connected with emotional aspect of human factor in language and are relevant in modern linguistics. Attaching words to feelings and emotions is one of the most important aspects of our everyday language, cognition and society interaction. Experiencing positive emotions like happiness, excitement, joy, hope, and inspiration is vital for anyone who wants to lead a happy and healthy life. Emotions are biologically-based psychological states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. In human life the role of emotions is extremely great as far as they accompany any activity and perform communicative, cognitive and regulatory functions. Happiness is such a central concept in life that not many people pause to consider what happiness is and why we strive so tirelessly to attain it. The power of positive thinking comes in different forms. Modifying nouns, English and Ukrainian adjectives give more specific information about the object, person, place, thing, idea, etc. 59 English adjectives and 36 Ukrainian ones are used to signify the quality of being happy. Their semantics is unique, yet with clearly anthropocentric character. The words under research form complex systems possessing certain structures. They are divided into three groups according to their degree of polysemy: words with high and middle degree of polysemy and monosemantic units. In English the group of monosemantic adjectives prevails while in Ukrainian the group of words with middle degree of polysemy is predominant. Monosemy as a linguistic phenomenon expresses the ability of the lexical units in question to interpret the objects of the world in detail, specifying cultural notions characteristic of their semantics. In their turn, these adjectives possess both common and distinctive features, and vary in their qualitative and quantitative characteristics.