Mineeva Z. I. The Polysemy of Russian Zootropes

The article was written with support from the Program of Strategic Development of Petrozavodsk State University for 2012–2016.

(Petrozavodsk State University)

Abstract ♦ At present, a considerable share of naming units for people derives from figurative meanings of the words naming animals (metaphorical and metonymical). Those units (zootropes) have predicative, subjective, appositive and vocative functions. Being relatively stable and dynamic, the corpus of Russian zootropes is culturally and socially determined, and it is used for both conveying information and expressing attitudinal description of a person.

The goal of the study was to identify the semantics of zootropes essential in early 21st century and to expose the units that have more than one anthropocentric meaning. The polysemy of Russian zootropes has not been subjected to expert investigation, and dictionaries lack a complete description of the semantics and special features of the current use of those units.

A semantic analysis of modern Russian zootropes has shown that many of them were polysemic, combining neutral, pejorative and ameliorative meanings.

Polysemy was investigated with the help of the National Corpus of the Russian Language. Preference was given to the latest linguistic use cases. The option of creating a database with dates in the inverse order was used. The taxonomy of zootropes includes homogeneous and mixed types.

The author made a conclusion that the reason for the development of polysemy and the emergence of new meanings lies in the capability of zootropes to meet the challenges of the modern society and its need for new names, attitudes and characteristics. Semantics changes from specific features to more abstract ones. Due to globalization, the semantics of some units is identical in different languages.

Keywords: zootrope, nomination, metaphor, metonymy, polysemy, National Corpus of the Russian Language, ameliorative, pejorative evaluation, neutral semantics.

Mineeva Zoya Ivanovna, Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor, Department of Russian, Petrozavodsk State University. Postal address: 33 Lenin St., Petrozavodsk, Russian Federation, 185910. Tel.: +7 (8142) 71-10-73. E-mail: zmineeva@rambler.ru

Citation: Mineeva, Z. I. Polisemiia v russkikh zootropakh (2014) [The Polysemy of Russian Zootropes]. Znanie. Ponimanie. Umenie, no. 3, pp. 328–338. (In Russ.).

Submission date: 25.05.2014.

RUSSIAN VERSION

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