Andrey Zaynuldinov
University of Barcelona, Spain
Emotional evaluation in the Russian language
as an object of study
The article is created as part of the project SOMEMBED-SLANG: COMPRENSION DEL LENGUAJE EN LOS MEDIOS DE COMUNICACION SOCIAL of the Spanish
Ministry of Economy and Development.
Introduction
Various factors in semantics that refer to meaning are defined as belonging to one of three broad groups depending on whether the relationship being studies is that between language, objects, states; or between language and mental states; or, finally, between lan- guage and extra-linguistic facts. The most relevant opposition lies in the first two groups of factors that are defined in the analysis of meaning; on the one hand the so-called “ob- jectives” or “nominative” and, on the other, “subjective” ones, also called “pragmatic.” In these groups, the following meanings are often distinguished1:
Objectives: referential, descriptive, denotative, extensional, and factual meanings;
Subjective: attitudinal, affective, connotative, emotional, and expressive.
From this preliminary distinction, for the subject at hand, it is enough to distinguish between the components of a), which we will label generically as “nominative”, and the components of b), which we will call “pragmatic.” The nominative components oppose each other in the descriptive – denotative – rational aspects; and the pragmatic compo- nents oppose each other in the expressive – connotative – emotional aspects. In addition, the nominative components combine or, better, act complementarily with the pragmatic
(in different proportions): descriptive + expressive, denotative + connotative, rational + emotional2.
The lexical meaning, therefore, is presented as “the realization of the concept, the emotion or the relationship by the means of the linguistic system”3. The objective or nom- inative aspect of meaning has been studied deeply in numerous works. The pragmatic or subjective aspect, however, presents some gaps that require a deeper analysis. For example, there is no generally accepted definition for the components: “emotional,” “expressive,” “connotative,” or “affective.” In the same way there are diverse positions regarding the role of the register in the analysis of the components of the lexical meaning. According to Киселёва, Телия, Арнольд, the structure of lexical meaning only includes elements that are strictly semantic, so that the elements of the register belong to a peripheral level. Other researchers, however, consider that the registry confers value nuances within the lexical meaning itself.
There is a basic opposition in the analysis of the structure of meaning between the lexicon whose fundamental function is nominative, which does not suffer restrictions of occurrence, and the value lexicon, which does suffer from restrictions of occurrence. For example, the exclusive use in vocative of words that express affection or sympathy: голубчик golubčik – ‘fig. (here and further fig. – figurative meaning): dear, expression of affection; dove in a transformed form’; светик svetik – ‘fig.: dear, expression of affection; dim light’, солнышко solnyško –’ fig.: affectionate name for a loved one or a friendly vocative to someone (usually with the pronoun my) popular-poetic and colloquial; alone (БАС)’; дружище družišče – ‘fig.: friend in the vocative; expressive form friend’ (СО); старинушка starinuška – ‘fig.: uncle; old’.
The problem of the valuation that a speaker makes in speech acts, and more specifically of the use of the lexicon in the valuation, has been studied during the last decades by many researchers, such as Киселёва, Арутюнова, Арнольд, Вольф, Телия, Трипольская, Vendler, Fillmore, Wierzbicka, among others.
The present article aims to develop an approach that allows an analysis of the lexicon with emotional evaluation. In this part of the study of meaning, the theoretical problems cited above are not solved and the regularities of use are not established. Moreover, there is no corpus of lexicon in which emotional value is recorded. Negative evaluation has been more studied than positive (although the results obtained are not very satisfactory), but the large number of possible oppositions that it presents and the complexity makes it less efficient to develop a theory about valuation.
This lexical subsystem is studied superficially in dictionaries of contemporary Russian language, since no basic work has been done to develop a system of labels that convey emotional value. The labelling system used in Russian dictionaries is inconsistent and there are important shortcomings in this line of research, including the lack of an anno-
2 Л.А. Киселёва, Вопросы теории речевого воздействия, Ленинград 1978; В.Н. Телия, Коннотативный аспект семантики номинативных единиц, Москва 1986; Т.А Трипольская., Эмотивно-оценочный дискурс: когнитивный и прагматический аспекты, Новосибирск 1999.
3 И.В. Арнольд, Стилистика современного английского языка, Ленинград 1981, p. 104.
tated corpus of the words or meanings of the words expressing emotional assessment. Neither the links or oppositions between the types of units with emotional value nor the regularities of their organization, are properly defined.
Objectives and methodology
The objectives of the research presented here are to study the Russian lexicon with positive emotional value, to define the principles of its organization and to establish regularities in oral discourse and literature. Therefore, to achieve these objectives, the following work was done:
define the system (the corpus) of the lexicon with emotional evaluation from the defi- nitions and labels presented by different dictionaries;
define the category of positive emotional assessment, the definition criteria of the vocabulary that expresses this type of assessment;
from the proposed classification characteristics (also on the basis of previous work) to establish the types of valuation and the mechanisms by which these units are formed;
create a classification of this subsystem based on the semantic and thematic character- istics of the lexicon, using the lexical-semantic reference principles proposed above4 and the thematic reference principles proposed in this article;
In our work the system is described from the selection and systematization of the data (in this case lexical units) that contain the emotional evaluation. The systemic relations are established from the analysis of complex processes within the framework of lexical-
-semantic and thematic groups. In other words, functional interpretation, the establish- ment of oppositional relations and the analysis of components are used in the work. It is, therefore, a work of description of the Russian language, which aims, as mentioned above, to define a certain system in the structure of the meaning of the lexical units of Russian. Because it is sometimes necessary to refine a lot in the characterization of a meaning, especially when defining nuances or expressive or valuation contents, it is often difficult to convey the different nuances and / or degrees of intensity of certain Russian oppositions through translation. For example interpretations of word as милый milyj – ‘dear, form of affection’, родненький rodnen’kij – ‘fig.: dear; native, home dim.’, дуся dusia–’dear, kind. Loving vocation to woman, sometimes to man ‘(БАС); свет svet – ‘fig.: It is used as an affectionate vocative. Archaic; light’ do not reflect the increase of intense affection. The author`s hypothesis is that the emotional evaluation can be defined from its objective and computable components. In this way lexical units with evaluation can be identified and labelled for their implementation in the linguistic corpus. The corpus consists of the Russian lexicon in different registers that express positive and negative emotional evalu- ation. Dictionaries СО, СУ, БАС, МАС, as well as texts of modern and classical Russian literature were used as examples of sources in this work. The selection was made on the basis of СО (45,000 entries), from which a corpus of 7500 lexemes and VLS (lexical-
4 Л.А. Киселёва, Вопросы…, ibidem; В.Н. Телия, Коннотативный…, ibidem.
-semantic variants) were constituted. More than 10000 usage examples were analysed with the selected entries and the explicit reference to the evaluation in the definition or annotations was reviewed and, in cases where no explicit reference was made, linguistic criteria were followed for inclusion in the corpus. We used the labelling system that was developed in Zainouldinov5, Зайнульдинов6 so that this system was tested in the present analysis.
Emotional Evaluation as a component of the lexical meaning
From the point of view of logic, Emotional Valuation is an internal assessment. It dis- tinguishes between internal evaluations (intuitive, primary, objective and properly valuing) and external (useful, teleological, instrumental) evaluations. Internal valuations express subjective relations, but do not exclude objective elements, since in the emotional eval- uation there are certain patterns, ideals or models, which Fillmore7 calls stereotypes and Телия8, “quasistereotypes.” According to this, the specific character of Emotional Valuation consists in the fact that it can accompany other types of valuations, for example, according to Вольф9, sensorial, ethical, aesthetic, moral appraisals; according to Киселёва10, it can accompany axiological assessments (political, religious, ethical, aesthetic; and, according to Арутюнова11, hedonistic, normative and psychological assessments. Not all types of valuation that distinguishes logical-philosophical analysis have correspondence in lin- guistic units in the plane of expression. This assumption is crucial for the development of our analysis, since the components that are only relevant in the nominative plane are no longer relevant in the study that concerns us.
Emotional evaluation and word meaning
Before analyzing the relationship between lexical meaning and Emotional Assessment, it is worth clarifying fundamental points such as the relationship between lexical meaning and concept. The lexical meaning, according to the theoretical position proposed here, is presented as the verbal realization of the concept, the emotion or the relationship. The concept is recognized as a phenomenon not identical to the lexical meaning, which, in turn, includes expressive, emotional, and so on, connotations. In addition, the properly semantic nuances are not confused with those of registration. Regarding the register, it
5 A. Zainouldinov, Tipología de los diccionarios de la lengua rusa y un sistema de anotación lexicográfica de la expresividad en ellos, Barcelona 2004.
6 А.А. Зайнульдинов, Эмоциональная оценочность русской лексики и фразеологии (опыт прагмалингви- стического словаря), “Russian Language Journal” 2007, Vol. 57.
7 Ch.J. Fillmore, Основные проблемы лексической семантики, “Новое в зарубежной лингвистике” 1983, 12, p. 109.
8 В.Н. Телия, Коннотативный…, ibidem, p. 44.
9 Е.М. Вольф, Функциональная семантика оценки, Москва 1985, p.43.
10 Л.А. Киселёва, Вопросы…, ibidem, p. 18.
11 Н.Д. Арутюнова, Об объекте общей оценки, “Вопросы языкознания” 1985, 3, p. 15.
should be pointed out that the present proposal of analysis adopts the position of Киселёва by which the proper elements of the register remain in the periphery of the meaning outside the lexical meaning that includes properly semantic elements. A strong argument for this position is the possibility of giving negative or positive values independently of the register. For example the following words have all negative value: кляча kl’ača (vulgar) ‘wretched nag’, донос donos (colloquial) ‘delation’, гордыня gordyn’a (cult) ‘pride’. Therefore, the meaning of the word includes its own expressive elements that characterize in a stable and univocal way the phenomenon itself or object denoted and at the same time does not include elements of record that characterize the discourse: archaisms, dialecticisms, professionalisms12. If Emotional Evaluation is not admitted to have component status of the lexical meaning, then the expressive meaning and the traces of registration are confounded and the thesis that the record lacks designation ob- ject is ignored. Likewise, the expressive component (including the emotional-evaluative component as a subtype) together with the descriptive component make up both the real objects and the subjective forms of emotional and voluntary human reactions. For this reason the expressive component must be included in the structure of the lexical meaning. According to this position it is thought that expressive words present a double denotativity: first denoted, as in the non-expressive word, is a fragment of objective reality, and second denoted is the human psyche: emotional experiences, mental states, voluntary intentions as a relatively independent parts. The semantics of emotional evaluation do not reflect the traits of the denoted, but a determined attitude towards it, a fact that has allowed us to define the valuation as an important component of the lexical meaning.
At the same time, Emotional Evaluation, regardless of its concrete properties, constitutes
the denotative part of the structure of meaning (words like милый milyj – ‘affection form’, дорогой dorogoj – ‘fig.: dear’, проклятый prokl’atyj – ‘damn’, пакость pakost’ ‘filth’), since its descriptive content represents a more general concept of something (someone) attractive or disgusting. The works of Киселёва13 present a more complete global vision of the typology of lexical-pragmatic meanings. According to its communicative function, it distinguishes the following meanings: a) nominative, b) deictic, c) nominative-evaluative,
d) determinative, e) emotional. Within the framework of nominative-value meaning there is a combination of conceptual-descriptive and emotional-value content. The proportion in the combination of components depends on the concrete character of the words. Thus, the emotional-evaluative part can be so small that the word can be considered as belonging to a category of logical language. But it is also true that the emotional part can dominate in such a way that the idea seems to be reduced to zero14. For example, the case of the scientific terminology, on the one hand, and on the other, the interjections. This idea
12 Д.Н. Шмелёв, Проблемы семантического анализа лексики (на материале русского языка), Москва 1973, p. 252.
13 Л.А. Киселёва, Вопросы…, ibidem.
14 Ch. Bally, Французская стилистика, Москва 1961, p. 23.
that emotional assessment forms part of the denotative and connotative component in the structure of lexical meaning was developed in the works of Телия15, Трипольская16. Instead of the notions of denoted and connoted, for expressive lexicon the terms “pri- mary nominative semantics” (which refers to the meaning of the expressive word) and “nominative secondary semantics” (which refers to the differential part of the lexical meaning) are often used. In addition, denoting secondary co-meaning is a determining aspect of primary meaning (the characteristic of the object) and the expressive part of meaning is “a sense of the existence of the word in the language.” Precisely the domain of one of the types of co-meaning determines the difference between neutral and expressive synonyms: кричать kričat – ‘shout, cry, yell’, ругаться rugat’s’a – ‘swear, curse, abuse’, орать orat’ – ‘yell, bawl, roar’, лаяться lajat’s’a – ‘fig.: bark, rail’. Телия gives prefer- ential attention to the macro-component of the lexical meaning that expresses the subject’s emotional attitude towards the denoted, including in this attitude the emotional-value modalities, constitutes the register mark in its broadest sense and the expressive tone17. The distinction between the modality de re (which defines the designated object) and the modal character (which qualifies the object designated by its trait that does not form part of the denotation) allows the modality of value itself (emotional-evaluative, connotative) to be defined. Thanks to this fact the cases like рассеянный rassejannyj – ‘distracted’, in which only a trait is referred to, are differentiated from cases like медведь medved’ – ‘fig.: clumsy; bear ‘, in which reference is made to more than one evaluative feature: медведь medved’ does not mean only ‘clumsy’, but also ‘clumsy due to bulkiness’18. Emotional-
-evaluative words are, as a rule, distinguished from their neutral synonyms not only by
Emotional Evaluation, but also by the descriptive content (критикан kritikan – ‘person
who criticizes in a reparative, unjust way’).
Expressiveness, Emotivity and Evaluation (Emotional Evaluation)
The definition and punctuation of positions related to pragmatic semantics are possible thanks to the separation of the following components: Expressiveness, Emotivity and Evaluation (Emotional Evaluation. Expressiveness and Emotivity were highlighted for the first time in the work of of Киселёва19. According to this, the component “Emotion- al Valuation” is a partial variety of the “Emotivity” component with some restrictions. According to Киселёва, words denoting moral values are Valuation-Emotional, but not Expressive. For example, добрый dobryj ‘good’, смелый smelyj ‘brave’ etc. they are value-emotional but they are not expressive. From the perspective of the present proposal, if they are not expressive, they are not emotional-evaluated.
15 В.Н. Телия, Коннотативный…, ibidem.
16 Т.А Трипольская, Эмотивно-оценочный…, ibidem.
17 В.Н. Телия, Коннотативный…, ibidem, p. 17.
18 Ibidem, pp. 25–26.
19 Л.А. Киселёва, Вопросы…, ibidem.
The relationship between the different components is outlined as follows: [Expressive- ness [ Emotivity [Emotional Evaluation] ] ]20.
The expressive component is connected to the semes of a qualifying-quantitative character, with the semblance of intensity, with the figurative meaning, with figurative representations, and this is reflected in the classifications: the semblance of expressivity (intensity of trait or quality, figurative meaning, novelty)21, hyperbolic denomination, “freshness” of the word, motivation, figurativeness, intensity or extensiveness, the high or low degree of a certain trait, action, or state. Other researchers consider that expressiveness is a characteristic of the utterance or of the text in general, but they introduce the category of affectivity, which includes the degree of intensity22. The intensification of expressiveness or figurativeness, the increase in the force of influence of the said is manifested in the comparison of the synonymous pairs: хороший khoroshij ‘good’ <прекрасный prekrasnyj ‘excellent’ <потрясающий potraisajuščij ‘stupendous’.
In terms of expressivity in the lexical level, prefixes and suffixes may be indicators of the so-called Subjective Evaluation, which can be used to refer to the subjunctive, for example the diminutive-affectionate suffixes: кисочка kisočka – ‘cat’, малышка malyška – ‘little child’, детишки detiški – ‘children’, loving suffixes: денечек den’oček – ‘day’, солнышко solnyško – ‘sun’, diminutive suffixes: барашек barašek – ‘lamb’, козлятки kozl’atki – ‘goats’, the prefixes with meaning of amplification раз-, пре-: развеселый razvesiolyj – ‘very cheerful’, преинтересный preinteresnyj – ‘very interesting’. Other indicators can be the semantic and derivative motivation of the Principio del formula- riowords, which may be more or less transparent, as нежиться nežit’s’a – ‘bask in’,
20 A. Zainouldinov, Tipología…, ibidem.
21 Л.А. Киселёва, Вопросы…, ibidem, p. 55.
22 В.Н. Телия, Коннотативный…, ibidem; Е.М. Вольф, Функциональная…, ibidem.
рифмоплёт rifmopl’ot – ‘rhymer, poetaster’, звездануть zvezdanut’ – ‘crash’ (in the latter case the speaker knows that the word is motivated from * звезд-zvezd ‘star’ but does not relate it to the meaning of ‘crashing’ in the sense of ‘shattering’). The motivation can also occur from a process of metaphorization, for example осёл os’ol – ‘fig.: very stupid and stubborn person; ass ‘, зубр zubr –’ fig.: person with much experience; bison’, малина malina – ‘fig.: something very good; raspberry’).
In some works that study Emotivity in the lexical meaning, the terms that denominate emotions are considered as a lexicon that expresses emotion not in its occasional use but in its fixed meaning. This position is difficult to maintain in the case of distinguishing between Nominative Function and Expressive Function. For example, милый milyj – ‘dear, affectionate form’, дружба družba – ‘friendship’, express emotional relationship and emotions, do not transmit any emotional or expressive element. These words are not distinguished from others that are unanimously included in the own-rational lexicon groups such as сто лstol – ‘table’, белый belyj – ‘white’, любовьliubov – ‘love’, ненависть nenavist’ – ‘hate’.
Lexical-semantic description of units with emotional evaluation
The figurative meaning
The differentiation of the components “expressiveness, emotion and valuation” allows the terminology to be defined, but at the lexical level a new element appears without which it is not possible to define the Concept of Emotional Value: the figurative meaning. As with categories and components of meaning, the figurative meaning can be considered and treated in different ways. The figurative meaning Principio del formulariotransfers the figurative representations that define the internal form of the word as an associative-
-metaphorical motive and that give rise to an image based on a linguistic motivation. In other words, when using a word in a figurative sense evokes the primary nominative meaning, it is said that there is figurative meaning. For example, in the word свинья svin’ja there is a primary nominative meaning, therefore without valuation, ‘pig’ (mam- mal domestic pachyderm…), and a figurative meaning “dirty person”, “bad person.” Regardless of the figurative meaning to be taken, the word presents a figurative com- ponent that refers to “as if it were a pig”, with the associations “dirt”, “little delicacy”, “misconduct”.
You can also give figurative words without figurative meaning like время идет vrem’a id’ot – ‘time walks (time goes by)’ in which the verb ‘walk’ is used figuratively but does not evoke the action of going walking. It can also be the case that there is no figurative mean- ing but connotation. For example, in gross бурда burda –’slipslop’ there is no figurative meaning, but the primary nominative meaning has associated with negative connotation. The essence of metaphorical figurativity is the identification of two objects from the features common to both. These common features are indirectly called through the fig- urative meaning, which exists in the linguistic competence of the speakers. The roots of linguistic figurativity are not found in semantics but in the thesaurus, in the system of
meanings23. For example, dirt in Russian or Spanish is associated with the image of the pig, which is not done in other languages out of the Judaic-Christian tradition.
In these words, the primary nominative meaning and the figurative meaning are simul- taneously perceived, so that through the so-called Association Act24 it can be established that these units have a double plan. The characteristic (‘dirt’) is indirectly called through an image-symbol (figurative meaning, associative characteristics): “image provokes emotion”25.
If secondary meaning is not perceived from the primary meaning, metaphorical figu- rativity disappears. Expressiveness and Emotional Evaluation can occur on the basis of novelty and lack of semantic motivation of secondary assessment, that is, it is not essen- tial that the speaker establishes any relation between a primary meaning and secondary, expressive meaning (metaphorical means).
Therefore, the Figurativity is a semantic component that reflects associations (images), connected with the defined word and, through this defined word, with the trait. The traits fixed in the figurative meaning of the word can be inferred or semantically transformed. The specific character of Figurativity as a means of creating Expressiveness determines the existence of the connotative semes (including the emotional values), which combine with the denotative meaning and provoke an intense persuasive effect.
The role of the internal structure of the word in the process of creation of Expressive- ness was posed by Шмелёв26 in his work on lexical semantics of the Russian language. The analysis of nominative primary meanings and derivative secondary meanings (for example, as in ремесленник remeslennik – ‘artisan’ and ‘person working without cre- ativity’, пятно p’atno – ‘stain’ and ‘dishonor’ allowed conclusions to be drawn as: “The corresponding common features are not the semantic differential features of these words, nor are they constructive elements of meaning: they are fixed associations connected with representations of the phenomenon called by the word”27.
Relationships that add paradigmatic and syntagmatic links can be “derivative or se- mantically motivated”28 and define an epigenetic dimension established by associations that determine expressive secondary meanings.
Structural methodology cannot accept that figurativity is determined by the internal structure of the word. However, without considering the structure, it seems impossible to describe the lexical meaning of the expressive units, so it seems that precisely the figura- tivity included in the internal structure of the word determines not only the development of meaning but also the peculiarities of its use.
23 Ю.Н. Караулов, Общая и русская идеография, Москва 1976; M. Black, Models and Metaphors. Studies
in Language and Philosophy, Ithaca 1962.
24 В.Н. Телия, Коннотативный…, ibidem.
25 Ibidem, p. 14.
26 Д.Н. Шмелёв, Проблемы…, ibidem.
27 Ibidem, pp. 193–194.
28 В.Н. Телия, Русская фразеология. Семантический, прагматический и лингвокультурологический аспекты, Москва 1996, p. 27.
The introduction of this dimension makes it possible to understand the importance of the motivated base of the vocabulary and phraseology and defines the need to investigate the internal structure in the figurative aspect (metaphorical, metonymic), as well as the role of symbols or quasisymbols. This idea seems similar to the action frames29, which allowed us to introduce the concept of “prototype” or “gestalt-structure”, which corre- sponds to a more concrete image or representation than a notion – with stored essential details and omitted minor details. In psychology theories there is an equivalent to this phenomenon – a typical image (stereotype, etalon or pattern). According to the proposal of Телия, the emotive meaning always has a semi-descriptive character “as if X were equivalent to Y”. This scenario corresponds to the prototypical models of behaviour30. According to Wierzbicka, the expression of negative valuation is defined as a model of type “a) X is a very bad person; b) X is capable of doing very bad things; c) X causes me very negative feelings”31. Punctuation “feel, feelings” allows us to define this type of assessment as emotional. Lakoff32, Lakoff and Johnson33, Pastor34 give analogy and motivation a special role in semantics. In these works the category of semantic motivation defines different phenomena, which are directly related to our object of study: a) myths and folklore; b) conventional figures and images, necessary to create new phraseological units or to interpret those that already exist; c) transformations of figurative schemes, motivated by visual or kinesthetic experience; d) conventional and kinesthetic metaphors as a basis for creating “living” phraseological units, in the active use of language; e) metonymy relations35. The image that evokes a lexical unit with figurative meaning is a component of expressiveness. Therefore, following this reasoning and from the argument outlined in36 the present paper, it can be affirmed that the figurative meaning is also a component of Emotional Valuation: Expressiveness> Emotional Evaluation> Meaning Evaluative. Words that present figurative meaning can be grouped into the following emotional value types:
figurative words motivated semantically or morphologically:
tropes (metaphorical and metonymic denominations motivated semantically); for ex- ample, орел or’ol – ‘fig.: brave, big man; eagle’, шляпа shl’apa – ‘fig.: dupe; hat’,
lexemes that transmit a trait or a characteristic to a high degree, for example,
чудовищный chudoviščnyj – ‘fig.: extremely bad, monstrous’),
morphologically motivated lexemes, for example the root morpheme in words
съёжитьсяsjožit’s’a ‘fig.: snuggle, shrink, verb from hedgehog;
derived words semantically motivated, for example белоснежный belosnežnyj (bel-
‘white’, sneg- ‘snow’) – ‘white as snow’, крохотный krokhotnyj – ‘fig.: tiny; crumb’,
29 G. Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, Chicago 1987; Ch.J. Fillmore, Основные…, ibidem.
30 A. Wierzbicka, Defining emotion concepts, “Cognitive Science” 1992, Vol. 16; А. Вежбицкая, Русский язык, “Язык. Культура. Познание” 1996.
31 А. Вежбицкая, Русский…, ibidem, p. 82.
32 G. Lakoff, Women…, ibidem.
33 G. Lakoff, M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago 1980.
34 G. Pastor, Manuel de fraseología española, Madrid 1996, p. 121.
35 G. Lakoff, Women…, ibidem.
36 Л.А. Киселёва, Вопросы…, ibidem, p. 55.
Metaphorical words with figurative meaning not semantically motivated (which have no figurative meaning):
lexemes containing various morphemes with figurative meaning, раздраконить razdrakonit’(raz- ‘prefix meaning “in parts” drakon- ‘dragon’) – ‘destroy fig.; what the dragon did’, звездануть zvezdanut’ (zved- ‘star’, -nu- ‘verbal suffix indicating “once”) – ‘hit fig.’;
lexemes, which by their exotism evoke a certain figurative meaning in their phonic form, for example абракадабра abrakadabra – ‘something incomprehensible and strange’, кавардак kavardak – ‘disorder’ (a mechanism of phonic associations),
artificial words such as мымраmymra – ‘boring, ugly and disagreeable woman’,
фифа fifa– ‘person who adds believability and weight’.
Conclusion
A more complete definition of Emotional Assessment can be established from the criteria that have been developed in the present work. It can be considered as the expres- sion of an emotional attitude that causes an emotional effect that is realized on positive (approval, admiration, friendly affection, sympathy) or negative (disapproval, extreme disapproval, pejorative and contemptuous) planes. As one can see, this definition follows the same line that was started by Киселёва37 that defined Emotional Evaluation as “ratio- nal valuation of someone or something, as if it had gone through the emotional prism of the human mentality on the positive and negative planes”. The constituents, therefore, of the category of Emotional Valuation that have been defined from the correlation between Expressiveness and Emotional Valuation are: the figurative meaning, the expression of a high degree of certain characteristic, of “novelty” based on obscure motivation, met- aphorization, which by its exoticism evokes a certain figurative meaning in its phonic form, the artificiality of forms.
It has been shown that Emotional Assessment is performed at all levels of language, phonetic, morphological, syntactic and lexical, but it is in the latter that it is revealed to a greater degree. Systematic characteristics of Emotional Assessment have also been defined: its subjective-objective nature, the existence of norms, patterns, stereotypes in competition. From the proposed analysis it can be affirmed that the opposition between Emotional Val- uation and Emotional Relationship is not correct, but rather that the emotional relationship is made in Emotional Valuation. The rational and emotional components can be expressed both in the denotative meaning (чудесный čudesnyj – ‘wonderful’, молодец molodec – ‘well done’), and in the connotative meaning (стальной stal’noj – ‘fig: steel, iron, орёл or’ol – ‘fig.: brave man, big, eagle). It is confirmed that the components “Expressiveness”, “Emotivity” and “Emotional Evaluation” are in a hierarchical dependency relationship. This point was proposed by Киселёва38, but Киселёва did not argue for the necessity of
37 Ibidem, p. 17.
38 Ibidem.
hierarchy. Criteria for determining the emotional value lexicon have been proposed: the figurative meaning, the high degree of the characteristic that is transmitted, the importance of the phonic form, the artificiality or the novelty and the morphological motivation. A thematic classification of the lexical groups is presented in which the belonging of the primary nominative meaning to a certain group conditions the appearance of the emotional valuation in the figurative sense (or secondary meanings).
Certainly, this pragmatic analysis does not reflect the entire diversity of the linguistic picture of the world of Russians; nevertheless, the offered classification can be used to develop concepts of lingual-cultural studies, lexicographic practice, teaching Russian as a foreign language.
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Abstract
Emotional evaluation in the Russian language as an object of study
The main purpose of communication activity is not only to describe events, but also to evaluate them emotionally or expressively. This article describes emotional evaluation, expressiveness and emotionality (emotivity) in relation to the vocabulary of the Russian language. The author suggests criteria for identifying this type of impact and analyses it in detail. The results of the presented Emotional-evaluative dictionary EMOS can be taken into account in lexicographical description and in automatic translation, as well as in teaching Russian as a foreign language.
lexicographical description