Word-Formation field of the emotional concept ‘PECHAL’ [sadness] in the Russian language

Abstract

The word-formation field of an emotional concept is an ordered system of categorical derivational values that reflect cognitive criteria and are expressed with the help of derivational means. Having analyzed the derivatives included in the family of words of the noun ‘печаль’ [sadness] as well as its synonyms, we can note that the most significant micro fields in the structure of the word-formation field of the Russian concept ‘‘печаль’ [sadness] are ‘Action’ and ‘Attribute, Quality’ which confirms the importance of these cognitive criteria in representations of emotional concepts. The intensity is manifested indirectly due to derivative verbs with prefixes vs- (vz-), na -, ras-. The micro field ‘Person’ lies on the periphery of the word-formation field: all derivatives with the value of a ‘Person’ are not stylistically neutral. The analysis of the historical development of the word-formation field of the noun naming the concept showed that, on the one hand, the number of its derivatives is being reduced and, on the other hand, the interaction of cognitive criteria is being intensified at the word-formation level since many derivatives can express several categorical derivational values (for example, action and intensity).

The novelty of the suggested approach lies in the fact that building a model of the word-formation field of the concept enables us to talk about the specifics of this section of the nominative field, describe the word-formation processes, show the interaction of different ways of word-building, and try to establish the dependence of the structure of the word-formation field on the type of the concept.