Marchyshyna A. Functional and Semantic Peculiarities of Humorous Modality Verb Operators: a Study of Modern English Fiction

The dissertation focuses on the functional and semantic analysis of humorous modality verb operators in modern English fiction. The notions of humorous text modality as well as humorous modality verb operators were introduced. The humorous situation was stated to be the sphere of respective verb operators functioning. The selection of humorous situations from the texts was carried on with the help of humorous situation model which is defined as an analog of an utterance with such obligatory components: a verb operator of humorous modality, its context and a seme in the verb operator's meaning the realization of which provides the context with humorous modality. The likeness in humorous effect formation helped to group the models of humorous situations into blocks. The semantic structure and thematic distribution of verb operators were analyzed. The main text functions (referential, operational, regulative, suggestive) of humorous modality verb operators were ascertained. Humorous modality verb operators are proved to be polyfunctional text elements.