Goncharova T. Linguoaxiological semantics of agentive nominative units with the suffix -er in Modern English.

The research focuses on the study of the onomasiological and semasiological peculiarities of the English agentive nominative units with the suffix -er. On the basis of the principles of building up the conceptual pattern of linguistic nomination the lexical-semantic field of nominative units denoting the doer of an action has been distinguished and the structure of the connotative macrocomponent of their semantics has been determined. The semantic classification of the agentive nominative units based on their associative-thematic characteristics related to the seme of evaluation and different connotative sense has made it possible to distinguish five lexico-semantic groups in the field of nomina agentis under study. In its turn, the semantic classification has enabled us to carry out the agglomerative clusterization of the invariant model “Person as the doer of an action” into four clusters and to trace the semantic shift of the nominative units under analysis towards amelioration and pejoration. The conceptual analysis has been used in the description of functional-onomasiological microfields of the agentive nominative units in question within which certain invariant-variant formations have been singled out.