Gladkova G. Cognitive and Discourse Motivation of Abstract Nouns in -ness in British Fiction of 18th - 20th centuries.

Semantic analysis of nouns in -ness led to the creation of a thesaurus of 1014 nouns linked through synonymic, antonymic, gradual and hyponimic relations, both contextual and conditioned by the language system. Since the generic categorical meaning of nouns in -ness is "quality or state of being such-and-such", their lexical meanings are highly gradable and reflect the speaker's evaluation of an object with respect to a certain scale, represented in the thesaurus through 37 oppositive concepts like Happiness - Unhappiness and Beauty - Ugliness. The scope of meaning of an abstract noun is highly context-dependent. It is shown that abstract nouns in -ness tend to be made more specific through derivational and semantic links with other words used within the same context.