Hryhorenko N. Peculiarities of the Semantic Space of Nouns Denoting Emotional Phenomena in English and Ukrainian.

The thesis focuses on the contrastive analysis of the semantic peculiarities of substantive lexical means denoting emotional phenomena in English and Ukrainian. The paper considers the structure of the semantic space composed by the names of emotions in the linguistic world-images under comparison; semantic relations between the elements of the identified microfields have been determined and the common and nationally specific features of their organisation have been pointed out. All the substantive lexical means representing emotional phenomena in English and Ukrainian have been classified for the first time. A model for the systemic analysis of the semantics of an individual designation of emotional experience and the semantic field of lexical units denoting people’s emotions has been proposed, which can be useful in further research of ‘the vocabulary of emotions’ based on other languages. The criteria for segmenting the semantic space of the names of emotions have been distinguished. The diffusive nature of the semantic language continuum has been demonstrated. The universal and specific characteristics of verbalization of various emotional reactions in English and Ukrainian have been described. The proportions of the lexical units denoting specific types of emotional reactions in the common semantic space of names of emotions in English and Ukrainian have been defined to display the priority of certain psychic manifestations in the national world views.