Masalska N. Comparative Analysis of the Category of Presupposition in the English, German and Ukrainian aphorisms.

The thesis concerns itself with the comparative analysis of the category of presupposition in the English, German and Ukrainian aphorisms. A critical review of the conceptions of modality within the framework of modern linguistic paradigm has been presented; the role and place of the category of presupposition in the structure of functional and semantic field of modality were determined; the units of the microfield of presupposition have been studied in the paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects in the English, German and Ukrainian languages; the genre and style characteristics of aphorisms have been elucidated; discursive relevance of the category of presupposition in the contrasted languages has been defined. The methodologies of analysis implemented in the paper permitted a comprehensive study of the multilevel category of presupposition both on the level of language and on the level of speech. The study of the category of presupposition on the paradigmatic and syntagmatic levels has highlighted the structural and semantic patterns of the category under consideration, as well as the impact of sentence factors on realization of this phenomenon in the syntagmatic chain in each of the three languages. Functioning of the category of presupposition in the English, German and Ukrainian aphorisms was studied taking into account their genre and style characteristics. To determine the discursive relevance of this category a number of methods for quantitative analysis were applied, which jointly created a panoramic picture of the use of instruments of the analyzed category in the aphorismic discourse.