Mintsys Y. Diminutivity in Literary Discourse: Cognitive and Pragmatic Aspects (based on English Children Prose)

This dissertation focuses on the peculiarities of the category DIMINUTIVITY in English children prose, and it is based on the integrative approaches and methods of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics. The research deals with theoretical and methodological principles of studying diminutivity; it specifies notional frames of diminutivity as a phenomenon of modern children prose and determines the criteria of interpreting diminutivity as a notional category. The research also describes the constituent structure of the lexical meaning of diminutive in the English language; it defines the role of diminutivity in English linguistic and conceptual worldviews and presents peculiarities of conceptualization of diminutivity in children prose; it reveals the ways of verbalization of the concept DIMINUTIVITY in English on morphological and lexical-syntactical levels. The research defines strategies of actualization of the pragmatic component of diminutive meaning; it models the discourse situation in which diminutivity occurs in English children prose; it determines illocutionary force of speech acts in which diminutives occur in English children prose.