ACTUALIZATION OF ENGLISH ADJECTIVES DENOTING MENTAL CATEGORIES AND SPECIFICITY OF THEIR TRANSLATION INTO UKRAINIAN

Abstract

The article is focused on the consideration of the semantic characteristics which are manifested by the lexical semantic field constituted by the adjectives of contemporary English. The English language, like many others, has accumulated significant lexical potential for various aspects of intellectual strength and cognitive skills. In a linguistic sense, it can be characterized based on the analysis of a certain lexical and semantic field. To identify the verbal characteristics of the adjectives that characterize positive and negative intellectual properties, the composition and structure of the corresponding lexical-semantic field have been determined, the semantic structure of the dominants of the selected lexical-semantic groups have been analyzed along with the peculiarities of their reflection in the constituents of the field. It has been identified that the field under study consists of the lexical semantic groups each of which is represented by a specific semantic subcategory being of positive or negative connotation (Mental, Clever, Intellectual, etc.). The carried out analysis revealed the semantic structure of the mental adjectives, peculiarities of their combinatory properties as well as regularities of their translation into Ukrainian. It has been found out that the semantic structure of adjectives with negative connotation is not as ramified as the one of the positive connotation, though their number is nearly the same. It has also been identified that translation of mental adjectives into Ukrainian depends on their combinatory power and verbal context. The study of the intellect notional category helps understand how words and their multiple meanings are stratified within the lexical semantic field, providing an explanation for the phenomena of polysemy and synonymy/antonymy inherent in the units of the lexical semantic field, for creating thematic dictionaries-thesauri.