The Transitional State as an Object of Description in an Explanatory-Ideographic Dictionary

The article aims to analyze the representation of words with semantics of the transitional state in an ideographic dictionary and to identify the means of semanticization of the transitional state in dictionary definitions. The authors address the problem of distinguishing the concepts of “state”/“non-state”, “temporary state” / “border state” / “transitional state”. According to the authors, the transitional state is the state at the moment of which X is in the process of turning into Y (for example, agony is a transition from life (X) to death (Y); warming is a transition from cold (X) to heat (Y); youth is a transition from adolescence (X) to maturity (Y), etc.). In the dictionary definitions of nominations of the transitional state, the semes “temporality”, “dynamism”, “combination of signs X and Y”, “pronounced change of X into Y” should be detected. The research was carried out on the material of the Large Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Nouns edited by L.G. Babenko. The research methods were dictionary definitions analysis, component analysis, and quantitative calculations. The research included several stages: 1) identification of categories with the typical semantics of “state” in the dictionary; 2) identification of units with the semantics of the transitional state in these categories; 3) identification of linguistic means of expressing the semantics of the transitional state; 4) analysis of other categories of the dictionary taking into account the established means of expressing the semantics of the transitional state. In the course of the research, three ways of expressing the meaning of the transitional state were characterized: 1) the inclusion of the word state in the name of a lexical group - 6 lexical groups with a total of 368 nominations, 22 of which name transitional states; 2) the indication of the presence of the seme “state” in the typical semantics of a lexical group -6 lexical groups with a total of 336 nominations, 15 of which name transitional states; 3) the presence of means of expressing the transitional state in the very interpretation of a particular lexical unit - 22 lexical groups with a total of 998 nominations, 169 of which name transitional states. Finally, 34 lexical groups with a total of 1702 units were identified, of which 206 units (12%) name transitional states. The research shows that lexical, morphological, and word-forming means are used to express the semantics of the transitional state - as a rule, in a complex. The research has revealed that lexical units with the meaning of the transitional state are found not so much in categories specially designated for the description of states as in categories with other typical semantics. Obviously, this is due to the presence of semantic intersections, which is why one word can be described by several parameters and included in several denotative classes at once, in most of which it describes some particular manifestation of the corresponding typical situation.

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