Conceptual and Lexical Gaps in the Sphere of the Human Inner World and Authors' Ways of Their Elimination (Based on Examples from the Literature of the 20th Century)

The aim of the article is a linguistic description of a special type of an intralanguage lexical gap in the semantic sphere “human inner world”, i.e., the type characterised by the lack of both a word to denote the mental phenomenon and a clearcut nationwide concept of the phenomenon. The article suggests the term “conceptual and lexical gaps” for such cases. It is part and parcel of the writer's work to eliminate such lexical gaps with authors' individual concepts, on the conceptual level, and with some newly coined or newly combined means of expression, on the language level. The research material is Russian and English literature of the 20th century (Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Nabokov, Colin Wilson, Joseph Brodsky, John Fowles, Viktor Pelevin); works in which descriptions of a person's mental life play a significant role were selected. The analysis draws on the lexical gap theory (Yu.A. Sorokin, I.Yu. Markovina, G.V. Bykova et al.), in particular, on the statement that there exist “intralanguage gaps”, i.e., lexical gaps that can be traced without comparing two or more languages. The method of conceptual analysis is used. At the preliminary stage of research, microcontexts with the writers' multiword names for mental phenomena, and also those with descriptions of unnamed mental phenomena, were chosen from the texts. Then, the analysis of the context of these names and descriptions showed the pragmatic factors causing the character's or the lyrical hero's need to eliminate the gap. At the final stage, a significant semantic difference between two groups of conceptual and language gaps was identified. It can be concluded that there are three main pragmatic factors making a person feel such a type of lexical gap. The speaker notices a conceptual and language gap under the following conditions: (1) (s)he experiences some mental phenomenon and realises it; (2) (s)he realises its personal importance; and (3) (s)he does not find any brief name for this phenomenon in the language (s)he uses. Having generated, in the process of comprehension of the mental phenomenon, the nucleus of its individual concept, (s)he tries to represent this concept by choosing language means. Another result of the analysis is the conclusion that the writers' descriptions of mental phenomena uncovering conceptual and language gaps fall into two semantic groups. The first group includes descriptions of mental phenomena directly associated with the external (i.e., not belonging to the described sphere) object, e.g., Nabokov's feeling of the starry sky (The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight) and Brodsky's feeling ofpatina (Homage to Yalta). The second one includes descriptions of mental phenomena characterised by their internal structure, not by what has caused them. The effect of “recoil” after an insight (Ultima Thule by Nabokov, Buddha's Little Finger (aka Chapaev and Void) by Pelevin, The Mind Parasites by Wilson) and the cosmic synchronisation (Speak, Memory by Nabokov) may serve as examples.

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