Subjective Images of Time in Modern Slavic Languages: Diminutive Models

This paper presents the pragmatic sense of subjective evaluation expressed by a diminutive suffix attached to the names of the exact time intervals ( minute , godzinka , sedmichka and others) in Russian, Bulgarian and Polish. For detecting actualized meanings, we use the procedure of contextual analysis and analysis of translational correspondences. The basic and Parallel Russian-Bulgarian and Russian-Polish Subcorpora of Russian National Corpus served as the main source of data. The author describes the variants of the subjective-evaluative meanings expressed by different types of units in the three languages and reveals the contextual conditions for the actualization of revealed meanings. Diminutive names of exact time periods refer to three types of values: 1) the subjective attitude of the speaker to the time interval as minor, small, and the implied positive emotion, 2) the positive attitude of the speaker to events and situations that occur at this time; the derivative does not express the value «small» and is highly context-dependent; 3) the attitude of the speaker to the situation as a whole; the diminutive does not express the value «small», but functions a means of naming the expression in the sentence as a whole. The present research made it possible to conclude that the differences between the three languages manifest themselves in the absence of certain diminutive derivatives, the extent of their functional activity in terms particular pragmatic meanings. The names of small periods of time in all of the languages actualize only the subjectively-dimensional value. The names of large time intervals are characterized by a wide range of evaluation and expressive meanings. Сomplex meanings of diminutives are expressed during interaction with the semantics of syntactic constructions and lexemes of the sentence in compared languages.

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