Secondary values of verbal adjectives on -emyy-/ -imyy: sphere of sense perception

The paper discusses the patterns of secondary meaning formation in verbal adjectives with suffixes -em- / -im-. Factors influencing these processes are the presence of a mandatory modal component in the semantic structure of adjectives, the participation / non-participation of non-prefix in their formation, the semantics of the motivating verb. Given these factors, two main semantic groups of adjectives are identified: (1) derivatives of perceptual state verbs (oshchutimyy, ulovimyy); (2) derivatives of perceptual action verbs (obozrimyy, razlichimyy). The classification is built on the opposition of verbal nouns with prefix ne- and without it (vidimyy - nevidimyy, etc.). Systematization of secondary meanings allowed establishing paradigmatic relationships between perceptual adjectives with different generative foundations, revealing the patterns of various meaning formation, noting the meanings not documented in dictionaries but developing in speech. All perceptual adjectives denote in their secondary meanings the ontological feature of the object regarding its distinctness of existence for the subject of perception. For ne- adjectives of this group, the semantics of the impossibility of sensual perception may signal the existence of an object in the consciousness of the perceptor. Contextual means often emphasize the value of such ideally existing objects. When the meaning of purposeful mental action increases in verbal adjective semantics, the character of secondary values changes. Perceptual action adjectives denote a variety of qualitative characteristics of an object: temporal / spatial extent, similarity, peculiarity degree, originality, distinctive character. Only to some extent does the study confirm the idea of the linguistic priority of visual perception. The tokens vidimyy / nevidimyy, zrimyy / nezrimyy demonstrate a high activity of semantic derivation and are superior to tokens slyshimyy / neslyshimyy. The tokens osyazaemyy / neosyazaemyy and oshchutimyy / neoshchutimyy are not inferior to “visual” adjectives and surpass them in the number of meanings in non-derivatives’ sphere. Based on the modal semantics of adjectives of both groups, a quantitative value of strong / weak degree of a sign or condition is formed, allowing perceptive adjectives to act as intensives.

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