The variety of figurative semantics of the word by psycholinguistic experiment results

The topicality of the research of figurative tools of language is due to their pragmatic potential (which is connected with expressing axiological attitude to objects and phenomenon that are named). Following the founders of the theory of figurative semantics (Blinova O. I. and Yurina E.A.) we understand this linguistic phenomenon as a category that generalizes units of the lexical-phraseological level of language with two planes of semantics expressed metaphorically. This article shows the experimental research of realization of figurative lexical units proper. It involved 700 hundred people aged 15 to 55 with different level of education and different social origin as respondents. This research was aimed to identify how the native speakers realize such features of figurativeness as motivation, metaphoricalness and expressiveness. The stages of the research and its results are described below. The results from each stage of this research are a unique material that reveals the reflection of semantics of figurative words in the minds of native speakers from different perspectives. Lexical units that had ordinary interpretation (they identified several variants of semantic content) were included in the group of stimulus words (about 75) with variable figurative semantics. There are six types of variation of figurative semantics. These types differ by structure elements of figurative meaning or by the inner form of the motivation word: 1) the variety of the denotation component, which causes the appearance of several object-conceptual meanings; 2) the variety with which the motivation word has lexical-semantic variants with one denotative, one associative and different symbols of figurative meanings; 3) the variety expressed in the appearance of lexical-semantic variants with one denotative and different associatives and symbols of figurative meanings; 4) the variety expressed in neutralization of stimulus word figurativeness. The variety of the semantics of the figurative word (expressed in reactions of informants to figurative stimulus words) actualizes different aspects of perception of lexical figurativeness. Different figurative meanings indicate the variety of associative-motivational links that motivate the figurative word of the unit, their changes from generalization to specification. The phenomenon of inverse creation of metaphor is one of the ways to interpret the inner form of the word and cannot be a proof of neutralization of its figurativeness in the metalanguage consciousness of native speakers.

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