Analyzing linguistic units of tactile perception in the Russian, English and French languages

Sensation and perception is a cornerstone on whichour conceptualisation of external world is built. All information from the world around us is received by means of sensations and processedby means of perception for further use. Contact perception together with dermal sensation reflects a lot of properties by means ofwhich we recognize objects. The aim of this article is to analyse tactile perception lexis. The basic situation of tactile perception involvestwo participants. The first one is the one who perceives and the second one is the one that is perceived. The subject of perceptionmay not only perceive passively, but it can actively uses an appropriate perceptive to receive required information about the world. As aresult we have ternary opposition of meanings: осязать - быть на ощупь - ощупывать. To understand distinctness of the Russianopposition we match it with the appropriate French and English ones. In the French linguistic picture of the world sense of touch can berepresented as: toucher - au toucher - toucher. In the English language the lack of words is partly compensated by means of wordcombinations,but in most cases it is compensated due to polysemy: to feel - to feel - to feel. We would like to draw your attention to thefact that in the Russian language words осязать - осязание are connected as they have the same base, in the French language wordstoucher - toucher are similar in their form, in the English language to feel - touch do not have derivational connections. Based on ourresearch we suggest translating the French verb toucher by means of Russian word-combination трогать ‹на ощупь›. We are of theopinion that the French verb toucher belongs to the group of touch verbs as well as to the group of feel verbs.

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