Kate Komar
(Vinnytsia Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi State Pedagogical University)
Scientific Supervisor: I.E.Grachova, PhD
STRUCTURAL-SEMANTIC PECULIARITIES OF EPITHET (BASED ON ENGLISH DETECTIVE NOVELS OF THE XXI CENTURY)
Epithets play an extremely important role in writing any work, and especially a detective story. After all, it is with the help of words, namely epithets, words that so aptly describe objects, mood, feelings, and state, atmosphere that we can understand and feel what exactly the author wanted to convey to us. As you know, the aesthetic ideal of fiction is a figurative representation of reality. That is why the possibilities of figurative use of words, which reflect the individual author’s manner and linguistic richness of a particular artist, are most evident in artistic texts. An important place among these means is occupied by the epithet – a trope, which plays a significant role in creating a linguistic picture of the world, helps to distinguish a certain object or phenomenon from a number of similar ones, or rather to convey an idea, gives language imagery, emotional expressiveness and is evidence of the richness and variety of speech. We adhere to a narrow understanding of the epithet, which “encompasses only artistic, emotionally colored meanings marked by originality, infrequent use, and individual content”
Modern research in the field of linguistic stylistics is essential changed the interpretation of the epithet. Previously, its study was limited to analysis at the level of words, today leading linguists consider an epithet as part of an epithet phrase, since it acquires a specific meaning only in connection with the signified word, which expands the semantic field of meaning, which, in turn, highlights new, sometimes unexpected , semantic properties of the described word itself. Functioning on two levels – lexical-semantic and syntactic – the epithet combines lexical and grammatical valence, i.e. reveals its potential only as part of an attributive phrase. The context becomes the factor that transforms a logical definition into an epithet combination, which, functioning in an artistic text, acquires additional connotations. “While preserving the basic meaning, the lexeme in almost every case of use appears in a new, special, distinctive meaning, acquiring different semantic shades in the context”
In the novels, the authors pay considerable attention to the artistic detail, specifying what is depicted, which is largely facilitated by epithets. It is on the details, in particular on the choice of epithets, that the integrity of the work of art is built, and the author’s style strategy is revealed. Epithet detailing acts as a means of character individualization. The inclusion of an epithet phrase in an artistic image is carried out according to the principle of semantic clarification, concretization or the principle of contrast. Appearing in the text, epithets become an organic part of it both from the compositional content and structurally functional side. Their choice is motivated by the general semantics of the text, the author’s aesthetic and linguistic preferences, and the entire artistic and figurative system of the work. The text-creative function of the epithet is revealed in the information that will become essential for the further development of the storyline and the disclosure of the characters’ characters.
Traditionally, the epithet is expressed as a figurative attribute grammatical categories of adjective, adverb, a noun-adjective with the grammatical function of a pre-substantive meaning and a qualitatively-defining adverb with the syntactic function of an adverbial meaning, a circumstance of a mode of action. In the novel Ty Kinsy, we can distinguish a common and other grammatical form of epithet expression – a noun and a phrase that have a figurative and descriptive content, for example: abyss of eyes, abyss of thirst and tenderness, burned cheeks, smelled of sun and sheaves, kisses of thirst, gratitude and courage, eyes full of happy drunk sun.
References
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