ICONIC ENCODING OF CORPOREALITY IN MODERN ENGLISH

Abstract

The literature on the unity of emotional, volitional, intellectual, and physical states within the holistic cognitive-semantic context of corporeality shows a variety of approaches. The originality of our solution lies in the fact that the object of the prеsеnt study is the domain of Grеimassian sеmiotic thеory (including the so-called thymic category) that has been further developed: Taking into consideration that people use basic-level concepts regularly, we hypothesised that thymic category members can be selected, given that these category members are yielding information on the semantics of perception in the elementary concepts of Modern English. The data obtained suggests that the information on the thymic category is conveyed by the conceptual triad SENSE : FEELING : EMOTION. Furthermore, cognitive and onomasiological features of the basic-level concepts have been analysed. Thus, the previous research has been extended by clarifying the semiotic structure of the thymic category in Modern English and presenting the results on the distribution of cognitive-onomasiological capability within the framework of derivatives of the verbalized conceptual triad SENSE : FEELING : EMOTION. The iconic character of this conceptual complex is one of the means of naïve worldview reconstruction in word-formation. Notably, the iconic aspect is marked by cognitive-semantic shift of the thymic-neuter indices of the conceptual thymic information to its thymic-extremal analogues. This could be a result of the fact that the shift of a given type is based on the correlation of evaluation of the sign-motivator and expressive-gnoseological functions of perception performed by the native speakers. The reconstruction of the thymic composites domain reveals that the motivators of sensory type prevail. Besides, the cognitive-semantic shift was detected: the motivators are represented by the derivatives of the verbalized concept SENSE, while the concept EMOTION is lacunary, a fortiori the composite words with feel and sensation constituents are semantically more mobile and expressive.