THE DYNAMICS OF ENGLISH SENSORY VERBS MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Abstract

The study is focused on the analysis of the dynamic development of the morphological functions of the main sensory verbs, which make up the core of five lexical-semantic fields of visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory and tactile sensory perception, in the diachronic view and covers all periods of the English language development: Old English, Middle English, Early New English and New English. The objective is a detailed and in-depth study of the grammatical and phonetic characteristics of the main nuclear English sensory verbs at each stage of their development and highlighting the changes that took place in their morphological chronology. The main tasks are to track, analyze and compare the grammatical and phonetic characteristics of sensory verb lexemes of five main lexical-semantic fields to indicate the process of sensory perception in each historical period, comparing their dynamics and identifying all possible grammatical and phonetic changes that took place in the specified time period. Various methods, analyses and approaches were involved to obtain reliable data: phonetic, component comparative, quantitative analysis, analysis of dictionary definitions, comparative-historical method, diachronic-synchronic approach. The study is based on the use of all possible Old English, Middle English and Modern English dictionaries that are available. The results prove that in the subsystem of English sensory verbs denoting the processes of sensory perception, there have been noticeable changes on the grammatical and phonetic levels. Throughout all periods of the English language development, their grammatical and phonetic functions have been subjected to various forms of alignment and similar influence from the class of strong declension to weak declension. A significant part of the basic nuclear sensory verbs underwent quantitative and qualitative phonetic changes.