NOMINATIVE FIELD OF THE CONCEPT GENIUS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the investigation of the peculiarities of verbalization of the conceptGENIUS in the English language, namely, consideration of the nominative field of the given concept.The research analyzes definitions of the lexical unit “genius” in the English dictionaries; singles outnotional conceptual features of the analyzed concept in the English language. According to therepresentatives of the semantic-cognitive approach, concept is a basic unit of human mental code,which has an internal structure consisting of conceptual features; it is the result of the individualand social learning of the world. Conceptual features contain comprehensive information aboutthe corresponding object or phenomenon, as well as the interpretation of information of publicconsciousness and the treatment of the subject or phenomenon. Thus, the representatives ofthis trend treat language as one of the main tools of cognition and conceptualization of the world.The study of concept through the language is the most reliable way of linguistic analysis whichallows to detect conceptual features and to work out the model of the concept. Any analysis of theconcept starts by detecting language units that represent a given concept, the interpretation oftheir vocabulary and speech contexts. The etymology of the lexical unit “genius” has been studiedas well as the structure of its semantic meaning. The following notional conceptual features ofGENIUS in the English language have been singled out: intellectual power; creative power;uncommon, exceptional superiority; originality. The following lexical units represent the mesialpart of the studied nominative field: brainiac, Einstein, mastermind, brain, intellect, thinker, whiz,wiz, wizard, as well as the subconcept PRODIGY.

Keywords

• номінативне поле
• концепт
• genius