TOWARDS A TYPOLOGY OF SEMANTIC DERIVATION MODELS. A CASE OF MENTAL ENGROSSMENT VOCABULARY

Abstract

The paper focuses on the semantic derivation models of mental engrossment vocabulary – a semantic class of words that denote the mental state of a person absorbed (lost, buried, plunged, etc.) in thought, memories, dreams, etc. The study shows the characteristics of the development of a mental engrossment vocabulary semantic paradigm from a cross-linguistic perspective and reveals the semantic derivation models of engrossment adjectives in the English and Polish languages. Semantic derivation modelling provided in the paper proceeds from the assumption that the development of a linguistic item semantic paradigm is realised simultaneously with a situation concept extension. The extension of the concept is supposed to be determined by the changes the participants undergo within the source-to-target-situations transitions (shifts). The participants of the source situation may change their role, referential, communicative, taxonomic or deictic characteristics as compared to those in the target one. The changes determine the types (models) of derivational strategies that underlie the development of a linguistic item’s semantic paradigm. The semantic development construed by the English and Polish engrossment adjectives suggests the regular way of a concept extension – from the internal domain (the situation of mental engrossment) towards the external domains (the situations of identification, association, evaluation, etc.). The study concludes that engrossment adjectives in English and Polish may apply to the actantial (based on the increase of the situation participants), implicative (based on the implications of the situation participants’ changes) and categorical (based on the situation participants’ taxonomic class specifications) models of semantic derivation.

Keywords

• semantic derivation
• model
• mental engrossment
• cross-linguistic
• concept of situation
• participant