INTERJECTION FUNCTION OF ZOONIMES IN THE MODERN SPEECH USAGE

Abstract

Purpose of work – to determine the specificity of the interjective function of word-zoonyms in the modern Russian language (on the material of the zoonym «dog»). The material of the study was the names of animals from an enlarged group of zoonyms, which were extracted by the continuous sampling method from the The Large Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language (edited by S.A. Kuznetsov). About 490 zoonyms were analyzed. Examples of their speech use were taken from the National Corpus of the Russian Language. The following methods were used in the study: continuous sampling, introspection, analysis of vocabulary definitions, component analysis, contextual and interpretive analysis. The study showed that the functions of zoonyms in modern Russian-speaking speech usage are represented by three groups: characterizing, invective and interjective ones. The interjective function, first described in this paper, is due to the presence of pejorative connotation in the meaning of the zoonyms. The conditions for the implementation of the interjective function are the presence of contextual indicators that contribute to the desemantization of the main and figurative meanings of the words-zoonyms. The main sign of the interjective function of the zoonym is the implementation of the pragmatic semantics of this group of words. The analysis of the material showed that the zoonyms in the interjective function expressed not only the negative emotion of contempt, but also the pragmatics of the attitude to the object of perception. The result of the research can be applied in the field of linguistic expertise, lexicographic practice, as well as in the field of teaching Russian as a foreign language.

Keywords

• зоонимы
• междометная функция
• прагматическая семантика