Thesaurus modelling of English mythological terminology (semantic field for the term «God»)

Abstract

It is found that in the mythological discourse of English-speaking countries there are many concepts that are represented in the minds of people who study English as a fuzzy set of isolated concepts. This leads to difficulties that hinder the understanding and correct use of mythological terminology. The purpose of the study is to systematize the English-language mythological discourse and its terms using the thesaurus approach, which involves the construction of semantic fields and the identification of the information-semiotic nature of the studied terminology. To identify the meaning of the terms under study, we chose a semiotic approach, since in it each linguistic sign is considered as a sign consisting of the signified or content side of the linguistic sign and the signifier (otherwise called the MY? expression). It is in the signified of the linguistic sign that the meaning components are laid, which allow revealing the semantic nature of the term. Thus, it is the information-semiotic nature of the terminology Greek mythology that acts as the subject of research. In the course of the study, the semantic field god was constructed with two schemes of semantic relations; a dictionary entry was written for each term of this field. The study showed that the identification of the information-semiotic nature of English mythological terminology contributed not only to the differentiation of nuances in the meaning of mythological terms due to the creation of new dictionary entries, but also helped to clearly illustrate the connection of terms within the field by constructing schemes intended for the title term God. The results obtained can be used in the process of professional training of linguists, as well as for the development of lecture courses and for conducting seminars on foreign literature

Keywords

• term
• mythology
• thesaurus
• semantic relations
• associative relations
• semantic field
• discourse