The possessee semantics in privative verbs with the possessor-plant in English and Ukrainian.

Анотація

Privative verbs (hereafter PVs) are universal language units with complex semantic structure as they combine semes representing three fundamental categories of the language, i.e. causative, possessive, and negative semes. Each of the above categories has been thoroughly scrutinized not once, however various aspects of privative verbs have not received proper attention so far, which predetermines the relevance of the present research.

The object of the present research is quite restricted as it is limited to the group of PVs where the subject of the causative situation is a plant, e.g. Eng. to pare «to cut away the outer edge of (a fruit), in thin layers, slices, or flakes»; Ukr. зривати «надломивши, відокремлювати від стебла, кореня і т. ін. (листок, квітку, плід тощо)» ‘to separate from the trunk, root, etc. by breaking away (a leaf, fruit, etc.)’.

The empiric material of the present study is constituted by 137 lexemes (to be more precise lexico-semantic variants (hereafter LSVs) of the verbs): 82 lexemes in the English and 55 units in the Ukrainian language which were retrieved from the present-day English dictionaries among which are Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, The Oxford English Dictionary, Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus of the English Language.