STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF LEXICAL SEMANTIC GROUPS OF COLORATIVE ADJECTIVAL UNITS IN THE RUSSIAN AND BELARUSIAN LANGUAGES

The article is devoted to studying structural organization features of adjectival lexical semantic groups as separate partof-speech segments in semantic fields of colour in the modern Russian and Belarusian languages. The data structure of hierarchically organized lexical sets is explored by using definition and component analyses of the meanings of colour adjectives on the basis of two types of modeling. In accordance with the first modeling type, the structure of the lexical semantic group in the Russian language consists of a core zone, near-core zone, central zone and nearest peripheral zone; the correlative set in the Belarusian language consists of a core zone, near-core zone and central zone. According to the second modeling type, lexical semantic groups of colour adjectives in the both languages are structured into six subgroups: Basic (Absolute) Colour Lexemes, Secondary (Hue-denoting) Colour Lexemes, Mixed Colours, Human Organ and Body Part Colour Nominations, Rare Colour Lexemes, and Animal Colour Nominating Adjectives. Based on the analysis of a rich factual material, smaller semantic communities, i.e. parcels, are defined in each of the subsets. The parcels are formed by elements the meaning of which includes a colour characteristic. Specific examples are given to show cross-language similarities and differences in the structure of lexical semantic groups of colour lexemes in the Russian and Belarusian languages.

lexical semantic group, lexical semantic field, adjective, subgroup, parcel, colour, colour lexeme, lexical semantic variant

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