EMERGENT SEMANTICS OF THE UKRAINIAN NOUN AS A DETERMINANT OF ITS DERIVATIONAL CAPACITY

Abstract

Abstract
The article is an extension of the author's series of publications on derivational paradigmatics of the Ukrainian
language. Derivational paradigms of nouns-names of persons according to their internal features constitute
the focus of the article. The structural and semantic characteristics of the units under study are established, and
the linguistic and extra-linguistic factors of influence on the formation of the component structure of derivational
potential are investigated.

Resume
Among the most urgent problems to be solved in Ukrainian derivatology, there is the problem of
paradigmatic relations of language units in word formation, as represented by the derivational paradigm.
This paradigm is the universal systematic way of determining the derivational potential of words
belonging to different parts of speech, because it is structured by sets of derivatives in paradigmatic
relations, which are directly motivated by the very same derivational word. The parameters of derivational
paradigms of nouns in the Ukrainian language depend on the derivational capacity of motivational
words of certain lexico-semantic groups, which is conditioned by a complex of semantic, structural,
functional-stylistic and pragmatic factors, with the semantic one being the determinant. The article
focuses on paradigms of nouns-names of persons according to his / her internal characteristics
and analyzes the dependence of the derivational potentiality of these nouns on their semantic
emergence. Two groups of suffixed nouns, i.e. names of persons according to their external and internal
characteristics, are considered. These quite small groups of nouns are distinguished by the peculiarities
of their formal grammatical and semantic representation that determine the set of specific derivational
paradigms and their parametric features. The nouns with emergent semantics always contain some
additional components in their meaning structure – semantic extensions, which have no expression
in their formal structure, and have more derivational capacity than the words with non-emergent
semantics. The parameters of a typical derivational paradigm of these nouns are determined and
it is established that the semantic peculiarity of the derivational base, namely the emergence of their
semantics, determines the derivational potential of vertex nouns to form derivatives belonging to one
of the three parts of speech: noun, adjective or verb. The derivational potential of a lexico-semantic
group of nouns with a weak or zero emergent level, that is those without semantic extensions,
is equally analysed. It is shown that they reveal a lower derivational capacity: the lexemes with
non-emergent semantics form mostly single-word derivational paradigms with a limited quantitative
representation and that are structured by the absence of derivatives in the adjectival and verbal
zones. Their typical derivational paradigm is structured by derivatives of only one substantival zone
with modifying meanings.