ГЛАГОЛЬНАЯ ЛЕКСИКА С СЕМАНТИЧЕСКИМ КОМПОНЕНТОМ «ПОВЕДЕНИЕ ЧЕЛОВЕКА» (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ РОМАНА Э. ХЕМИНГУЭЯ «ПРОЩАЙ, ОРУЖИЕ!» И ТЕКСТЕ ЕГО ПЕРЕВОДА НА РУССКИЙ ЯЗЫК)

Since the verbs describing human behavior have a vivid semantic diversity, a wide range of connotations and are also distinguished by the active word usage both in everyday speech and in the language of fiction, they are regarded as quite relevant material for the analysis within the framework of the anthropocentric paradigm. Research devoted to a detailed description of verbal vocabulary with the meaning of ‘human behaviour’ is represented by a number of works of different authors such as L.M. Vasiliev

The article is based on the works of the foreign and national researchers who considered the issues and problems of studying lexical-semantic fields. Hence, in the context of the presented analysis our task was not just only to study the semantic characteristics of the behavioral verbs, but also to apply to them a field methodology. On a theory of L.M. Vasiliev, who proposed to classify a lexical-semantic group as a variety of semantic fields

When collecting the material for the analysis, it was important to rely both on the dictionary entries of lexicographic sources and on statistical data. The first ones provided material for a more precise determination of the content of the verbal group, and the latter made it possible to characterize the usage frequency of verbal lexicon with the stated meaning in the context of E. Hemingway’s novel.

The contextual analysis was aimed at determining the syntagmatic features of the elements of the verbal group under study. Appealing to the translated text of the novel “A Farewell to Arms!” allowed us to compare lexical and grammatical nuances of the verbs’ verbalization in a Russian language.

All the verbs denoting behavior can be combined into a group with the integral seme “behave / behave in some way”. Hence the archiseme of the lexical-semantic group of behavior is an English lexeme behave which is capable of verbalizing the general meaning of the group under study. In Russian such a universal lexeme is the verb вести себя, which is a translation equivalent of the English dominant lexeme.

The analysis of the English and Russian lexicographic sources made it possible to identify a number of verbs that have a usual meaning and to compare the definitions of the concept “behave / вести себя”. Both in English and in Russian the verbs behave and вести себя have in their semantic structure a common meaning “to act in a certain way”, but the semantic structure of an English lexeme is presented in dictionary entries more comprehensively than its Russian equivalent and has such important semantic features as “to be polite” and “to act properly”

We also defined both the antonymic and synonymic chains of the English lexeme behave. It has 4 antonyms (misbehave, carry on, act up, misconduct)

The verbs of human behavior identified with the help of the lexicographic sources served as a guide when selecting and analyzing practical material in the context of literary-artistic discourse. An evaluative point for selecting from the novel the verb examples with an author’s individual semantic characteristics became the main theme of E. Hemingway’s work: war and its meaningless.

While studying the text of E. Hemingway’s novel “A Farewell to Arms!” we began with the selecting of those linguistic units that verbalize the semantic feature “to act in a certain way”. This feature is a semantic attribute of the entire lexical-semantic group under study. Among them, the only verbs found out in the text of the novel were the lexemes act (3 word usages) and operate (10 word usages). The translation of the contextual syntagmas of the latter didn’t always demonstrate their lexicographic equivalents:

1. “A mercurial product,” Rinaldi said. He acted very elated now

2. “If I go back they’ll make me get operated on and then they’ll put me in the line all the time

3. “All summer and all fall I’ve operated. <...> By God, baby, I am becoming a lovely surgeon.”

In the first example, the translator chooses the lexeme говорить as an equivalent to the verb act. The suggested word meaning is not stated in the dictionary entries of English-Russian lexicographic sources, and thus the choice of a Russian lexeme is contingent on its syntagmatic relations with an adverbial-substantive phrase приподнятым тоном. In the second and the third examples, the verb operate is used in one of its connotative meanings «to treat an illness or injury by cutting someone’s body and removing or repairing part of it»

As next, we identified and analyzed the verbs that intend to describe human behavior at war. The main guideline in selecting of the designated verbal lexicon was their denotation of conducting combat operations. We identified the following number of verbal lexemes with the stated connotation: fight (34 word usages), march (10 word usages), bombard (1 word usage), attack (24 word usages), defeat (1 word usage), beat (11 word usages). The verbs add up to a synonymous chain with the key lexeme fight, the semantic structure of which has a denotative attribute "to use physical force to try to defeat another person or group of people"

4. “It would not finish it if one side stopped fighting. It would only be worse if we stopped fighting."

5. "Priest wants us never to attack. Don’t you want us never to attack?"

In the text of the novel, the verb march forms quite often a syntagma with the substantives troops and soldiers (the troops marching along the road; the soldiers marching; the troops marching under the rain etc.). The translator uses a whole chain of synonymous verbs like идти, шагать, проходить (идут по дороге войска; шагают солдаты; проходили под дождем войска etc.) to verbalize the regarded English lexeme in Russian. The translator’s choice in favour of a semantic shades variety in the translated text is dictated by the traditional stable combinability of the nouns солдаты and войска in line with the verbs шагать and идти/пройти.

The verbs defeat и beat are dominant synonyms

6. "They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start."

If in the above mentioned example we also stated the usage of a semantic loan translation, then in the case of the Russian contextual verbalization of the verb bombard we observed a slightly different translation feature:

7. ... and I was very glad the Austrians seemed to want to come back to the town some time, if the war should end, because they did not bombard it to destroy it but only a little in a military way

The verbal lexeme bombard was translated with the help of concatenation of loan translation and transcription methods.

Declared as a key lexeme the verb behave was not found in the original text of the novel “A Farewell to Arms!”, but it still can be characterized as a nuclear lexeme of the lexical-semantic group under study, since it expresses its total meaning, i.e “human behaviour”.

The rest of the behavioral verbs identified from lexicographic sources were not found out in the context of the novel under study. We also didn’t find the lexemes with the opposite semantics, i.e. the verbs misbehave, carry on, act up, misconduct. This can be explained by the fact that the lexicographic sources do not demonstrate a rich range of antonyms for the analyzed verbal group. The absence of the same antonyms in the context of E. Hemingway’s work shows that the author tries to avoid giving any assessment of human behavior, in particular a negative assessment. This idea is also confirmed by the fact that all the antonymic verbs established in the dictionary entries have in their semantic structure only a connotation of a negative assessment of human behaviour.

Of more concern, among other things, is the quantitative correlations of the verbs of human behaviour identified in the context of E. Hemingway’s novel “A Farewell to Arms!”. The verbs associated with human military activity are the most commonly used (see Fig.1), which is explained primarily by the theme of the work itself. This nuance also contributes to a better understanding of E. Hemingway’s linguistic world-image. The writer places a high emphasis on an active behaviour of a person who experiences both a feeling of combat excitement and a feeling of fatality and panic, which is realized from the author’s standpoint precisely in a terrible, destructive time called “war”.

Figure 1 - Quantitative correlation of the verbs with the semantics of human behaviour in the text of E.Hemingway’s novel “A Farewell to Arms!”

DOI:10.23670/IRJ.2024.139.141.1

The lexicographic interpretation of the behavioural verbs as well as their analysis within the framework of the novel “A Farewell to Arms!” made it possible to outline the boundaries of the studied lexical-semantic group and define the verbs behave, act and operate as nuclear lexical units. In addition to the lexemes of a usual nature, we included in the analyzed group the verbs that name actions that have in their semantic structure the meaning of human behavioural actions at war. The writer’s contextual presentation allows us to interpret human actions as devoid of a romantic aura; they portray a man as an instrument tasked with carrying out the orders of his superiors, and also deprived of the right to choose between “killing and not taking the lives of other people”.