SEMANTIC VARIANTS OF THE CONCEPT HATRED IN THE RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH LANGUAGES

Abstract

The work examines the semantic variants of the lexeme ненависть in Russian and hate/hatred in English. Based on the analysis of the data of the language corpora (the National Corpus of the Russian Language and the British National Corpus), it is proved that the lexemes ненависть and hate/hatred have two semantic variants: ненависть 1 and hate/hatred 1 is an intense feeling of hostili-ty; ненависть 2 and hate/hatred 2 is a feeling of lesser intensity, provoked by displeasure experienced by the subject upon contact with the object; it is linked with the standard way of interacting with the ob-ject. At the same time, semantically diffuse uses of these lexemes are always possible. The differences between Russian and English in this respect at the lexical level are manifested primarily in the synony-my of the English nouns hate and hatred , the analogue of which is absent in the Russian language, and in the higher frequency of occurrence of the second semantic variant in English: judging by the corpus data, the frequency of English variant is an order of magnitude higher. Moreover, hatred rather than hate is the main lexical means of its expression. The semantic symmetry of love and hate in both Russian and English is expressed by the presence of two main semantic variants of each of the compo-nents of the opposition, distinguished on similar grounds; while the asymmetry, first of all, in the com-plex structure of the first of the selected variants of love, which includes five sub-variants that are absent in the corresponding variant of hatred.