Denotative and significative components of paronymic attraction

The article is devoted to paronymic attraction (PA), which some scientists consider as a phenomenon of the lexical-semantic system of the language, others as a stylistic figure, and still others as a mechanism that turns one into the oth-er. The author sees in PA semantic relationship between words that have a phono-morphological similarity, potentially represented in the language and manifested in speech as a result of individual reflection. Since PA can be called a nom-ination of a «non-standard» denotation represented by paronyms included in the attraction, paronymic correlation is considered as an expressive sign that has specific denotative and significative characteristics. After conducting a study on the corpus of Russian poetry of the XX-XXI centuries, the author comes to the following conclusions. In PA, the sound-semantic correlation itself becomes a sign, which is used autonomously, being both a sign and a thing. At the same time, the significatum of the reference name predetermines the scope of denotation of the reinterpreted name. Most often, concrete and abstract nouns, proper names and «attribute» words – adjectives and adverbs – come into attraction; for all classes of words, there is a tendency to increase the nominative value and expand the denotative ability of signs (compared to the general language) and the formation of its single type according to the model of common names (reference to an object, to a class of objects, to class features, to a typical denotative situation). As a result, a mobile structure of meaning of the denotative-significative type is formed; at the same time, the meaning of the sign conveys a set of features of the designated object that allows clarifying its invariant characteristics relevant in each specific situation. The paronymic combination is perceived as an abstract sign characterized by referential polysemy.