The Nominative Field of HAPPINESS Concept in the Middle English and Modern English Periods

Introduction. The article presents the result of the diachronical research of HAPPINESS concept nominative field. The research was conducted on the basis of English explanatory dictionaries and texts of corpus databases, using the methods of corpus linguistics. The relevance of the research is due to the insufficient development of the theoretical foundations for studying the evolution of nominations and components of the concept under study, and the development of corpus linguistics as one of the most relevant ways of studying concepts.Methodology and sources. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is formed by cognitive linguistics studies by N.N. Boldyrev, Y.S. Stepanov, E.S. Kubryakova, E.A. Nielsen, Z.D. Popova, I.A. Sternin; conceptology studies, in particular, emotional concepts, and emotiology studies by N.A. Krasavsky, V.I. Shakhovsky and O.E. Filimonova. The empirical material of the study is based on the texts of English corpus databases, as well as articles of English explanatory and etymological dictionaries.Results and discussion. Based on the method of constructing the nominative field described by Popova and Sternin and using the material of English explanatory dictionaries for the Middle and Modern English, the core of HAPPINESS concept is revealed. Based on the texts of English corpus databases, using corpus linguistics methods, as well as the collocation search model compiled by the author, the concept’s nominative field’s peripheral components are identified. Based on the analysis, the proposed changes in the composition of the nominative field of the concept in diachrony are revealed.Conclusion. In conclusion, the results of the analysis of the nominative field of HAPPINESS concept are presented, and the provisions on the nature of the development of the concept in diachrony are put forward.