CONNECTION OF THE SEMANTICS OF DOUBT AND INDEFINITE REFERENCE

The article is devoted to the analysis of the connection between the semantics of doubt and indefinite reference. Reference as a correlation with reality is carried out by the speaker during the speech act. If such a correlation is unsuccessfully realized in the human mind, then we are talking about the uncertainty of the object. The category of uncertainty is highly subjective and communicative in nature: the meaning of the indefinite reference is transmitted in the process of a specific speech act. The semantic category of doubt is complicated, on the one hand, by connections with the category of certainty/uncertainty, on the other hand, the semantics of doubt and indefinite reference are implemented in specific speech acts and have an obviously subjective nature, which is explained by the fact that when a word enters the speech act, it can have a different semantic content under the influence of many factors, such as the goals of the addressee, the context and the background knowledge of the communication participants. Therefore, from the standpoint of pragmatics, based on the relationship between communicators, there are three situations in which indefinite reference and the semantics of doubt can be realized simultaneously. These 3 situations are: 1) the speaker knows the object inaccurately, the listener knows the object of speech; 2) the speaker knows the object inaccurately, the listener does not know the object of reference; 3) the speaker knows the object but, for whatever reason, does not want the listener to know that it is the object in question. In the third situation, depending on the listener's consciousness, two options are possible: 1) the listener and the speaker have common knowledge, with the listener being one of the insiders of the event described by the speaker, so he knows the speech object, and then a situation of certainty is formed; 2) the listener does not know or does not know exactly the speech object, then an uncertainty situation occurs. Based on row data from the texts of modern mass media, we found out that indefinite reference and the semantics of doubt are emphasized with the help of different linguistic means. Given the results of the analysis of the linguistic data, we consider that indefinite reference and the semantics of doubt are two different sides of the same phenomenon, and they complement each other.