Evaluative assymetry of a partial quality

Aim. To characterize the evaluative asymmetry of a partial quality manifestation as expressed in the Russian and English languages. Such asymmetry is expressed by means of affixes and/or collocations with an understatement marker “a bit”. It reflects the general tendency for evaluative characterization of objects expressed by detailing negative experience and reducing positive quality to the norm.

Methodology. The material of the study is the result of continuous sampling from the “Reverse Dictionary of the Russian Language”, “The National Corpus of the Russian Languages” and “The British National Corpus”.

Results. The article gives explanatory versions of the phenomenon. It includes the non-dichotomy principle of the quality description in natural language, a more detailed negative quality evaluation, modal qualification of the object, regularity of occasional word-formation variants of such an evaluation, absence of nominations for substantive correlates of negative evaluation, phonetic limitations. The most important one is the recognition of the greater significance of negative experience for understanding the reality. The negative assessment of a partial quality of the object is combinedwith the modal autocharacteristics of the speech subject,who seeks to showthe combinatorics of this quality and thereby emphasize the objectivity of his position. The specificity of contextual clarification of partial negative evaluation in sentenceswith the words “impudent, silly, a bit puzzled, stupid, foolish, awkward, ashamed”is demonstrated. The semantics of compliance in the qualification of partial negative quality is noted. The absence of gradual variants of positive quality semiotically turns the norm into a reference point.

Research implications. The theoretical significance of the work is in the characteristics of evaluative semantics types, and the research implication of the paper is its applicability to Axiological Linguistics and Language and Culture studies and to teaching university students these disciplines.

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