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Abstract: The article deals with the problem of semantic perception of a deliberately ambiguous poetic text which contains lexical innovations. The aim of the study is to describe the non-conventional form and complex conceptual content of lexical occasionalisms relying on the methodological frameworks of creative linguistics and cognitive poetics, which make it possible to identify manifestations of creative reasoning in the process of a literary text perception. Based on the material of occasionalisms in the poems by Alexei Kruchenykh, the role of the internal (word-building) context and the external (linguistic and extralinguistic) context in constructing the meaning of occasionalism is revealed. The method of cognitive modeling is used as the main research method, which is supplemented by such research techniques as contextual analysis and structural-semantic analysis of the material. Lexical occasionalisms are described (1) as non-conventional speech and language units, characterized by novelty of emergent lexical meaning and conceptual content; (2) as means of poetic foregrounding, which profile the reader's attention and perform an orientation function in the system of textual meanings. As a result of the study, it is shown that the semantic capacity of a derivative occasional word is due to its broader and more underspecified conceptual base. It is argued that the meaning construction of occasionalisms is determined by a complex set of motivating factors. The reader takes into account the morphological and derivational features of occasionalism as a derivative word (the model of word-formation, the relationship between the generating base and formants, conventional grammatical meanings of these elements). The post-emergent meaning of the occasionalism is affected by micro- and macro-contextual inferences and the construal operations (focusing and profiling) the reader employs in “viewing” the scene presented in the poem.

About the author(s) :

Tatiana V. Ustinova
Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia)
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5377-7364

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 10.03.2023; date of publication: 30.03.2023

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