Cognitive-semantic mechanism of the construct X IS X
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2025-3-25-33
X IS X is a compressed judgment construction with homographs of subject and nominal predicate, characteristic of repetitive speech. At first glance, the construction X IS X does not convey any new information and is a meaningless speech act. However, the choice of any speech form is purposeful, serves the purpose of meaning production and is a conscious strategic choice of the language user. Therefore, understanding the meaning of the construct X IS X cannot be derived from its literal meaning alone. Purpose – Based on the conceptual denotative meaning and associative information of lexical units, we try to explain the mechanism of meaning formation of this construction from the point of view of cognitive semantics, interpreting the subjective intentions and discursive meanings of the speaker and opening a new perspective for further research. The linguistic materials of the study are phrases with the construction X IS X from the National Corpus of the Russian Language. To investigate the semantic mechanism of the X IS X construction, we mainly use descriptive and interpretive methods. The polysemantic X in the X IS X construction has the characteristic meaning and contextual meaning of the utterance, and the pre-X provides preconditions and presuppositions for the association of the post-X in the additional attributive meaning, which saves the listener’s time and effort to process the information that is assumed by the ideal cognitive model and context. We can also say that there are three focuses in the instruction X IS X: the syntactic representational focus is the post-X, the semantic focus is the associative information of X, i.e., the additional attributive meaning, and the main focus is the specific connotation in the additional attributive meaning. The ideal cognitive model is the basis for the formation of the additional meaning of X, and the cognitive context plays an important role in identifying and selecting the manifestation and reception of the additional meaning of X. The selected attributive features become the focus of discourse and have a marking character, expressing the speaker’s subjective intention and discursive meaning. The interpretation of the meaning of the structure X IS X is based on the conceptual denotative meaning of discourse, activating the associative information of lexical units in the cooperation of the ideal cognitive model and cognitive contexts, addressing the features of the present in the meaning of additional attributes, and then deriving the rich discursive meaning of the structure.
Keywords: cognitive semantics, X IS X, repeated judgment construction, discourse, connotation, ideal cognitive model
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Issue: 3, 2025
Series of issue: Issue 3
Rubric: THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS
Pages: 25 — 33
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