Evaluative interpretation of events by actional verbs with the meaning of destruction of an object

48 Вестник Российского нового университета48 Серия «Человек в современном мире», выпуск 1 за 2023 год

Логина Татьяна Викторовна

several categorical meanings) or recategorization (change of its categorial meaning) are of primary concern [2; 3].

The class of action verbs consists of verbs from different lexico-semantic groups. This article analyzes the ways of evaluative interpretation of an event by action verbs with the meaning of destruction of an animate object. Destruction is comprehended as an impact on an object as a result of which the object comes into a qualitatively new state. Obligatory components of this type of action are the subject, the action and the object which the destruction action is directed to. Optional components include: tool, method, intensity, factual object, aim.

A person is the prototypical subject of action. The analysis of definitions shows that the main components that make it possible to receive an evaluative interpretation of the destruction event are: type of the destruction object (animate), method, intensity, aim, as well as the tool or means of object destruction. Thus, the article analyzes the following group of verbs (assassinate, annihilate, behead, butcher, cripple, crucify, decapitate, decimate, euthanize, execute, exterminate, guillotine, kill, lynch, massacre, murder, poison, quarter, slay, slaughter, stab, zap etc.).

Initially, there is an analysis of the ways of evaluative interpretation of the living being destruction event by the verb kill which conveys the idea of murder in the most general sense (1). However, the verb modifies its meaning when combined with atypical nouns (shopping centres, bleach, smoking) or nouns of abstract semantics (suspense, natural disasters) or the name of diseases (malaria, lung cancer etc.) and is recategorized from action to causative one which is achieved by using the verb in a transitional construction, a new metaphorical understanding of the action (2–7).

• (1)    Only in the USA terrorists kill hundreds of people annually [4].

Оценочная интерпретация событий акциональными глаголами со значением

( Kill – to make a person or other living thing die [5] . )

• (2)    Bleach kills household germs [4].

• (3)    Smoking kills the same way her words do slowly and unmercifully [4].

• (4)    The out-of-town shopping centre will kill local trade [4].

• (5)    The vet confirmed that rabies killed his dog [4].

• (6)    What happened next? The suspense is killing me ( = make someone feel angry or irritate ) [4].

• (7)    Natural disasters killed around 6,000 people in 2019 [4].

A speaker chooses the following verbs if quantitative characteristics of the animate object and the method of committing the murder prevail in the evaluative interpretation of the event (butcher, decimate, exterminate, massacre, slaughter, etc.) . For example:

• (8)    He violently massacred thousands of innocent people and pillaged their wealth [4].

( Massacre – to kill a large number of people, especially in a cruel way; to defeat somebody in a game or competition by a high score [6] . )

• (9)    It’s certainly true that first Britain and then America have humiliated and brutalized and repeatedly invaded and massacred and bombed and slaughtered and tortured hundreds of people of the middle east [4].

• (10)    Farmers were paid to slaughter 6 million baby pigs, and discard them or use them as fertilizer [4].

( Slaughter – to kill a lot of people in a violent way ; to kill animals, usually for their meat [5].)

• (11)    Their soldiers brutally butchered lots of innocent people near that village that the soil was soaked with blood [4].

( Butcher – to kill people in a very cruel and violent way ; to kill animals and cut them up for use as meat [6] . )

Since quantitative characteristics and the method of performing an action are present in the semantics of the verb, they can уничтожения и разрушения объекта 49 be expressed both explicitly and implicitly. However, examples (8, 10, 11) evaluate the method component by combining the verb with adverbs of manner (violently, brutally) as well as the number of people which confirms the idea of a mass murder. The object of the action in the example (10) is a group of animals. The examples (12, 13) show modification of the verb under the influence of such mechanism as metaphor. The verb is combined with atypical nouns as an affected entity (language, last name) and the physical sphere of influence changes to the emotional one. In this case, the method of causation is subjected to evaluative interpretation.

• (12)    That’s why we butchered the hell out of the language and now “tweet” is in our dictionary, “bromance” is apparently a word now, and so are “helicopter parent”, “fist bump”, and “crowdsourcing” [4].

• (13)    And for context, my last name is habitually butchered too – Gartland. The “T” gets no love, ever [4].

The event of the destruction of an animate object, depending on the degree of cruelty, can be represented through a method or tool for committing a murder (behead, decapitate, guillotine, gore, lynch, murder, poison, quarter, slay, stab, zap etc.) .

• (14)    She slowly poisoned John with small doses of arsenic over the course of several years [4].

( Poison – to harm or kill a person or an animal by giving them poison [6] . )