CAUSES FOR THE FRENCH ENANTIOSEMY ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The causes and sources of enantiosemy origin in current French were considered in the article. The relevance of the investigation was noted; the purpose, tasks, object and subject were covered in the work. The analysis of enantiosemy modern researches of domestic and foreign linguists was carried out. It was established that enantiosemy was a contradictory phenomenon, which was reflected in the scientific works devoted to this issue. It was noted that the main cause for the enantiosemy origin in language had been the changes that occurred in the functioning word under the influence of its verbal environment, and which had been fixed in the language as a result of repeated use in the process of its historical development. Based on the analysis of theoretical sources and factual material, it was found out that there were a number of lexical units with opposite semantic meanings in French and the main causes of French enantiosemy were determined. Extralinguistic and linguistic reasons were distinguished. Extralinguistic reasons included: particularity of primitive people thinking, because their thinking had been based on opposites; emotional factors, in other words, the tendency to emotional thoughts and feelings expression (the use of words with a positive meaning in an ironic context, where it had taken the opposite meaning; as well as the use of abusive words, names of diseases and animals in a positive sense); cultural and historical reasons. Linguistic factors included: polysemanticity of word-forming morphemes (opposite meaning of some verb prefixes; opposite meaning of some noun suffixes); difference in the action direction to achieve a certain opposite result; formation of two-species verbs; polarization of actants and replacement by the opposite of one or other subject-object relationship; metaphor and metonymy; colloquial language; onomatopoeic elements in the word formation. It was summarized that enantiosemy vocabulary reflected the influence of both external and internal factors. A comprehensive study of the enantiosemy nature was a very promising direction, as it allowed to identify and describe semantic changes within the existing token, which was later reflected in the French language system.