COGNITIVE EPITHETATION: REIFICATION IN M. TSVETAEVA’S TEXTS

Abstract

The article covers the analysis of the cognitive mechanism of epithetation in the M. Tsvetaeva’s individual style. The research material was “Dictionary of Poetic Language by Marina Tsvetaeva” and the collected works of M. Tsvetaeva in seven volumes. On the base of cognitive-semantic, contextual and quantitative methods, the mechanism of epithetation in M. Tsvetaeva’s texts is analyzed based on the metaphorical model of reification. It is established that epithetation has a cognitive blending character, consisting in the imposition of mental spaces of the attributive component and the object of epithetation within the epithet complex. Reification, significantly inferior to personification, has an individual style specificity in M. Tsvetaeva’s texts, which consists in establishing associative links between mental spaces based on the free choice of an attribute. The frequent, important for the poet directions of attribute transfer are being installed within the framework of the considered metaphorical model. The lyrical subject's awareness of himself as a biofact is based on the associative connection of water, fire, air or earth and man in the projection of the properties of the elements of nature onto the organism; the opposition of the spiritual and the corporeal is emphasized with the help of cognitive epithetation of the attributes of these mental spaces. The blending of the attributes of matter and man actualizes the semantics of the intensity of the manifestation of the attribute. The tendency of M. Tsvetaeva’s language to use the cognitive logic of attributive reification is noted when M. Tsvetaeva conveys the semantics of the spontaneity of feelings, their strength and power, as well as the down-to-earth nature of human life. The general temporal semantic attribute is distinguished by its novelty, often paradoxicality. Particular attention is paid to the productivity of the blending theory of cognitive epithetation when analyzing attributivity in texts of various individual styles and discourses.