Functional semantics of emotive units in A. P. Chekhov’s and I. A. Bunin’s prose: The general and the specific (based on the material of the microfield “Grief”)

The aim of the study is to represent the general and distinctive features of functional semantics of emotion nominations in A. P. Chekhov’s and I. A. Bunin’s prose on the example of grief emotives. The article highlights the most important aspects of the given emotion, verbally represented in both writers’ prose; syntagmatic and paradigmatic connections of grief emotives are analyzed and, on this base, the most significant contextual meanings of these lexemes are defined, which are actualized in the considered works. The scientific novelty of the conducted study is that it offers the first comparative analysis of emotive lexemes in A. P. Chekhov’s and I. A. Bunin’s prose from the point of view of functional-semantic similarities and differences of these units. The research established that both general and specific semantic characteristics of grief emotives are represented in A. P. Chekhov’s and I. A. Bunin’s prose works. The similarity of the functional semantics of these units is manifested in the fact that in both writers’ prose they are used for describing the characters’ inner state as well as for the emotional characteristic of the phenomena of the world, with the first case potentially representing a static or a dynamic aspect of the emotion. Furthermore, in Chekhov’s and Bunin’s prose the ambivalence of the grief condition is highlighted by means of hidden oxymorons. One of the specific features of the functional semantics of grief emotives in Chekhov’s prose is that the writer rarely uses authorial individual metaphors for describing this emotion, while in Bunin’s prose such expressive devices are quite vividly represented. The study also established that in Bunin’s prose the emotives of grief are actively used for the emotional characteristic of the phenomena of the surrounding world (first and foremost, light and sound).