SPEECH CREATIVE POTENTIAL OF THE PREDICATE "TO EXIST" IN THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE

Abstract

Introduction. Existence is an important ontological category which is taken into consideration in the process of understanding the world and other environmental phenomena, when the fact of existence of substance is evident. Existence denotes everything that exists in life. In liguistics existence is represented by language units of different language levels. On syntactical level it is realized by sentences of being, which are formed by verbal predicate of being. Investigation of verbal sentences, which take into consideration semantic types of predicates, is of great importance for the analysis of the language model of the world. That's why linguists of today give more attention to making close study of speech creative potential of predicate. The main place in the general system of predicates of being belongs to the predicate of existence, which is the object of our investigation. In modern Ukrainian linguistic studies the predicates of existence are the least investigated: O. I. Leuta, N. V. Melekestseva, V. K. Sytnikova, V. I. Dmytruk and others. That's why the actuality of the investigation is obvious. Purpose. The aim of the article is to analyse speech creative potential of one of the nuclear verbal predicates of being - the predicate "to exist" - and to single out structural models of sentences of being with the given predicate. Methods.The main method of our investigation is structural method which is realized through:

– the method of distributional analysis to determine the valence potential of the predicate "to exist";

– the method of transformational analysis to determine similarity and difference of syntactical structures, when a complex sentence with the predicate of being is transformed into some simple sentences with the same predicate, and lexical composition of elements of the syntactical structure is preserved the same;

– the method of modelling to single out different models of semantic and syntactic structure of sentences of being.

Investigation Results. Investigation results can be used to analyse the deep structure of simple two-part sentence and to carry out structural and semantic analysis of sentences taking into consideration semantic types of predicates. Scientific Novelty. Scientific novelty is in the fact that the article is the fist to analyse speech creative potential of the nuclear predicate of being - "to exist". The article also determines its valence ability and singles out 11 sentence models with the given predicate. Author's Conclusions and Propositions. The predicate "to exist" forms semantic and syntactic structure of two-part sentence of being. Being in its nature monovalent predicate, it can realize its bi- and threevalence ability in different contexual surroudings, which is determined by different communication needs. It is used most frequently in scientific articles, it is less used in historical literature, and it is the least used in fiction texts. It determines the necessity to further investigate predicates of being which is of great theoretical importance for new understanding of the essence of the sentence of being, because it goes beyond its traditional interpretation as a composite nominative sentence.