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FUNCTIONAL AND SEMANTIC PECULIARITIES OF SEMI-SUFFIXES AND SUFFIXES SYNONYMOUS TO THEM IN MODERN ENGLISH // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2017. Issue 3 (180). P. 33-37

The article dwells on the functional and semantic peculiarities of the so-called semi-suffixational elements and suffixes that have similar meaning. As a result of the comparative analysis of synonymous semi-suffixes and suffixes, the synonymous sets of semi-suffixes correlated with the corresponding sets of suffixes were revealed. It was stated that despite of being functionally and semantically close, possessing common distributional characteristics and sharing to a certain extent the same area of application, these word-building elements can’t be considered as the identical ones. The reason of it is hidden in the specific nature of the meanings of semi-suffixes: the semantics of the latest is not as wide in its denotative part but it shows more variety in its significative part than the semantics of the correlated suffixes. Moreover, suffixes demonstrate a higher degree of generalization of the lexical meaning than semi-suffixes. The author comes to the conclusion about a wider significative meaning of a semi-suffix capable of uniting more semantic characteristics and conceptional relations than the semantics of a suffix; denotative meaning of semi-suffix appeared to be more narrow and limited than the one of a suffix. Thus, significative meaning of semi-suffix contains a greater number of conceptual, semantic features and pragmatic relations.

Keywords: semi-suffix, suffix, generalization of meaning, synonymy, polycemy, significative meaning, denotative meaning