Identification of International Lexicon Units

As has been noted, the units of genuine international lexicon are identified on the basis of their common in different languages lexi­cal meaning and identical or only similar lingual form. Loan internationalisms, on the other hand, are identified mainly on the ba­sis of their common sphere of use, their lexical meaning, functional significance and partly - structural form.

The identification of genuine or loan internationalisms presents no difficulty so far as the monosemantic language units are concerned. That is explained by the terminological nature of the signs, which are used to signify social, political, scientific, technological, cultural and other notions (cf. parliament, theatre, theory, poet, arithmetic, artillery, botany, phoneme, suffix, theorem, proton, volt, decimal fractions, space probe, management, motor, computer, internet, electricity, etc.). These and many other internationalisms are monosemantic words or word-combinations which constitute a peculiar layer of lexicon in quite differ­ent languages. They are characterized by a similarity of their lexical

meaning, by an identity or similarity in their orthographic and sounding form, by their denotative meaning and sometimes by their motivation. The meaning of these and a lot of other international words and phrases/ word-groups of the kind does not change in any other contextual envi­ronment. Consequently, their nature is constantly monolithic.

The identification of the international meaning of some lexemes becomes much more difficult, however, when dealing with polysemantic language signs, which are a common feature in present-day English but less common in Ukrainian. That is because in English a lot of lexemes may often have one and the same lingual form for several notions, which is shown below in the vectorial representation of mean­ings pertained to the noun conductor:

genuine internationalism international loan word international loan word international loan word pseudo-internationalism pseudo-internationalism

As can be seen, only one out of six lexemes above has a com­mon lingual form and meaning in English and Ukrainian («кондуктор»). The same vectorial disposition of denotative meanings can be ob­served in several other polysemantic English words of the kind^Hence, in order to avoid mistakes in translation, one must carefully study the contextual environment of such and the like language signs. Though sometimes the corresponding vectorial meanings of polysemantic words can be identified already at word-combination level. Cf.: a fit of depression/depression fit приступ/при падок депресі і; depression of trade занепад/застій у торгівлі; the structW^ ^{of tne sentence} структура речення; a multi-storied structure багатоповерхова споруда (будова/будівля).

Naturally, not every adjunct (identifying word or word-group) forming a word-combination with a polysemantic word, can discrimi­nate the real nature and meaning of the lexeme. Because of this care should be taken when translating such polysemantic words, which may have under the same lingual form either a genuine or a

' An illustration of this pseudo-international meaning of the noun conductor ran be seen in the following excerpt from The Economist journal (February^o, laaoj. a spec­tacular example of Oxford Health Plans once fastest-growing HMu in ^"ca. ' ⁿe conductor Stephen Wiggins was forced to resign as chairman on repruary ^in.

pseudo-international, e.i., common, non-international meaning, the latter being realized in arJefinite context only. A few more examples of such words may be useful:

художній мистецький артистичний

театральний

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