CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURES WITH FIXED AND NON-FIXED FOCUSES

CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURES WITH FIXED AND NON-FIXED FOCUSES

Author:  E.G. Beliaevskaya

Affiliation:  Moscow State Linguistic University

Abstract: 
The paper is devoted to the discussion of focusing as of an inherent property of conceptual structures and sets out to prove that the conceptual structures underlying the semantics of language units have a fixed conceptual focus, which is preserved in any context of use thus making communication possible. Utterances and texts, on the contrary, are based on conceptual structures with non-fixed (changeable) focusing which might be either explicit or implicit.

Keywords:  semantics, conceptual structures, conceptual basis in semantics, focusing / profiling, conceptual inner form