Information on the thesis

The totality of synonymous qualitative adjectives of Older Scots, whose
complementary existence is studied in the synonymic sets that are chronologically ordered,
the diachronic or historical synonymic sets, is regarded in the proposed work. Subsequently,
the research transfers into the cognitive plane, where based on the accomplished sets, the
fragment of an adjectival associate map of Older Scots is being evolved. The complex of
simulative technics, which are applied to the map in order to revive its associative attraction
within our work, is called the historical associative thesaurus of estimation, activity and
potency on the material of Older Scots (Scottaurus). Neither Ukrainian nor British linguistic
school has ever performed the similar lexicographic study in Older Scots. Methodological
novelty is embedded in a new method of reconstruction and research of associative maps of
older lingual states, particularly, in semantic differentiation of the lexis with the synthesis of
mental (combinatorial semantic) representations.
Two types of lexicography (re)constructions, diachronic synonymic sets of qualitative
adjectives of Older Scots and diachronic epidigmatic structures of adjectives, are regarded in
the work. Because of the sporadic presence of adjectives in Scots Thesaurus, the historical sets
are compiled on the basis of the Dictionary of Older Scottish Tongue from the initial synchronic
sets of English adjectives (Oxford Learner’s Thesaurus and WordNet). The resulting historical
sets of Older Scottish counterparts are related by the common semantic feature of the initial
synonymic sets and the synonymic relationship, stated by Villiuman within the first thousand
of words in the set. The sets are lined up by the form of the designed database being
accompanied with exhaustive etymology, encyclopedic and illustrative data on any word.
The diachronic epidigmatic structure of the word embraces all the chronologically fixed
categories to which the word belongs, i.e. gradually evolves its semantic space in time. The
relevant database form contains the complete dictionary information on its partial meanings.
The semantic space of Older Scottish polysemous words is researched on the basis of
comparison of DOST-grounded epidigmatic word structures with the appropriate word
entries to Scots Thesaurus and Jamieson’s Etymological Dictionary of Scottish language.
The comparison componential and contextual-functional analyses of the studied adjectives
in the Scottish literature primary-sources ascertain the nonidentical structuredness of the
researched semantic spaces, namely different corteging of the fixed lexico-semantic variants
and wider, as compared to DOST, spectrum of the revealed semes, which allows to treat the
nature of these structures as continual with the vague transitions from one lexico-semantic
variant to another.
The accomplished lexicographic models are combined, following synonymic,
antonymic, epidigmatic and syntagmatic associative relations, into the patterns of an
associative map (1. GOOD-BAD, STRONG-WEAK, INFLEXIBLE-FLEXIBLE, LUCKY-
UNLUCKY, SUCCESSFUL-UNSUCCESSFUL; 2. cross-cultural universals GOOD-BAD,
ACTIVE-PASSIVE, STRONG-WEAK), reflecting the fragments of mental adjectival lexicon
of the Older Scottish ethnos. The applied Zipfian regularity of age-frequency correlation
allows us to transform the diachronic measure into that of associativity. Owing to the
revealed fuzziness of semantic structures and a priori everysemy of the made set-categories,
the patterns are exposed to fuzzy modelling, and therefore the activated network enables
examining the associative attractions within the regarded fragment of Older Scottish mental
lexicon of cross-cultural universals of evaluation, potential and activity GOOD, BAD,
STRONG, WEAK, ACTIVE and PASSIVE. The received associative reports provide us with
the values of fuzziness or degrees of belief of the received associative relations, in particular
positive and negative associative environment of the knots, so-called associative antipodes
(e.g. WEL-HAPPY-SPED Vs EVIL-WANHAPPY and MERVAILOUS-SPED Vs PUR-
WIKIT); restored associative experiment for the network knots (e.g. PISSANT and
VICTORIUS); associative distancing (e.g. for VALUBLE – VICTORIUS in the field GOOD,
FERY – VIGENT in the field ACTIVE); and dichotomic mental (combinatorial semantic)
representations (e.g. for HE, KID and THOW). The latter practice is realized with the original
method of associative differentiation of lexis, based on the modification of Osgood’s
semantic differential, fuzzy associative practice that represents the differentiating attributes
by means of the weighted fuzzy synonymic categories of cross-cultural universals of
evaluating, potency and activity, introducing in the synthesis of mental representations of
Older Scottish environment both connotative and denotative meaning components. The
reports are maximally verbalized, owing to the practice of Computing with words, and
represent the historical associative adjectival thesaurus of evaluation, potency and activity of
Older Scots.
Key-words: qualitative adjectives, Older Scots, reconstruction, diachronic synonymic
sets, meaning maps, Zipfian regularity, associative attractions, historical associative
thesaurus, associative lexis differentiation, Osgood’s semantic differential, Barsalou’s
gradual conceptual categories, central tendency, fuzzy logic.