On the semantics and pragmatics of the adverb maidenly and its fixation in the explanatory dictionary

Eremin Alexander Nikolaevich

The present article is devoted to a description of the semantics and pragmatics of the adverb maidenly and its representation in modern explanatory dictionaries. This extends to similar adverbs: masculine, feminine, fraternal... Some reflections on this have already been expressed by us [Eremin 2022: 18ff]. The author comes to the following conclusions: 1) the interpretation of this word is given in a referential way, as syntactic derivatives are usually described [On syntactic derivation, which Dokulil called transposition, see Dokulil 1962: 129 - 149]. This, from our point of view, is not controversial; 2) such an interpretation is not informative enough, on the other hand, it leads to errors in its use in specific communicative situations; 3) the word girl as a motivator of the adverb maidenly denotes a stereotypical girl, whose image is created by artistic discourse; 4) pragmatic characteristics of a stereotypical girl (such as: skinny, slim, pretty, affectionate, shy, with delicate features, slim build, ringing carefree laughter, pure and naive in her ideas about the world, light and graceful in movement, etc. ) it is desirable to note in the pragmatic zone. Moreover, it is also desirable to record that such connotations are very dynamic in time. And some of them are clearly obsolete and false linguistic material (timid, naive in ideas about the world, etc.) [See about it: Xu Shanshan: 2017. № 11. p. 3. - P. 159-163.]

Keywords:semantics, pragmatics, lexical norm, lexical and syntactic derivation.