REGULARITY OF SEMANTIC SHIFTS IN KINSHIP EXPERIENTIAL CLUSTER IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN

The work realizes the second stage of the project devoted to studying semantic content of experiential cluster of kinship in English and Russian. The first article within the topic was devoted to cognitive modelling of this group of lexis (Stepanova 2019). Based on joint properties that characterize all the kinship concepts and individual set of relationships characteristic for a certain term, this research studies their further semantic development reflecting diverse human engagement in economic, social, spiritual, physiological, etc connections between people in the modern society. This language cluster is very rewarding in this respect and allows to be investigated from the cognitive perspective. Further semantic development of this group of words is most often determined by metaphor. The cognitive theory of metaphor looks at semantic transformations as the product of a certain activity of human consciousness and can be explained with the formula of "image + experience". The evolution of thought/idea along the metaphor channel leads to the situation where the image (object, attribute, quality, phenomenon, symbol, etc.) is transferred to a completely new soil and is passed through the already existing system of concepts (experience). As a result, there is an adjustment of the new knowledge/experience to the established old knowledge/experience. Thus, further semantic development of the lexeme signals a change in the categorial structure of consciousness. The methodology of investigation hinges on cognitive approach, where structural methods of cluster organization and indirect nominalization are supported with frame techniques, contextual analysis, comparative and contrastive methods of investigation.