Interpretation of the phenomenon of anglicisation of the Ukrainian language

Abstract

The article is devoted to examining the part-of-speech potential of anglisms in contemporary Ukrainian within the framework of linguoaxiology – the morphology of evaluation – a line of inquiry undertaken for the first time in both Ukrainian and international linguistic scholarship. The findings contribute to the refinement of theoretical postulates concerning the mechanisms of borrowing anglisms within functional-pragmatic and systemic-structural paradigms, and to identifying borrowing tendencies related to the part-of-speech capacity of recent anglisms characterised by lexico-grammatical evaluative meaning. The implementation of these approaches has made it possible to demonstrate that the highest borrowing activity is observed in abstract nouns with evaluative semantics, agentive nominals denoting persons, and relative adjectives with evaluative meaning derived from animate nouns, which function to characterise particular types of activity. Comparative and elative forms are widespread and may be created in Ukrainian in violation of the established rules of their formation. The number of evaluative anglism verbs is four times smaller than that of nouns, despite the fact that, according to linguistic theory, the verb occupies the central position within the system of parts of speech. The study also documents the borrowing of interjections as a closed word class in Ukrainian, functioning as carriers of emotional evaluation – a finding that challenges the widely held view that the borrowing of interjections is minimally productive. The analysis identifies several adaptation mechanisms, including graphic variation, part-of-speech transformations, Latin-script forms, and derivational chains. A new theoretical perspective on the part-of-speech axiological potential of Ukrainian anglisms is thus being shaped, and characteristic changes in morphological borrowing patterns and their evaluative meanings – both typical and productive – have been revealed. The practical significance of the article lies in offering recommendations for improving lexicographic practices, particularly with respect to the representation of morphological characteristics associated with the expression of evaluative semantics in anglisms.