Representation of the concept “SPACE”: lexicographical and corpus analysis

The article presents a study devoted to the analysis of the notion and the image “SPACE”. The relevance of the work is due to the need for multi-aspect investigation of the Russian consciousness and the elements that compose it. The objects of the study are the notion and the image “SPACE”, while the subject is their semantic content. Various dictionary entries recorded in different etymological and explanatory dictionaries served as a material for the first stage of the analysis. The data from the National Corpus of the Russian Language and Russian regional associative dictionary EVRAS were selected to arrange further study. By means of semantic analysis, methods of corpus linguistics and psycholinguistics, the author conducted a detailed investigation that revealed the current state of the conceptual component of the selected notion. In the course of the work, it was discovered that the etymology of the name SPACE originates from the Old Slavonic word meaning ‘wide, spacious’ and determines the key seme of the notion associated with the property of something to spread or take up space. Later, in the course of philosophical knowledge spread, the core of the notion was enlarged with a new meaning, interpreting space as an infinitely developing form of matter. In the modern texts, SPACE can be seen relatively often in various genres and types of discourse. It has a complex internal organization, since it combines oppositional issues concerning spatial perception. These oppositions reflect different sides of the notion in terms of its size, boundaries, actions, as well as the form of its existence (natural space/ artificial space). Psycholinguistic study of the image of SPACE showed that in linguistic consciousness of Russians, it is associated with philosophical and scientific understanding, natural spaces of space and sky, virtual space, freedom and inner world, and also can be characterized, on the one hand, as closed and small, and on the other, as huge and immense. The conclusion presents the main findings, generalizing the obtained results.