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Abstract: Currently feminitives (feminatives) appear to be one of the actively discussed lexico-semantic groups. This discussion has gone far beyond the community of researchers. Especially heated discussions are held in the internet-mediated communication involving the so called netizens, or netenauts – active Internet users. They not merely express their attitude towards the feminitives that already exist in the language but also propose their own auctorial feminitives. The authors denote these units by the term neofeminitives. The term feminitive has narrow and broad meanings. In its narrow meaning the term feminitive is understood to be a denomination of a woman in accordance with her social role, for instance: studentka (college girl), uchitelnitsa (schoolmistress), kassirsha (paymistress). The feminine suffexes -ess(a), -is(a), -k(a), -sh(a) and others serve as determinants expressing the notion of femininity. Nowadays, the most productive suffixes are -k(a) and -sh(a). The units newly formed with the help of them enter into the relations of derivational competition. The article shows this phenomenon on the vast illustrative material. The term feminitive in its broad meaning is used to denote nouns having semantics of femininity and expressed by the inflection -a, for instance: mama (mom), tyotya (aunt), etc. The extension of the notion of femininity and, correspondingly, the expansion of the scope of the lexico-semantic group of “feminitives” appear as consequence of activization of the processes of borrowing. The group of “feminitives” has accepted some words that have only lexical feature of femininity, cf.: biznesvumen, shouvumen, biznesledi, gerlskaut, kolgerl, pleymeyt and others. The activity of penetration of such foreignisms serves as an evidence for their being urgent and proves that they should be regarded as the so called actual neologisms (Marinova). Meanwhile, the Russian language, being an inflectional language open to new loan words, actively adopts borrowings, adjusting them to the established system. This is manifested through creating neofiminitives with the derivational determinants of femininity, cf.: biznesvumensha – biznesvumenikha, gerlskautka – gerlskautsha, pleymetsha – pleymeytikha. These neofeminitives enter into the relationship of derivational competition, which is one of the active derivational processes in the modern Russian language. As the results of this neofeminitives analyses, the authors draw a conclusion that they accomplish a twofold function. Firstly, neofeminiteves accomplish a differentiating function, as they denote the gender of the named object, but this act of naming is almost always stylistically marked because of some particular qualities of the feminine suffixes. For this reason, one may state with confidence, that Internet neofeminitives also accopmlish a perlocutionary function. The scientific novelty of the study is seen in the proof of the position on the role of word formation in the study of the linguistic picture of the world in relation to the group of neofeminitives.

About the author(s) :

Svetlana V. I lyasova
Southern Federal University (Rostov-on-Don, Russia)
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2386-6512

Elena V. Pugacheva
Branch of K uban State U niversity (Gelendzik, Russia)
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4012-8776

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 07.07.2022; date of publication: 29.12.2022

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