Parthenissa by sir R. Boyle through the mirror of markemology

Abstract

The paper aims at identification markeme peculiarity of English heroic romance ‘Parthenissa’ (1655– 1679) by Sir Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, 1st Earl of Orrery. The research focuses on the study of markemes found in the text. The study is conducted within the framework of markemology. It is a linguistic approach based on the identification of special keywords called markemes. Their analysis allows conducting a linguistic study of a text and identifying its major ideas. The main feature of such keywords is taking into account both frequency and informative value of each lexeme. The informative value of a lexeme is assessed by automatically calculated Index of Textual Markedness (InTeM). The markeme analysis of the romance language makes it possible to specify a dominant (acknowledgement) and a vice-dominant (consideration) markemes. The stratifi cation of markemes results in determining a markeme core and a markeme periphery, which include 19 and 31 markemes correspondingly. Due to their semantic classification, the markemes were distributed into seven semantic sets: fundamental notions, interpersonal relationships, mental and perceptional markemes, emotional markemes, qualitative markemes, social markemes and ethical and moral markemes. It is established that major semantic sets are emotional markemes, interpersonal markemes, mental and perceptional markemes and qualitative markemes. Emotional markemes constitute the majority of core markemes. Most of them carry positive connotation. They are followed by fundamental notions, mental and perceptional markemes, interpersonal relationships ranked in descending order of the quantity of markemes in each semantic set. One core markeme per semantic set represents semantic sets of qualitative, ethical and moral, and social markemes. The composition and semantic classification of the markemes fully corresponds to the poetics of heroic romance, which deals with both human nature in inconstant and illusory world and chivalric, heroic and gallant features of a character.