MARKEME TRAJECTORY IN A. P. CHEKHOV’S WORKS

Abstract

Тhe goal of the study is to reveal the markeme dynamics and a markeme trajectory in A. P. Chekhov’s works according to the accepted periodization: late 1870–1886 (fi rst or 'early' period), 1886–1993 (second or 'turning point' period), 1893–1899 (third or 'Melikhovsky' period) 1899–1904 (fourth or 'late' or 'Yalta' period). In accordance with this goal, the task of establishing the writer's markeme identit is formulated and solved. The fi rst 11 from 15 volumes of A. P. Chekhov's complete works including humoresques, short stories and novels created in 1880—1903 have been studied. Applying the method of markeme analysis, the vocabulary creating the centralconcepts of the writer's artistic world has been revealed. In all sections there are 'prevailing' markemes, characteristically important for all A. P. Chekhov's creative work: existence, impression, pleasure, moment, attention, where the dominant is existence, that is, the basis of everything, and the vice-dominant is impression, both defi ning the so-called 'impressionism' of A. P. Chekhov. The isolation of new unique integral markemes in a single chronological section allowed the authors to determine its originality, and the introduction of such an indicator as distributed functional weight (DF-weight) gave us the opportunity to clarify the signifi cance of one or another period of the writer’s work. The pool of integral markemes of the studied A. P. Chekhov's texts has been compared with the results of markeme research carried out by A. A. Faustov, which allowed us to determine the 'points of markeme contact'.