CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE ABSTRACT NOUN “EMPTINESS” (PUSTOTA) IN THE IDIOSYSTEM OF L. ANDREEV (ON THE MATERIAL OF SHORT STORIES)

The noun denoting an abstract phenomenon (AN) is its only material embodiment; the ideas society develops about the phenomenon are culturally signifi cant meanings determining the co-occurrence of the AN, allowing to reconstruct the abstraction portraitin all its cultural projections upon empirical experience. How substantial the phenomenon behind the noun “emptiness” (“pustota”) is for the Russian linguistic consciousness is indicated by its existence in diff erent spheres of culture, hence, in everyday, scientifi c, philosophical, and artistic types of consciousness. The article analyses co-occurrence of the AN emptiness on the material of L. Andreev’s texts and aims to reconstruct the understandings of the concept and its images, based on the projections of emptiness on physical world objects (sensory images) or better known and understandable abstractions (logical images). The verifi able method used is conceptual analysis, applicable to the AN’s verbal, adjectival, and substantive types of co-occurrence, as well as co-occurrence with prepositions of space. The analysis shows that in the author’s idiolect, emptiness, a phenomenon of the highest degree of abstraction, acts as a personalized entity (emptiness embraces) possessing destructive power (emptiness extinguished the sun) but performing diff erentiation and defi nition necessary for the world order (emptiness separates). Artist and philosopher, Andreev is attracted to the deep metaphysicality of emptiness and sees it as a subject of action, state and relations; hence, the noun turns subject of the sentence or utterance. It allows to reconstruct the portrait of emptiness in the writer’s idiolect on the example of several short stories.