The problem of choosing the concept’s name (the French language)

Purpose of research. This article is devoted to the problem of choosing a name for a concept within a foreign linguoculture. At first glance, this stage of scientific analysis doesn’t imply any difficulties in selecting an equivalent concept for one of the languages under study. In the process of work, the researcher, of course, can use existing knowledge in a foreign language, as well as turn to lexicographic sources. But, having delved into the material, it is quite difficult to choose a particular option, since the selection of a priority lexeme may have a shade of subjective perception. The question raised in the article is quite relevant, as at the initial stage of working, it’s difficult to convey the lexeme’s verbal image referred to the concept, if it deals with a cross-language, comparative vector of research. The researcher is a priori responsible for transferring as clearly as possible all the contained semantics of the concept embedded in the native language into a foreign language, so as not to mislead the target audience. As a research task, the authors attempted to identify French lexical equivalents for the Russian concepts “one’s own” and “alien” in accordance with a specially developed algorithm.

Methods. Within the proposed sequence of actions, methods of lexicographic analysis, component analysis, and frequency analysis are used. The introduction of the latter is based on the choice of digital research vector. Modern capabilities, including text corpus, make it possible to work with a large amount of information, that affect the quality and accuracy of the results.

Results. Thus, with the help of a comprehensive analysis, it was possible to determine the most frequent lexemes. In order to verify the data obtained, it was decided to refer to the fund of phraseological units of the French language and thereby estimate the level of error or make sure that the coefficient is negligible. The final stage of analysis confirmed the correctness of the results obtained.

Conclusion. Based on the results of the study, it was established that the key words for the Russian concepts “one’s own” and “alien” in the French language correspond to the lexemes “son” and “étranger”.

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