ON OF PAIN IN ENGLISH AND ROMANIAN

Abstract

The current studies related to the expression of the human sphere of feelings, states and emotions positions PAIN at the interface of the affective experience, cognition and language, and at the crossroads of different disciplines and epistemological approaches. PAIN is a complex universal semantic concept, unitary in its (physical and mental) ambivalence and multi-dimensionality, manifested through its semantic components that have different specific lexico-grammatical configurations in languages, demonstrating prototypical construal modes of the PAIN situation, with wide cross-cultural implications. Thus, for example, PAIN conceptualization in English and Romanian can display some commonalities in using possessive predicative constructions (both being Have-languages), although with functional differences, but the highly analytical nature of English would not allow for the representation of the globally affected Experiencer in constructions with direct and secondary semantic PAIN predicates, unlike in Romanian where, culturally, PAIN is likely to have a more engulfing implication.