Mental Process Verbs in “Women in Love” by D. H. Lawrence
Mental Process Verbs in “Women in Love” by D. H. Lawrence

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the paper was twofold: to overview and highlight the concept and a variety of mental process verbs and to investigate them in David Herbert Lawrence’s novel “Women in Love”. Rich in symbolism and lyrical prose “Women in Love” is a complex reasoning about the sensual and spiritual mysteries in the modern world. The philosophical novel attracted our attention due to its clear and magnificent journey through the intellectual lives of its characters. There is a cognitive depiction of each character throughout their relationships with one another. As “Women in Love” is based wholly on human relationships, it is interesting to note the types of mental process verbs that are used to reveal the inner relationships among the characters. The verbs expressing mental processes cover a significant part of all verbs used in Lawrence’s novel “Women in Love” as the literary base of this novel is relations among people in various situations (5,902 items drawn from the novel were subjected to the analysis). Consequently, the author’s intention to disclose and display different shades of relations requires a versatile usage of mental process verbs that would create a colourful and fulfilled picture of human’s inner world. The novel has been analysed from the point of view of mental process verbs within the framework of systemic-functional linguistics, what lets us analyse the verbs semantically. Throughout D. H. Lawrence’s “Women in Love”, we see an intellectual depiction of each character’s relationship with others. Obviously, these relationships include a significant amount of mental process verbs. All three types of mental process verbs were subjected to the analysis: cognition, perception, affection. A relative frequency proved the verbs denoting the processes of cognition to be the most numerous. The author used this type of verbs to depict the main characters’ (the Sensers) experience of the surrounding world. Besides the prototypical verbs as know, think, love, want hate the author uses other, though sparingly, colourful verbs, such as: ponder, muse, writhe, weary, etc. The beauty of the novel does not lie in the story but on how it is told. The prevailing topic of the events in this literary work is related to the world of human beings: a big attention is paid to the inner world of people. The corpus under investigation proves that the author opted for a versatile range of mental process verbs to disclose the main characters.

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