Abstract:

Prohibitions play an important role in any culture, and languages have extensive systems of means for expressing prohibitive meanings. The appeal to the verbs of prohibition in English and German seems relevant in the context of historically established socio-cultural norms, as well as religious, ethical and cultural values, since the designated values and norms are subject to change, and prohibitive verbs can acquire new shades of their meanings. The article discusses key English and German prohibitive verbs and their derivatives in a semantic aspect. The verbs fordid, prohibit, interdict and inhibit as well as their derivatives in English are analyzed in detail. The analysis of the most common German prohibitive verbs verbieten, untersagen, nicht erlauben, nicht zulassen, verwehren, sperren and others is given. The research reveals that prevalent means of the category of prohibition in the English and German languages are imperative constructions including prohibitives, which are a negative correlate of an imperative; modal verbs, and infinitives with negation. The features of functioning prohibitive verbs in modern English and German speech in the historical socio-cultural context are discovered.

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