Category of seemingness as a means of verbalizing a logically vague proposition in Herbert G. Wells’s novel “The Time Machine”

Abstract

The research aims to reveal the specific features of manifestation of the epistemological category of seemingness as a means of verbalizing a logically vague proposition in an English literary work of the science-fiction genre. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that it has been the first to approach the category of seemingness, as the phenomenon of both logic and language, from the point of view of its function as a means of verbalizing an epistemologically vague proposition in H. G. Wells’s novel “The Time Machine”. The research findings reveal a causal type of connection between a vague proposition and indistinct perception of a particular type, namely, a visual, aural, tactile, olfactory, gustatory and kinesthetic type. Indistinct sense perception in a vague proposition is made explicit in the novel by diverse sensory denominations or implied by the context. The research results specify various linguistic factors that impede adequate perception of the first-person narrator-protagonist who describes the events in the world of fantastic future as perceptively deceptive and epistemologically unverified.