Семантика неполноты действия в русском, украинском и английском языках

Abstract

Semantic categories can be studied effectively using a comparative approach, since it allows to determine the general and specific features of the object under study against the background of the languages under consideration, but also to see the peculiarities of native speakers’ perception of the surrounding world. This is also relevant for the category of aspectuality. The discoveries of Slavic aspectology of the 20th century were actively used to study aspectual semantics in other Indo-European languages, including Germanic ones, in which the category of aspectuality has a different character and structure. Some questions in this field still remain controversial, with certain aspectual meanings requiring further study. This research focuses on the semantics of incomplete action in verbs and verb combinations of the attenuative mode of action in the Russian, Ukrainian, and English languages. The type of aspectual meaning under consideration is related to the idea of a partially complete action, action lasting for a short period of time, or insufficient to obtain a full result. Prefixal verbs with diminutive and related meanings are numerous in Slavic languages, which is explained by a developed verbal prefixation in general and special features of speakers of Slavic languages. A comparison of “attenuative” verbs and verbal units in Russian, Ukrainian, and English makes it possible to identify the main meanings of incomplete action in these languages and assess the productivity of their formation patterns in the compared languages. The study has demonstrated the variety of means to express the incompleteness of an action (prefixes, suffixes, adverbial combinations, etc.) in the compared languages, as well as the synthetic way of expressing the specified semantics in Russian and Ukrainian and the analytical way in English. This is explained both by the predominantly analytical structure of English as a whole, and by the likely lesser significance of attenuative meanings for English speakers when actualizing the inner parameters of the action. The analysis has demonstrated the following meanings of the studied units in the languages under consideration: 1) incompleteness of an action and its lesser result; 2) limited action in terms of its duration; 3) simultaneous incompleteness of an action and its complementarity, an addition of something to it; 4) lesser degree of an action, its sporadic character. Individual aspects of the meanings of incompleteness in compared languages do not coincide and and are in the relations of intersection.