Conceptualization of the Horizontal Position in Space in Russian and Greek Stative Verbs

Abstract

The paper deals with the Russian and Greek verbs denoting the horizontal position of a person or an object in space. A comparative analysis of the Russian and Church Slavonic positional stative verb лежать/лежати with its Greek counterparts has been carried out in the diachronic perspective by means of the linguistic-textual method. The research is based on the material of six Church Slavonic and Russian translations as well as on four Modern Greek translations (editions) of the Gospel, in which 44 relevant contexts have been identified; besides additional material from some other Bible books has been used. Historical and comparative research has shown that the Greek language doesn’t possess lexical means of expressing a horizontal position in space. In Ancient Greek, the stative verb κεῖμαι was used in this function, in case spatial concretization of position was relevant, it used its prefixed derivatives. In Modern Greek this verb becomes obsolete and in most cases is replaced by the grammatical forms of the corresponding causatives and autocausatives or by abstract existential verbs. On the contrary, in Church Slavonic and Russian throughout the period under consideration, the position of a person or an object has played an important role in space conceptualization, finding its lexical manifestation in the positional stative verbs, widely used even when the concretization of the position in combination with a certain actant is redundant. On the other hand, the preservation of the stative semantics leads to a low derivative potential of the verb лежать in combination with spatial prefixes due to the meaning of finiteness (resultativity) which they developed. Consequently, the semantics of Greek prefixes has to be conveyed by additional (lexical and syntactic) means. Generally, the results of the work have revealed significant and deep differences in the conceptualization of the positional state in Greek and Russian, which has to be taken into account when developing nationally/culturally oriented methods of teaching a second (foreign) language.