Plotand Event-Driven Functions of Perfect Verbs in a Fiction Text

Abstract

The article examines the role of Russian perfect verbs in text formation. Based on the texts of modern Russian writers (S. Vasilenko, D. Granin, E. Limonov, V. Pelevin, T. Tolstaya, V. Tokareva, L. Ulitskaya), the functions of the verb forms with perfect meaning in the plot organization of a fiction text are considered. The principal attention is paid to the analysis of the functions of 1) regression of the narrative, 2) progress of the narrative with a pause in the external environment or in the inner world of the character, 3) pause in the narrative. Narrative regression is interpreted as a reference to the past, progress as a perspective of the narrative, and pause as a fixation of the state of the environment or the internal state of the character. It has been established that these functions are realized within the framework of a perfect situation as a functional-semantic field. The nucleus of the field is a perfect verb or passive past participles; the periphery of the field is formed by multi-level language units that actualize the perfect meaning in the context. It has been revealed that the perfect situation has a complex semantic structure, in which three components are holistically represented: pre-perfect state, action, and post-perfect state. This structure allows expressing different types of links: between the temporal plans of the text, between the cause of an event and the consequent state of the event, between a mental action and the object of this action. In a fiction text, each component of syncretic perfect semantics can become a basis for the plot situation. It has been shown that plot- and event-driven functions of perfect verbs are determined by the position of the verb in the complex syntactic whole, by interaction with other predicates, by the syntactic structure, and by the lexical meaning of the verb. In particular, it has been established that the function of regression of the narrative is represented by perfect verbs as a part of complex sentences with temporal, causal, and deliberative subordinate clauses. The function of progress of the narrative with a pause in the external environment is performed by perfect verbs inside a complex syntactic whole. This function may also be realized on the border of two complex syntactic wholes. Progress of the narrative with a pause in the inner world of the character is expressed by mental verbs (ponyal, dogadalsya, osoznal, pochuvstvoval, reshil, etc.). A pause in the narrative is typically expressed by passive past participles. The contextual and semantic analysis of perfect situations allows concluding that perfect verbs have an impact on encoding and decoding of the meaning of the fiction text.