Russian sentence adverbials: classification, orientation and representation

Abstract

In this article sentence adverbials (SA) in Russian are analyzed in their totality, i.e. from a lexical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic point of view. They are classified according to Hare’s three utterance components, which yields (1) neustic, (2) tropic and (3) phrastic SAs. These components are used to represent semantic paraphrases of Russian SAs in utterances from various types of discourse in order to show their exact contribution to the meaning conveyed by the entire utterance. They are further subdivided according to their function: (1) into connectives and non-connectives; (2) into attitudinal and modal SAs; and (3) into temporal and areal SAs. It is demonstrated that many adverbials consist of micro-groups involving three and only three members, in which one is first person oriented, the other is second person oriented and the last one is third person oriented. This indicates that when making utterances Russians have to base them on the previous discourse in one way or the other. This paper focusses on a specificity of the Russian language—the system of modal adverbials that reflect a division between external and internal reality. We end the examination by discussing the function of word order in connection with more than one SA in an utterance.