Semantic Classification of the Russian Speech Act Verbs

Abstract

The paper presents a semantic analysis of the Russian speech-act verbs in terms of semantic primitives. The verbs whose content plane incorporates ‘speak’ as a semantic primitive are allocated to the Speech-Act Verb Class. A lower-level classification is based on the similarity of the propositional structure arrived at as a result of the semantic analysis. The research is based on the Russian translation of Henry Fielding’s novel ‘The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling’. As a result, a semantic classification of the Russian speech act verbs is presented.