Semantic Differentiation among Negative Sentence Variants

Abstract

In keeping with the general concern in contemporary linguistics with the relationship among units at a given linguistic level, recent work in Russian syntax has shown an increased interest in the relationship among sentence variants within the so-called syntactic paradigm, particularly in the semantic differentiation among the variants. This heightened concern among linguists finds support in the needs of foreign-language pedagogy, because fluency in a foreign language implies control of a range of sentence structures and an understanding of their semantic differentials. If the semantic study of sentence variants has lagged behind the study of their formal structure, it is because descriptions as a rule are stated in terms of generalized category symbols, individual lexical meanings not being treated. Both linguists and pedagogues often limit their consideration of sentence variants to an enumeration of structures which are close in meaning-transforms of a single kernel sentence, variants of a single invariant model, ways of expressing one and the same meaning, and so on. To be sure, semantic differences are not entirely ignored, but they tend to be stated in terms of quite general semantic categories, e.g., presence or absence of an agent, agentive or instrumental meaning of the grammatical subject, and so on.' Such generalized formulations, although appropriate in the works where they are used, fail to give a complete and realistic picture of the functioning of these constructions in the linguistic system. Further study of the semantic nuances which correspond to structural differences is needed.