Abstract
We present a case study of grammatical constructions and how their function in a single language (Russian) can be captured through semantic and syntactic classification. Since 2016 an on-going joint project of UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow has been collecting and analyzing multiword grammatical constructions of Russian. The main product is the Russian Constructicon (https://site.uit.no/russian-constructicon/), which, with over two thousand two hundred constructions (and more being continuously added), is arguably the largest openly available constructicon resource for any language. The combination of this large size with depth of analysis, containing both syntactic and semantic tags, makes it possible to view the interrelation of constructions as families and to discover trends in their behavior. Our annotation includes 53 semantic tags of varying frequency, with three tags that are by far more frequent than all the rest, accounting for 30% of the entire inventory of the Russian Constructicon. These three semantic types are Assessment, Attitude, and Intensity, all of which convey a speaker’s evaluation of a topic, in contrast to most of the other tags (such as Time, Manner, and Comparison). Assessment and Attitude constructions are investigated in greater detail in this article. Secondary semantic tags reveal that negative evaluation among these two semantic types is more than twice as frequent as positive evaluation. Examples of negative evaluations are: for Assessment VP tak sebe, as in Na pianino ja igraju tak sebe “I play the piano so-so [lit. thus self]”; for Attitude s PronPers-Gen xvatit/xvatilo (NP-Gen), as in S menja xvatit “I’m fed up [lit. from me enough].” In terms of syntax, the most frequent syntactic types of constructions in the Russian Constructicon are clausal constructions [constituting an independent clause like s PronPers-Gen xvatit/xvatilo (NP-Gen)] and constructions with the anchor in the role of adverbial modifier (like VP tak sebe). Our semantic and syntactic classification of this large body of Russian constructions makes it possible to postulate patterns of grammatical constructions constituting a radial category with central and peripheral types. Classification of large numbers of constructions reveals systematic relations that structure the grammar of a language.
Highlights
We focus our analysis on two large and partially overlapping networks of grammatical constructions in Russian, namely the Evaluative constructions used to express Assessment and Attitude
Attitude constructions comprise a multiply interconnected system, with both hierarchical relationships that join families into clusters and clusters into the network, as well as horizontal relations across families and clusters linked via shared constructions and similar concepts
Whereas the semantics of lexemes that express evaluation has been subjected to classification
Summary
We focus our analysis on two large and partially overlapping networks of grammatical constructions in Russian, namely the Evaluative constructions used to express Assessment and Attitude. Idea that constructions form networks of related members was suggested by Goldberg (2005), using the example of English Subject Auxiliary Inversion, which is present in a wide range of constructions, among them questions (Did he go?), wishes/curses (May you live a good life!), negative conjuncts (Never had she seen anything like it), and positive rejoinders (So do I) Goldberg demonstrates that these constructions constitute a family based on semantic similarities, by sharing some or all of the following characteristics: the meaning of these constructions differs from that of a positive declarative sentence in that the framing is negative and/or non-declarative and/or narrowly focused and/or dependent on other clauses. They are assigned to 280, 224, and 222 constructions, respectively. We are in a position to estimate the amount of overlap for various semantic types and syntactic patterns of constructions and to show how semantic types and syntactic patterns of constructions can relate to each other
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