Impersonal Sentences Research Articles

Безличные предложения как репрезентанты образной картины мира (на материале повести Василия Белова «Привычное дело»)

Безличные предложения как репрезентанты образной картины мира (на материале повести Василия Белова «Привычное дело»)

К вопросу о грамматической природе безличных предложений

К вопросу о грамматической природе безличных предложений

The concept of a person in the study of the problems of impersonal sentences

The concept of a person in the study of the problems of impersonal sentences

ОСОБЕННОСТИ ПЕРЕВОДА ПАССИВНЫХ КОНСТРУКЦИЙ С АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА НА РУССКИЙ ЯЗЫК: НА ОСНОВЕ ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКИХ ТЕКСТОВ

In the article, an attempt is made to analyse the ways of passive constructions translation from English into Russian on the basis of economic texts. Attention is paid to the use of such ways of translation as translation with the help of verbs ending in -ся , similar Russian passive constructions, verbs in active voice, indefinite-personal and impersonal sentences, complex sentences with an impersonal or indefinite-personal main sentence, nouns in the function of the adverbial modifier and phrases. The choice of these ways of translation is substantiated.

COMPOUND NOMINAL PREDICATE IN THE OLD BELARUSIAN LANGUAGE: REPRESENTATION OF THE NOMINAL PART

The article considers means of representation of the nominal part of the compound predicate in the Old Belarusian literary and written language and gives examples from written monuments of different genres dated the 14th – 18th centuries. It was revealed that the most common ways to express it are as follows: nouns in the nominative and instrumental cases, and sometimes in other oblique cases; short adjectives in the nominative case; full adjectives in the nominative and instrumental cases; adjectives in comparative and superlative degrees; short and full participles; adverbs and words of the category of state. Pronouns (possessive and relative) and numerals (quantitative and ordinal) are less common. The neuter short participles are used as part of a compound nominal predicate in mononuclear impersonal sentences. The choice of the nominative or instrumental case of a noun or an adjective being the nominal part of the predicate could depend on the location of the nominal part in the structure of the predicate, the origin of the written text, its genre affiliation, the grammatical systems of other Slavic languages, the traditional spelling and the desire to reflect the features of live speech in writing. These factors have caused the variability of the nominal part of the compound nominal predicate. The results of the research will contribute to the theoretical understanding of the dynamics, main trends and patterns of development of the syntactical system of the old Belarusian literary and written language. They will also be used in characterizing the language features of the monuments of different genres.

A Brief Description on Impersonal Constructions in Uyghur

Impersonal constructions have been a regular topic of investigation in various languages which belong to different language families across the world. Discussions over Impersonal constructions would constitute main contribution to the theoretical study. Although impersonal constructions are the main characteristics of Uyghur, but it’s been hardly noticed by theoretical linguists. With this research, I would like to put forward the idea that Uyghur also have a wide variety of impersonal constructions, the analysis of which would bring an interesting contribution to the typology of impersonality. Scholars conceive impersonal constructions in different terms, some apply morphological methods, and others adopt syntactic approaches. Whichever methodology they apply, it is unarguable that impersonal constructions are agentless by nature, in which the sentences may not have an overt subject. They are many varieties of types, such as agentless gerunds, agentless passives, existential sentences etc. Since Uyghur is a pro-drop language, omitting the pronominal subject also helps to form impersonal constructions. This paper provides a brief description on the types of impersonal constructions, explicates several ways of forming agentless sentences, and introduces main types of impersonal sentences in Uyghur.

Two puzzles on the nominative particle ga in Japanese

Abstract Back in the 1970s, Kazuko Inoue observed that some active sentences in Japanese allow a prepositional subject. Along with impersonal sentences pointed out by S.-Y. Kuroda, such examples suggest that the nominative subject is not an obligatory element in Japanese sentences. While this observation supports the hypothesis that important characteristics of the Japanese language follow from its lack of (forced-)agreement, Japanese potential sentences require the nominative ga on at least one argument. The present article argues that the nominative case particle ga is semantically vacuous even where a ga-marked phrase is indispensable or the ga-marked phrase is construed as exhaustively listing. Stative predicates require a ga-marked phrase because they can ascribe a property to an argument only by function application. The exhaustive listing reading arises by conversational implicature when the presence of a ga-marked phrase signals that a topic phrase is being avoided. The discussion leads to a semantic account of subject honorification whereby the honorification only concerns the semantic content of the predicate, and does not involve agreement with the subject. It is also shown that sentences with a prepositional subject allow zibun only as a long-distance anaphor, which indicates that they do lack a subject with the nominative Case.

National Mentality: Does It Influence a Language Grammar?

The article shows connection between the national mentality and the formation of grammar on the example of the French, Kazakh, Russian and English languages. It highlights the usage of copular verbs and modality in the first pair of languages, and word order, imperative mood and impersonal sentences in the second. The analysis shows that while teaching grammar of a foreign language, it is essential to combine it with cultural information and to compare two cultures at that point. Such cultural dialogue will ease the conception of the foreign language grammar phenomena and help form grammar competence – one of the means of intercultural communication – assuming the ability of a linguistic persona to elicit, understand and interpret the concepts formed by grammar tools of a foreign language.

Impersonal Russian Sentences with the Subject in the Accusative Case and the Meaning of a Person's Physical Condition in the Terms of Persian Language

In this article, considering impersonal sentences with the subject in the accusative case, which conveys the physical state of a living being, an attempt is made to compare them with the Persian correlates. This type of impersonal sentences can cause different problems for the Persian-speaking students due to their grammatical specificity (e.g. the uses of the subject in the accusative, rather than in the more common dative case, the dissimilarity of their syntactic structure with the native, Persian, language, etc.). The article shows that for many of the analyzed Russian sentences there can be found Persian correlates in which the real semantic subject of the sentence does not coincide with the grammatical subject. The use of such structures during the learning process can contribute to the more effective teaching of this model of Russian sentences to the Iranian students.

Las oraciones con se en español y su representación en polaco

In this paper we analyze the different syntactic-functional characteristics of se. The form se has different uses in Spanish, which, by their variety and differences with respect to Polish and, since not all of these values are represented in the same way, may be a problem for Polish learners of Spanish as a foreign language. On the one hand, he is a personal unstressed pronoun belonging to the series me, te, se, nos, os, se, and as such it can function as direct or indirect object. Thus, we have a series of pronouns that vary according to the number and person in Spanish, and they are equivalent to two unique forms in Polish depending on their grammatical function. Furthermore, it can appear in sentences whose main characteristic is to represent processes and states as in the passive or impersonal sentences, and also we have a Polish non-existent structure such as the passive-reflexive sentence. The fact that this structure has no equivalent in Polish motivates some difficulties for Polish learners of Spanish as a foreign language. Moreover, such sentences are often ignored during learning, so that difficulties remain over time.

The Impersonal Sentences: A Proposal for a Teaching Unit

This study proposes a framework to develop a teaching unit for a group of italian speaking students of E/LE (Español Lengua extranjera), in order to deepen one of the most complex linguistic topic: the impersonal expressions.Moreover, these structures represent a central issue, of any language system, as they may become even indispensable to communicate in certain contexts and real situations. Basing on the enfoque por tareas approach, and through a comparative-contrastive perspective with Italian language, our proposal aims at choosing the best way to transmit to our student certain basic skills in using such forms.

L’abandon du sujet : syntaxe de dépendance et grammairiens slavophiles

Political science specialists have made an important work for the knowledge of russian culture. now a huge field remains to be explored in the history of linguistics in russia. In this paper we propose a study of the philosophical motivations of verbocentrism in the slavophile syntactic theories, which is both a very poorly known origin of dependency grammars, and a handsome solution to the problem of the so-called impersonal sentences.

La phrase et l'énoncé dans la slavistique française du XXe siècle

В статье дается краткий очерк работ, опубликованных на французском языке о предложениях и высказываниях в славянских языках (XX век вплоть до 1999 г.). Очерк содержит краткую характеристику вклада Люсьена Теньера не только в славистику, но и в общую синтаксическую теорию (синтаксис зависимостей). Подчеркивается нарастающее внимание, уделяемое в течение XX века прагматике в связи с изучением порядка слов, дис- курсивых частиц и интонации. Главными темами французских статей в области славистики были: информативная структура, номинативные предложения, безличные предложения, определительные синтагмы, сложносочиненные предложения (изучение союзов а и и).

Evidenz für syntaktische Nullen aus dem Burgenlandkroatischen, Polnischen, Russischen und Slovenischen: Merkmalsausstattung, Merkmalshierarchien und morphologische Defaults

Summary In the present paper, I investigate different types of impersonal sentences in Slavic languages focusing on impersonal sentences with accusative internal arguments (objects). These constructions pose various questions concerning selectional properties of the categories involved in the syntactic derivation of the respective sentences and concerning the licensing of morphological markers, esp. of the accusative of internal arguments and of the dative of quasi-subjects with certain types of reflexive impersonals. I will discuss these issues in the first two sections following the introduction claiming that at least the main (verbal) predicates of impersonals sentences with accusative internal arguments also select a semantically bleached, phonetically null external argument. The arguments for this analysis involve both theoretical and empirical considerations. In section 4, I will briefly turn to the impersonal morphological markers of verbal and nominal predicates. I will propose a default mechanism for the impersonal variant relying on feature hierarchies and markedness rejecting an agreement analysis with the phonetically null external argument.

Semantic and Structural Characteristics of Impersonal Sentences with Introductory “it”

The article aims to reveal the nature of sentences with introductory it where the predicative is expressed by an adjective (it is…). The introductory it is followed by a compound nominal predicate with a predicative expressed by an adjective while the conjunction that introduces an object clause. The semantic aspect of these constructions is of certain interest, but it is also important to see through what English patterns it is expressed. Unlike the sentence It is a house, where the grammatical subject it preserves its deictic meaning, the pronoun it in the abovementioned sentences is fully abstracted and specified by the object clause. The adjective following the construction it is… acts as an epithet which expresses the person’s opinion and evaluation of the given action and reality. The nature of the grammatical noun – logical noun and subject – predicate correlations is also specified.

Two Types of Impersonal Sentences in Spanish: Locative and Dative Subjects

This paper gives further support for the claim that the EPP feature in T and ψ‐features agreement/nominative Case assignment can be fulfilled by different elements. Some Spanish impersonal sentences will be analyzed that contain predicates selecting for a locative or dative as an external argument. The predicates under study are of two types: stative and eventive. The existential verb haber (which incorporates a locative clitic in the present tense verbal morphology) belongs to the first type. The verbs suceder, ocurrir, ‘to happen’, as well as meteorological verbs, belong to the second class. Data regarding word order, idiom formation, existential interpretation, raising, extraction from coordinate structures, and nominalization show that with these impersonal predicates the locative/dative PPs behave as real subjects, and contrast with those which appear in locative‐inversion constructions, which involve anteposition of an internal argument. It will be shown that these arguments bear quirky Case and are generated in the highest node in the extended VP projection.

A propósito de un caso de convergencia gramatical por causación múltiple en el área de influencia lingüistica catalana : Análisis sociolingüístico

The paper represents a study of a Spanish syntactic phenomenon in the Catalonian speech communities as a case of grammatical convergence between both languages. To the author, the origin of the concordance feature between the Spanish verb haber and the noun in normative impersonal sentences may be internally induced, but his great social extension is only explicable by linguistic contact influence. The presence of this feature in other Spanish varieties doesn’t mean that the accomplishment of the linguistic change has the same explicative factors in all the speech communities. Because of this epistemological principle, the author makes a cross dialectal analysis of the linguistic variable in the Spanish and the Catalan languages. In the empirical work he treats some sociological factors as mother tongue, dominant languages or origin of the speakers that reveals the importance of linguistic contact in the realization of the concordance. Finally, he makes some consideration about the problems that has had the interference concept in linguistics and sociolinguistics in last times, as well as about the implicit -and erroneousidea that the contact induced changes are only unidirectional (from the more to the less prestigious languages).

Irish autonomous impersonals

This paper investigates Irish impersonal sentences marked by the inflection traditionally known as “autonomous” and examines ways to account for the empty subject position in such sentences. The various empty categories of Government-Binding Theory are considered. It is argued that the best candidate for the subject of the impersonal construction is arbitrary PRO, in contrast to other languages such as Spanish, which has been analyzed as having an arbitrary pro subject. Some problems resulting from allowing PRO in a tensed S are discussed. The proposed solution is linked to the fact that Irish tensed clauses need not include AGR.

Généricité, spécificité et constructions verbales : les structures à sujet inversé

A comparison between the referential properties of subjects in pre-or postverbal position seems to suggest that only preverbal subjects permit a generalising interpretation — and hence often give rise to ambiguities — , whereas postverbal subjects limit themselves to a specifying role (une découverte sensationnelle s'annonce vs (il) s'annonce une découverte sensationnelle). Impersonal structures (il V S) are of particular interest in this respect as the conditions governing their occurrence, as opposed to those of inverted structures (V-S), are apparently more appropriate for utterances of a general nature (il meurt chaque année des milliers d'enfants). But whereas generic sentences with a preverbal subject express a generalisation of a definitional nature, impersonal sentences express a generalisation of a quantitative nature, linked to the event itself. Our study emphasizes the importance of word-order in the analysis of generic reference. Furthermore, it is also evident that the problem of classifying generic sentences requires further investigation.

Understanding ?because?: How important is the task?

The causal connective “because” requires the order of clauses within a sentence to violate the order of events in the real world; i.e., “effect because cause” is correct. Children's (4, 6, and 8 years of age) ability to comprehend “because” was explored in a series of four studies. The first, a replication with variations of existing studies, assessed children's ability to judge as anomalous sentences in which the order of clauses is reversed. Comprehension of impersonal sentences is better than of sentences derived from narratives of their own experiences, although children do poorly at this task until age 8. However, results of study 2 suggest that children's poor understanding of task requirements is partly responsible, since increased task instructions and modeling led to significant improvement in the ability of preschoolers to judge sentences as anomalous. In the third study, children named the cause event after being told a causal sequence (involving either psychological or physical causality) of the form: Event A, “Event C (effect) because Event B (cause),” Event D. Comprehension of physical causality sequences is superior, but again, only 8-year-olds showed good performance. In Study 4, children were asked to find the cause event in four-clause sequences of the same form as in Study 3, but memory props were added in the form of pictures of events A, B, and D. Near perfect performance was shown by all children. Overall, comprehension studies of “because” are judged to be rife with methodological problems, and memory demands are seen to be particularly important.