Russian Nouns Research Articles

Trends in Mutual Transpositions of Lexical and Grammatical Noun Categories in Russian Language

This study addresses the gap in understanding the lexico-grammatical-structural types of nouns, particularly how lexico-semantic variants gain new connotations during transposition. Drawing upon Babaytseva’s theory of transitivity phenomena and building on Mel’chuk’s text semantic theory, we identify the schemes and mechanisms of transposition relations concerning the lexical and grammatical categories of modern Russian nouns, by analyzing transposition phenomena and their semantic mechanisms in 660 Russian nouns with indefinite denotation and lexical and grammatical status. The research details all possible immigration transpositions of the lexical and grammatical categories of nouns at the minimal context level and their mechanisms. Findings reveal that approximately 27% of the examined nouns carry connotative meanings, encompassing functional-stylistic, cultural-ethnic, and emotional-evaluative facets. Additionally, the transposition of nouns can occur within or between categories. The principal mechanisms of transposition at the syntagmatic level include metaphors and metonymy. Transpositions at the lexical and semantic categories of nouns coincide with several phenomena: changes in the numerical paradigm, phraseologization, connotation, and the unveiling of the noun’s stylistic potential.

Hybrid ‘sledom’ [follows] in Area of Interaction of Nouns and Adverbs: Semantics and Grammar

This article presents the results of a study on the process and outcome of the stepwise adverbialization of the instrumental case of nouns in the Russian. The relevance of this work is underscored by the attention to the interaction between grammatical and semantic aspects within lexical units subject to transposition at the level of parts of speech. The aim of the article is to elucidate the specifics of hybrid structures formed as a result of the functional adverbialization of nouns in the instrumental case. The material used consists of contexts from the Russian National Corpus featuring substantive word forms like ‘sledom’, demonstrating various stages of adverbialization. An interdisciplinary approach is employed, utilizing methods of oppositional analysis, indexing, linguistic experimentation, as well as elements of componential and distributional analysis. Using the word form ‘sledom’ as a case study, the primary stages of adverbial transposition of nouns in Russian are identified. The analysis reveals that within the hybrid zone, the word form ‘sledom’ exhibits 55 % correspondence with the features of its original noun (‘sled’) and 60 % correspondence with the characteristics of a core adverb (‘sledom’). Lexicalization of the word form at this stage of adverbialization is not observed; it continues to function within the semantic domain of the original substantive lexeme. The significance of this research lies in its contribution to the development of a general theory of transitivity and syncretism in the grammatical structure of language, as well as the potential application of the proposed methods of oppositional analysis and indexing in studying other types of transpositional transformations within the system of parts of speech in the Russian.

Terms for Impositive Practices in Fiction. Translation Perspectives

The article addresses problems of translating Russian nouns which denote forms of impositive communication. The theme of social tensions and struggle for position within the changing social hierarchy is central to M. Bulgakov’s works; the correct rendition of the communicative pressure exerted by his characters on each other is therefore indispensable to translation adequacy. The study explores strategies employed by translators when conveying the axiological and cultural components of several Russian nouns denoting various forms of communicative imposition (внушение, замечание, просьба, совет, развязность). The paper discusses some of the challenges experienced by translators seeking to “replant” Bulgakov’s texts into the Anglophone culture which attaches great value to communicative non-imposition.

Gender Semantics of Nominations <i>родитель – родительница – родители</i> in Modern Media Discourse

Purpose. The purpose of the article is to identify manifestation patterns of gender semantics of Russian nouns родитель – родительница – родители (pluralia tantum) in different referent and context conditions. The research is based on newspaper subcorpora of Russian National Corpus. Results. The vocabulary values are marked by gender semes: родитель (father), родительница (mother), родители (father and mother – the separate lexeme). The first two nouns are characterized by a reduced stylistic meaning. They are also evaluated as outdated, but it does not confirm in modern Russian speech. The feminitive родительница retains a gender meaning in all types of usage, it is often used as a neutral synonym for мать (mother). It shows a clear tendency towards stylistic neutrality. At the same time it has a negative connotative background and can be used for reducing the social and personal status of the referent. The word родитель is a male nomination if denotes a particular person. For a generalized referent or if as a logical predicate, the gender seme is not preserved. Colloquial coloration is preserved only when the word referents a particular person. The meaning of the noun родители with semes of the bigender couple is fully realized only if it denotes a particular family or nominates a social role attributed to a particular family. In other cases it has non-gendered semantics, and becomes the plural form of родитель as ‘person with offspring’. Conclusion. We suppose changes in the semantic structure of the noun родитель can affect the lexical and morphological status of the word родители.

Borrowings or Code-Switching? Analysis of Ways of Morphosyntactic Integration of Lithuanian and Russian Nouns in the Novel "Robczik" by Bartosz Połoński

One of the most debated issues in the research on linguistic interactions includes the problem of differentiating between loan words and effects of code-switching, which is solved in a particularly complex way by studying the interaction of closely related languages. The aim of the article is to reveal various ways of integrating Lithuanian and Russian nouns used in informal communication in the Polish language in Lithuania and to make attempts to answer the question of whether the degree of morphosyntactic adaptation can be used to determine the boundary between the loan words and effects of code-switching. The study is based on the linguistic material of the novel Robczik by Bartosz Połoński, in which the author fairly accurately reconstructed the slang of young people at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. The analysis shows that in the case of typologically and genetically similar languages, foreign lexical items are incorporated into the syntactic structure of the language in several ways. However, the morphosyntactic integration of Lithuanian and Russian words is not a sufficient criterion to distinguish the phenomenon of borrowing from that of code-switching. Other criteria, such as phonological, which can only be applied to spoken linguistic material, may be of utmost importance.

THE MEANINGS OF THE SUFFIX “K” IN THE COMPOSITION OF NOUNS IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE AND THE WAYS OF EXPRESSING THEIR EQUIVALENTS IN THE PERSIAN LANGUAGE

The article considers the suffix -k- in the composition of nouns in Russian and the ways of expressing their equivalents in Persian. The problem is that in Russian the active suffix -k- forms nouns with different meanings, such as subjective-evaluative meaning, the meaning of femininity, singularity, object and action. However, Persian-speaking students sometimes do not have sufficient knowledge about these meanings. In Russian, these nouns are formed by adding the suffix -k- to the stem of adjectives, nouns, numerals and verbs. Each of the options has its own formation conditions. The aim of the present article is to identify various meanings of this suffix in Russian and to determine its equivalents in Persian. It was revealed that the majority of formed nouns are feminine nouns, and the Russian suffix -k- is conveyed in Persian by suffixes, adjectives and nouns.

“Threat” in Russian – A Linguistic Perspective

ABSTRACT The present study explores a frequent concept in modern media discourse, namely “threat,” based on a corpus analysis of the two Russian nouns groza and ugroza from 1800 to 2020. We show that the two words share a network of submeanings, but that they have different centers of gravity in the network. We identify four submeanings and suggest that the distribution of the two words has changed over time. In present-day Russian, groza is dominant in the meaning ‘thunderstorm,’ while ugroza describes a wide variety of threats. Our analysis of origins of threats and affected entities has also revealed a diachronic development, whereby origins of threat change from concrete physical threats via military threats to more generalized dangers, such as nuclear and environmental disasters, diseases, and terrorism, while entities affected by these threats undergo a change from concrete persons via communities and states to the entire planet.

Towards the feature identity for ellipsis in Russian: Evidence from noun phrases with coordinated adjectives

This paper deals with the problem of feature identity in Russian noun phrases with coordinated modifiers. The data from various languages shows that ellipsis allows mismatch of some morphological features for the elided and the spelled-out constituents while other features must match. The studies of Russian noun phrases with coordinated modifiers propose ellipsis analysis but does not determine the constraints on feature identity for the elide and the spelled-out noun. In this paper, we analyze the identity of such noun features as number and case by conducting a corpus study and a selfpaced acceptability experiment. The results demonstrate that the difference in number is unacceptable for conjuncts without numerals (singular vs. plural nouns) but acceptable with paucal and other numerals (numberless vs. plural nouns according to D. Pesetsky’s analysis). The noun number features mismatch in noun phrases without numeral, but number features in numeral phrases do not conflict. The coordination of a noun phrase without numeral and a numeral phrase is also unacceptable. While the nouns in both conjuncts are plural, the case is different (external case vs. genitive). Thus, the ellipsis in Russian noun phrases with coordinated modifiers requires the lack of number

Acquisition of Russian noun case by bilingual children: lexical cues to case assignment in real and novel words

ABSTRACT The present study examines the mechanisms of lexical case acquisition in Russian by two-to-five-year-old Russian monolingual (n = 54) and Russian-English bilingual children (n = 38). Participants performed a picture-based sentence completion task. Sentences were constructed to elicit production of real Russian words (n = 24) and nonce words (n = 24) in different non-nominative cases (e.g., ‘The boy is holding a … beetle-ACC/meetle-ACC’). We wanted to know if there are qualitative and/or quantitative differences in case assignment on complements of prepositions between monolingual and bilingual children, whether they can generalize case assignment rules to novel input, and whether monolingual and bilingual children show different developmental trajectories in terms of case acquisition at different ages. The results indicate that bilingual children make more errors with case forms than their monolingual peers in all tested age groups and inflectional paradigms, in both real word and nonce word productions. However, despite robust quantitative differences, bilinguals and monolinguals show strikingly similar patterns of case acquisition in that they make similar types of errors and struggle with the same case forms. Furthermore, we did not find significant differences in the accuracy of produced case forms for real versus nonce words, suggesting that both monolingual and bilingual children learn to generalize morphological rules to novel input early in language development. Finally, chronological age was a significant predictor of case form accuracy but did not interact with other variables. This means that both monolingual and bilingual children improved their case performance gradually over time with similar learning gains for real and nonce words.

Параметризация числовой вариативности для русских именных групп с помощью экспериментальных исследований и языкового моделирования

Параметризация числовой вариативности для русских именных групп с помощью экспериментальных исследований и языкового моделирования

Frequency and morphological behaviour of nouns in Czech and Russian

Declensional morphology of nouns in Czech and Russian is investigated and compared. It is shown that, in general, word forms which are more similar to their lemmas are preferred, but there are differences between animate and inanimate nouns and also among grammatical genders. The frequency distribution of grammatical cases is also studied, with animacy and gender being again important factors.

Evolution of the dative, instrumental and locative plural forms in *ŏ/*jŏ-declension based on Old Russian monuments of business writing

The article examines one of the morphological innovations in Old Russian noun declension system, so-called the a-expansion, as a result of which the words of all declensions acquired inflections with the formant -a- (-амъ, -ами, -ахъ) in the dative, instrumental and locative plural forms. An analysis of the relevant *ŏ/*jŏ-stem noun forms, which were found in the five studied corpora of Old Russian business writing monuments of different geographical origin, made it possible to reveal several patterns in the development of this process that are significant for historical morphology. Thus, the data show that the a-expansion either was evolving more slowly in the instrumental case than in the dative and locative cases or was less often reflected in writing. Based on the studied material, the article concludes that neuter nouns could succumb to the a-expansion faster than masculine words. In addition, the data of the studied texts allowed assuming that the a-expansion began earlier and was evolving faster in the northwest, while in the central zone this process proceeded slower.

Lexical production and innovation in child and adult Russian Heritage speakers dominant in English and Hebrew

AbstractThe present study investigated lexical production and innovation of 202 participants across six groups: child and adult heritage speakers of Russian, dominant in Hebrew or American English, and monolingual Russian-speaking children and adults. Understanding quantitative performance across these six groups was intended to provide a comprehensive perspective on heritage language (HL) development, while comparing the participants’ qualitative non-target response patterns would elucidate the organization of the HL lexicon. We assessed the production of Russian nouns and verbs using a naming task. We then considered the effects of input at the societal and lexical levels (focusing on word frequency and age of acquisition). Our findings are discussed in terms of accounts of HL developmental trajectories: monolingual-like trajectory, frozen lexical development, attrition, and new language variety in a contact situation. The results presented no evidence for attrition, while elements of the other three trajectories were found in our quantitative and qualitative analyses.

What’s so bad about being a manageress?

ABSTRACT A feminitive is a noun which restricts its extension to women/girls. They have a long history of use within English (e.g. princess, temptress), as well as more recent additions to English (e.g. manageress, hostess). The desirability of introducing feminitives as a device of feminist language reforms is controversial. While some are a helpful tool for raising the visibility of women in traditionally male roles and environments, some seem counterproductive because they reinforce the assumption that the default referents of the original term are men. We argue that this dual aspect of feminitives follows from observations about their semantic content. Our proposal is that feminitives are a useful opposition to expressions which semantically exclude women, but a harmful reinforcement of pragmatic presuppositions about the denotations of semantically gender neutral expressions. We suggest an interesting parallel with feminist language reforms which directly modify the grammatical gender of certain nouns in Russian.

ОБ ИНТЕРФЕРЕНЦИИ В ОБРАЗОВАНИИ ФОРМ МНОЖЕСТВЕННОГО ЧИСЛА В РУССКОЙ РЕЧИ ИТАЛЬЯНЦЕВ

The article is about the observation of the interfering influence of the Italian language on the formation of plural forms in the Russian speech of Italians, which can lead to the erroneous formation of plural forms from the Russian words singularia tantum. The purpose of this study is to establish the main linguistic causes existing in the Russian and Italian languages, which are the basis for the occurrence or absence of such type of interference and related errors; which, in turn, allows us to understand the nature of errors in the speech of non-native speakers. The research was conducted on the material of authentic translated texts written by Italians for educational and other purposes. The relevance of the topic is due, on the one hand, to the frequency of the formation of plural forms from the words singularia tantum in the Russian speech of Italians; on the other hand, the need for a clear understanding of the linguistic nature of such errors. It is important to emphasize the unsystematic nature of the formation of number forms in nouns in Russian and Italian, as well as the unsystematic nature of grammatical litters describing the category of numbers in bilingual and explanatory dictionaries, which creates a significant methodological difficulty.

Согласование в русском языке: морфологическая, синтаксическая и семантическая сущность

The article is concerned with the description of morphological, syntactic and semantic principles of agreement in the Russian language. Among the features of agreement described in the scientific literature, there are at least three that are contradicted by the facts of agreement in modern speech practice: 1) agreement is a syntactic connection that operates within a phrase or a simple sentence; 2) the syntactic connection of agreement is subordinate, one of the components in it is the dominant noun; 3) the direction of dependence is determined by the structural principle “from the main to the dependent”. The first feature is contradicted by the fact that there is an agreement between the anaphoric pronoun and its antecedent, which can be located in different parts of a complex sentence or even in different sentences. The obligatory nature of the second and third features is questioned with the onset of the active phase of the destruction of the case system in the Russian language. The “weakening of the case function” of the Russian noun (M. Glovinskaya) led to the fact that the connection of government is established not with the dependent noun, but with the component of the governed syntactic group that is closest to the verb or other controlling word. In this case, the nearest word is put into the required case form. Such a word can be a noun with a homonymous case form in a coordinative word-combination, with which a noun with non-homonymous cases randomly agrees, for example: Net docheri(Gen./Dat./Loc. case) i *sestre(instead of sestry) ‘There are not the daughter and the sister’. The closest word can be an adjective with a homonymous case form, and a noun with non-homonymous case forms randomly agrees in case with the adjective, for example: Net moiei(Gen./Dat./Instr./Loc. case) *sestre(instead of sestry) ‘There is not my sister’. We propose to call this type of agreement linear or probabilistic agreement.

«Парадную они называют подъезд»: социальное значение в семантике и метапрагматике

The paper analyzes the concept of social meaning, which has been conceptualized in lexi­cal semantics since the 1980s and has become central in modern sociolinguistics and linguis­tic anthropology. It has been used to describe pragmatic increments in the meaning of a lan­guage unit, which it receives in context. New explanatory approaches have developed from a sociolinguistic perspective in metapragmatics, where social meaning is seen as a social index that emerges in context. Social index (the index meaning of a sign) refers to typified social situations and social roles of participants of a communicative act. Social meaning is actual­ized when it can be interpreted in social interaction as being used to express certain connota­tions. This analytical review presents a contemporary conceptual apparatus and toolkit that enables linguists to describe the social perspective in constructing meaning and interpreting meaning formation in social contexts. The empirical material for the analysis reflects the con­temporary sociocultural and discourse practices using the example of linguistic variability in Russian. The analysis of the Russian nouns “paradnaya” and “pod’ezd” shows how a lan­guage sign acquires a stable indexical character and is used to express social attribution.

UPDATING THE PARADIGM OF CORRESPONDENCES TO GERMAN COMPOUND WORDS IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

In Russian linguistics, there is a categorisation of equivalents to German compound words in Russian. The article discusses the features of the existing approach and suggests refinements based on the conducted analysis. The relevance of the article lies in the fact that it complements the existing criteria and expands the ideas concerning possible correspondences to German compound 66 words in Russian, which is a contribution both to the study of compound words in German, and to the comparative study of German and Russian languages, in general. Compound words in the German language as a specific phenomenon in the word formation of this language present the object of the study, and its subject is the categorisation of correspondences between compound nouns in German and their equivalents in Russian. The method of comparison includes correlating German compound nouns with their equivalents in Russian, identifying the frequency of using certain models when translating German compound nouns into Russian on the basis of an excerpt from the original text and its translation. The purpose of the article is to systematise the correspondences of German compound nouns in Russian on the example of a certain literary text. The author’s task is to update the categorisation of correspondences for compound nouns in German and their equivalents in Russian, suggested in previous studies, in the process of identifying the predominant type of correspondences on a specific literary material. The following methods were used: a continuous sampling method, the component analysis, a descriptive method, a comparative analysis of the original and translation, and the method of quantitative analysis. The study combines the comparative (proper linguistic) aspect and the translational one. The main models of correspondences to German compound nouns in Russian found confirmation within the analysed material, while the author suggested some additions, which present the novelty of the research. The following results were noted: in terms of frequency the model of “an adjective plus a noun” takes the first place among correspondences to German compound nouns in Russian; the second place is taken by root and derivative words of the Russian language; the third place occupies a group of translation transformations, supplemented by the author; the fourth place is taken by a model of “a noun plus another noun in the genitive case”; the fifth place goes to prepositional word combinations. Two small groups - compound nouns of the Russian language and set expressions - are added by the author. In the identified group of transformations, the use of various translation techniques is noted, for example: adding and omitting lexical units, replacing parts of speech, generalisation, concretisation, semantic development, holistic transformation, replacement of one syntactic construction with another.

Semantics and Ways of Expressing the Plural of Nouns in Russian and Japanese Languages

Purpose. The study compares the ways to express the plural, as well as categories connected with these ways, and the semantics of plurality in Russian and Japanese languages which are genetically and typologically unrelated: Russian is an inflectional language and Japanese is an agglutinative one.Results. There is a grammatical category of singular and plural in Russian. This category is missing in Japanese, but there is a lexical-semantic category. The concept of singularity and plurality is not represented in Japanese. Number may be actualized by the speaker if the object (animate or inanimate) enters the speaker’s personal zone or a personification takes place. There is only one way to express plurality in Russian – by using flexions of plurality. There are four ways to do that in Japanese which are markers of plurality, classifiers, reduplication and combined dvandva (a word with coordinative connection between components of the whole word). The usage of inflections to express plurality is mandatory in Russian, but the usage of plurality markers in Japanese is probabilistic.Conclusion. A common category for Russian and Japanese languages which is important for expressing plurality is the category of animation. The similar meanings of plurality both in Russian and in Japanese is collective, representative and indefinite discrete plurality expressed in different ways.

Semantic Shifts Displayed by Adjectives Accompanying Abstract Nouns

The research is devoted to semantic changes undergone by adjectives accompanying abstract nouns in English and Russian. The article is aimed at proving that such adjectives lose their concrete lexical meaning and become intensifiers, that is undergo delexicalization. The nouns themselves serve as units of both lexical and syntactic context suppressing the elements of concrete meaning and enhancing the intensifying meaning. As a result of this process, synonymous relationship develops between adjectives which are not synonyms in other contexts. The process runs parallel in the two languages, with similar lexical sources, which makes it possible to assume that it is part of a general trend of semantic evolution from concrete to more abstract meanings.