Semantic Scope Research Articles

Comparative Slavic phraseology and paremiology: Cornerstones and stumbling blocks

The comparison of phraseological units of various Slavic languages is based on a unified system of concepts and their oppositions. Czech and Russian, Polish and Russian, Russian and Bulgarian, and Russian and Ukrainian idioms and paremias are studied in the article. Russian idioms such as белая ворона, паршивая овца and Polish biały kruk, czarna owca, Czech idioms obĕtní beránek and Russian жертвенный агнец, козел отпущения are examples of comparison. The sources of the material for the study are published bilingual dictionaries of phraseological units, as well as articles by linguists from different countries on this topic. Numerous semantic differences (connotations) were found that confirm the idiomatic character of each language. The equivalence of phraseological units is hindered by their polysemy and different semantic scope. And the content of proverbs reflects more the morality of society at a certain stage of its history than the linguistic image of the world. The influence of the national cultural background on the phraseological productivity (“phrasemogeneity”) of lexemes is demonstrated in the work. In particular, the words цървул, калпак, бъклица, трън, denoting the facts of rural life, are productive for Bulgarian phraseology. An attempt is made in the article to systematize the differential features that distinguish phraseological units of different languages. These are such oppositions as: “person” — “object”, “space” — “time”, “spiritual” — “material”, “assessment: approving/disapproving/neutral”, “external manifestation” — “internal state”, “scale: general — private”, and “stylistic coloring: from rough to sublime”. The depth and thoroughness of the semasiological analysis revise the thesis about the universal phraseological fund. The article discusses and develops some provisions of professor Valery Mokienko’s concept.

Мовні засоби вираження морально-етичного портрета ченця у тексті Києво-Печерського патерика

The article is devoted to the analysis of a fragment of Kyiv Rus’ linguistic picture of the world and to the reconstruction of human ethic orientations of the Early Middle Age. The aim of this scientific research is to highlight the semantic scope and functions of language units in the Kyiv-Pechersk Patericon are to describe the moral and ethic portrait of a monk. The proposed theme of a study allows updating the analysis aimed at the reconstruction of the Old Ruthenians ethical ideals. The Kyiv-Pechersk Patericon is the first original collection of lives of the Old East Slavic saints of the 13th century. It does not only fully describe the images of the first Rus’ ascetics, but thanks to its unique structure it is the only one among the East Slavic written papers, which gives a valuable possibility to unite different materials into a holistic picture of the moral life in ancient Kyiv. The linguistic means of depicting the moral and ethical characteristics of the inhabitants of the monastery became the subject of the study. It is concluded that in the selection of the characteristics of the monks in the text under consideration there is a tendency to idealize, focus on the literary etiquette norms and highlight the concept of the honor of the clergy. A special attention is paid to such qualities as the allegiance to Christian teaching, humbleness, restraint, mercy, expressed through about 40 positively connotated substantive and adjective lexemes (some negative characteristics are isolated and, therefore, are not involved in the analysis). The selected names don’t perform any terminological functions (they are not components of the titles of the highest ranks of the clergy or namings of the faces of holiness) but rather represent moral and ethical characteristics. In the use of most part of laudatory epithets-definitions there is a tendency to associate them with a specific person, which in the process of further canonization will be the basis for the inclusion of each of them in the certain category of sainthood. According to the origin and character of their use, these lexemes pertain to the church-bookish element. The consistency in refusing to borrow Greek or Latin words to denote the holiness idea indicates a high level of language and cultural-religion consciousness and can be regarded as the main feature of the Slavic choice in denoting this idea. The proposed article considers one of the fragments of the lexical originality of the Kyiv-Pechersk Patericon, which opens us prospects for further studies of this ancient text at different language levels.

Слова "город" и "городской" в русской фразеологии

The article deals with Russian phraseological units, which include the words gorod and gorodskoi. The word gorod is closely related to the Church Slavonic noun grad, which is its stylistic synonym, which is marked in most dictionary entries as «traditionally poetic» and «obsolete». These words are illustrative for the study of Russian culture. Expansion of the semantic scope of the word gorod is connected with change of city functions in human society and strengthening of urbanization process. In modern Russian, these words are sometimes played upon, which is typical of mass media. Set attributive phrases with the adjective gorodskoi, as well as a number of periphrases denoting a particular city, are discussed along with phraseological units. It is noted that the formation of phraseological competence helps to avoid communicative failures in intercultural communication.

Names of Russian Charity: idem vs. alium

This paper provides a linguistic analysis of abstract nouns belonging to the lexical-semantic field “Gratuitous Assistance to the Needy” and denoting the situation of charitable activities in general — благотворительность, донорство, меценатство, and филантропия. All of them are synonyms; they are defined through each other in dictionary entries and are often used as absolute equivalents. This impedes uncontradictory terminologisation of the language of charity and complicates the justification of the legal framework for this activity. The author aims to distinguish these words by using historical and explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language, dictionaries of synonyms of the Russian language, and The National Corpus of the Russian Language. This helps to determine the semantic scope, context compatibility, and conditions of the textual functioning of these words. The author concludes that the core position in the structure of the lexical-semantic field “Gratuitous Assistance to the Needy” is occupied by the originally Russian word благотворительность, which has a high usage frequency, denotes any gratuitous assistance, and has polar connotations, both positive and negative. Other terms occupy the periphery — either because of a narrower meaning (меценатство), or due to a limited scope of use (филантропия, донорство). The frequency of lexemes that refer to charitable activities increases during periods of social and economic stability, the establishment of better international relations, and decreases when society is forced to deal with serious problems. The intensive growth in the use of these words has been observed in the Russian media space since the mid-1980s and is still growing, which occurs due to the international actualisation of charitable activities and social responsibility trend.

A computational approach to lexical polysemy in Ancient Greek

AbstractLanguage is a complex and dynamic system. If we consider word meaning, which is the scope of lexical semantics, we observe that some words have several meanings, thus displaying lexical polysemy. In this article, we present the first phase of a project that aims at computationally modelling Ancient Greek semantics over time. Our system is based on Bayesian learning and on the Diorisis Ancient Greek corpus, which we have built for this purpose. We illustrate preliminary results in light of expert annotation, and take this opportunity to discuss the role of computational systems and human analysis in a complex research area like historical semantics. On the one hand, computational approaches allow us to model large corpora of texts. On the other hand, a long and rich scholarly tradition in Ancient Greek has provided us with valuable insights into the mechanisms of semantic change (cf. e.g. Leiwo, M. (2012). Introduction: variation with multiple faces. In Leiwo, M., Halla-aho, H., and Vierros, M. (eds), Variation and Change in Greek and Latin, Helsinki: Suomen Ateenan-instituutin säätiö, pp. 1–11.). In this article, we show that these qualitative analyses can be leveraged to support and complement the computational modelling.

Four Dthats

The distinction between a merely ‘rigidifying’ dthat and a directly-referential take on dthat-terms is well known, and is explicitly highlighted by Kaplan in Afterthoughts, his 1989 commentary on Demonstratives. What is not equally widely recognized is that Afterthoughts also oscillates between three different directly referential proposals. This essay discusses the semantic and philosophical implications of these different directly-referential interpretations of ‘dthat’, paying particular attention to (a) the relationships between syntactic and propositional structure, (b) the structure and makeup of contexts in the semantics of indexical languages, (c) the significance of context shifting devices and of so-called operators on character, and (d) the aims and scope of propositional semantics.

Gender- and Role-Specific Differences in the Perception of the Concept “Impishness” (based on the results of a psycholinguistic experiment)

The present paper continues a series of articles devoted to ludic competence and the description of its components with the help of psycholinguistic tools and methods. The present article explores another component of ludic competence, i.e. impishness, and the corresponding cultural concept “impishness”.
 An attempt has been made to single out gender- and role-specific differences in the perception of the verbalized concept “impishness” in the linguistic world-image of the Russian-speaking population of Eastern Ukraine. Psycholinguistic experiment was the main method of research. The sample comprised 400 older adults (aged 30 – 60), male and female respondents being equally represented. 
 Having analyzed the data from the free association experiment with the stimulus “impishness”, it was revealed that everyday consciousness of common representatives of the Ukrainian linguistic culture reflects all the conceptual meanings that are related to impishness in the intercultural domain.
 The core of the verbalized concept impishness is represented by four semantic clusters (more than 10%): “horseplay”, “play”, “children”, “flirting”.
 The semantic scope of the concept depends on the gender of the respondents. Thus, for female respondents, the main constituent elements of the concept impishness are children (subject of pranks), as well as foolery and frolicking as manifestations of playful behavior that finds expression in frolic pranks, practical jokes, funny tricks, etc. Male respondents, on the other hand, tend to associate impishness primarily with woman, as well as with immorality, flippant behavior, and various forms of daring, provocative, and imprudent behavior.
 Therefore, the ambivalent character of the concept “impishness” reveals itself in certain gender- and role-specific differences in its perception. It reveals itself most vividly in behavioral associates and associates that describe various forms of pranks.
 On the whole, the stimulus “impishness” is generally evaluated as something both positive and negative by all the respondents.11.25% of the respondents display negative attitude to the stimulus “impishness”.

The theoretical scope of Fujita Shōzō’s later concept of contemporary totalitarianism: integrating ‘totalitarianism towards unruffled ease’ and ‘totalitarianism as market economy’

ABSTRACT My research explores the theoretical relevance of the Japanese intellectual historian Fujita Shōzō’s later concept of contemporary totalitarianism, the theoretical essence of which is captured by his concepts of ‘totalitarianism towards unruffled ease’ and ‘totalitarianism as market economy’. His conception of totalitarianism is clearly different from the concept as it is generally understood that his theoretical focus on totalitarian orientations can be seen particularly in his views of contemporary life and the market mechanism. Fujita essentially divides the semantic scope of contemporary totalitarianism into these two socio-political concepts, although he did not build a clear theoretical bridge between them. In this research I argue that Fujita’s concept of contemporary totalitarianism reveals totalitarian orientations in contemporary life under the dialectical social conditions involving the rationalised system of a market economy and the strong narcissistic impulse to satisfy unruffled ease, particularly through seeing twentieth-century society in continuity. Furthermore, I argue that this leads us to critically understand contemporary social and political phenomena, thereby bringing us self-criticism and self-reflection in socio-pathological terms.

СЕМАНТИКА И СФЕРЫ ДЕЙСТВИЯ КИТАЙСКИХ НАРЕЧИЙ

The article is devoted to the analysis of the semantic scope of the Chinese adverbs. In Russian, adverbs are divided into two subclasses: adverbs with fixed and floating scope. The main attention is paid to the specifics of each class of adverbs, which allows determining what fragment of the semantic structure of a sentence is characterized by an adverb, and verifying the law of semantic agreement. The work determines the place of the Chinese adverbs in the semantic structure of a sentence, reveals semantic interaction between adverbs and predicates, which must be taken into account when using adverbs in a sentence.

$$\hbox {NL}_\lambda $$ NL λ as the Logic of Scope and Movement

Lambek elegantly characterized part of natural language. As is well-known, his substructural logic L, and its non-associative version NL, handle basic function/argument composition well, but not scope taking and syntactic displacement—at least, not in their full generality. In previous work, I propose \(\text {NL}_\lambda \), which is NL supplemented with a single structural inference rule (“abstraction”). Abstraction closely resembles the traditional linguistic rule of quantifier raising, and characterizes both semantic scope taking and syntactic displacement. Due to the unconventional form of the abstraction inference, there has been some doubt that \(\text {NL}_\lambda \) should count at a legitimate substructural logic. This paper argues that \(\text {NL}_\lambda \) is perfectly well-behaved. In particular, it enjoys cut elimination and an interpolation result. In addition, perhaps surprisingly, it is decidable. Finally, I prove that it is sound and complete with respect to the usual class of relational frames.

"Taiga law," in the works of V. P. Astafiev: the semantics of the concept of folk ecology

The article is devoted to the "taiga law" in the works of V. p. Astafiev, which is shown by the writer as a real concept existing in Siberia. The "taiga law" is noted in the literature and attracted the attention of literary critics, but the researchers did not turn to him, analyzing the work of the writer. In the ecological prose of V. P. Astafiev the significant place (and in some texts central one) to the code of the people's ecology, centuries-old and passed from generation to generation, as well as to the environmental symbol of the Siberian culture. The law includes the relation of man to man in the taiga existence and the relation of man to flora and fauna. Contrary to popular belief it is shown that the texts of V.P. Astafiev presented as a critical aspect of ecology (ecocriticism) and positive. The work is done in line with the ideas of cognitive linguistics, taking into account the conditionality of the literary text of the author's linguistic picture of the world, in the works of writers-villagers it is associated with a regional component. "Taiga law" is a regional mental concept that is waiting to be considered within the definition of "Siberian text". How the lexical unit "the law of the taiga" refers to the environmental vocabulary (Koslova). The article focuses on the features of the concept functioning as a sign- formator (W. Weinreich). In the article, the 10 components of the transformer are identified in the texts of the writer. This "unwritten" law, it exists in oral form, so has traits in common with folkloric elements: the writer, the nomination is presented in two variants (the "law of the taiga" and "strong law") is uncertain semantic scope, emotionally expressive painted. The spatial component of "taiga" is important in the nomination structure. This is an axiological concept based on evaluation, carrying a number of direct and hidden prohibitions. "Taiga law" appears in the texts of V. p. Astafiev, on the one hand, as organizing the beginning of the daily life of Siberians, on the other, as the cause of conflicts. In fiction texts creates tensions of the text, organizing the conflict both interpersonal and social. In some texts, the "taiga law" performs a plot-forming function. The results of the study essential for the theory of environmental prose, add a new element in the philological studies of Astafiev’s legacy.

Designing for “Raressential” Functions: Usage Patterns and UI Guidelines for Infrequent but Essential Tasks

ABSTRACTAs the number of functions offered by IT devices and services has grown with technological advances, designers have increasingly incorporated factors such as usage frequency and importance into the design of the user interface (UI). In this process, rarely used functions were pushed to the remote corners of the interface; some of these include infrequent but essential functions (“raressential” functions) that can significantly affect the user experience of a service. Despite their impact on user satisfaction, there have been few studies addressing the issues arising from the use of raressential functions. This study investigates usage patterns of representative raressential functions in order to propose design guidelines for UIs with such functions. Twenty-five participants were asked to sketch and perform the process for locating raressential functions in three different platforms. The protocol analysis and data visualization identified that (1) the corners of the mobile screen are strong visual attractors, (2) the overlap between semantic scopes of icons or names complicates the searching process in the PC environment, and (3) the lack of understanding of application software hierarchy seriously hinders orderly navigation in the TV platform. Participants also exhibited repetitive search patterns unique to each platform that delayed the completion of the task. Additional behavioral characteristics and relevant design guidelines are proposed for enhancing user experience of raressential functions.

Creolised Text in Mass Media: Principles of Effective Decoding

Arising and active development of innovative information channels, forming net thinking, require non-standard forms of presenting material in mass media. One of the solutions to this problem is increasing the number of creolised texts not only in electronic, but in printed media as well. Such texts containing verbal (heading, subscript, text comprising of more than one sentence) and non-verbal (image, scheme, table, font, colour) parts are widely spread in mass media because they allow the reader to precisely understand the author’s intention and the intention can be expressed in an implicit way. Such texts correspond to mass communication general trends towards information visualization, raising the effectiveness of the text impact on audience thanks to double coding, compact presentation of the material. These are the reasons of growing scientific interest in creolized texts in psychology, literature studies, linguistics, journalism. However, the terminology of the scientific sphere is not conventional: different terms “creolized text”, “semantically complicated text”, “polycode text”, etc. are all used in similar meanings in scientific papers. The authors of the article characterize terms used in Russian and foreign articles and monographs, assess their frequency and semantic scope. The specific features of creolized texts are pointed out, different types of such texts depending on metagraphic and iconic sign systems included in them are described. We distinguish three phases in reading such texts (preliminary stage, organised perception, final stage) and the role of visual and verbal components in the process. By the example of caricatures we show the importance of background knowledge for adequate decoding of creolized texts. Linguistic and cultural universals are an optimal source of objects whose meaning is evident to the representative of a certain culture. This makes the creolized text decoding easier in linguistic culture of its origin. On the other hand, texts based on linguistic and cultural universalia (realia, idioms, homophones, homographs, etc.) present extra difficulties for non-natives. The material of the research is caricatures of the late 20th — early 21st centuries by A.Merinov. Each of the caricatures is based on a certain linguistic and cultural universal.

КОРЕЛЯЦІЯ ПОНЯТТЯ «ВІДСУТНІСТЬ» ІЗ СЕМАНТИЧНИМИ КАТЕГОРІЯМИ ПОЗБАВЛЕННЯ, КАРИТИВНОСТІ Й НЕВОЛОДІННЯ

У межах когнітивної лінгвістики досліджуються мовні явища, що відбивають систему світобудови, а також розуміння і сприйняття людиною існуючого світу в реаліях і абстракціях. Онтологічні та гносеологічні суті як буття людини, так і мови як системи базуються на опозиції наявність vs відсутність. У сучасних лінгвістичних студіях розвиваються ідеї основоположників когнітивного напрямку Дж. Лакофф, Р. Лангакера, Е. Рош, Ч. Філлмора, У. Чейфа. Особлива увага приділяється лінгвальним узагальненням, що мають конкретну реалізацію в мові та мовленні, і, в той же час, охопленню всієї системи мови. Оскільки всю мовну систему пронизують асиметричні відносини, а теорія опозицій відображає сутнісні властивості системи мови, абстрактне поняття «відсутність» висувається на перший план в аспекті пояснення привативного характеру мови. Застосування лінгвокогнітивного аналізу, в основі якого лежить теорія прототипового опису лексико-граматичних явищ, дозволяє розглянути поняття «відсутність» у системі мови і засоби його репрезентації. Поняття «відсутність» і семантика засобів його вираження не піддавалися окремому розгляду. В наукових працях ставилися питання про самостійний статус у російській мові семантичних категорій позбавлення, неволодіння і каритивності, що фрагментарно пов’язані з поняттям «відсутність». Зокрема, зазначені семантичні категорії протиставлялися детально дослідженій на матеріалі російської мови категорії посессівності. Огляд досліджень категорій заперечення, каритивності, позбавлення і неволодіння свідчить про те, що вони безпосередньо і нерозривно пов’язані з поняттям «відсутність», а їх кореляція відбиває взаємозалежність конкретного (семантичних категорій) і цілого, під яким мається на увазі поняття «відсутність». Семантичний обсяг абстрактного поняття «відсутність» ширше, ніж семантичний обсяг зазначених категорій.

Z badań nad pojęciem pamięci – mneme w dramacie greckim. Część II: Mneme w utworach Eurypidesa

Study on the concept of mneme – “memory” in the plays of Euripides is a continuation of our research (based on the works of Greek tragedians), whose aim is not only to establish meanings, especially new ones, but also to define the role that this concept plays in the works of Euripides. Linguistic and literary analysis of 8 instances of a noun mneme shows that this concept reveals hitherto unknown semantic values and it also performs functions that are important for the plot. Among the meanings of mneme there are five new ones: (1) “testimony, proof” ( Suppliant Women ), whose role is a ‘media’ message to guarantee the preservation of memory about Theseus’ feats among descend­ants, (2) “account, balance” ( Heracles ), rational argument, which the hero must use in a critical situation caused by divine power, (3) specific “history”, which creates the plot ( Ion ), (4) “reason, rightness” ( Iphigenia at Aulis ), i.e. evidence of predominance of the woman over the man (in terms of character), (5) “image”, twice in this sense ( Iphigenia at Aulis ): 1. as a panorama, vivid memory of panegyric and cognitive nature (Greek expedition), 2. as scenes from Iphigenia’s childhood cited in order to change the decision of Agamemnon. In addition to the new ones, Euripides also uses known meanings: mneme with negation, i.e. the lack of “mentions, memories” (= concealment) becomes an important element of the plot of Helen , guaranteeing its happy ending; in turn mneme as Kreon’s “thought” is a tool for mastering feelings and influencing the development of stage events. All meanings defined by Euripides can be divided into two groups. The first group includes meanings that have rational value: (1) “account, balance”, (2) “thought”, (3) “reason, rightness”. In the other group there are expressive meanings: (1) “testimony, proof”, (2) “mention, memory”, (3) “history”, (4) “image”. Undoubtedly, Euripides not only broadened the semantic scope of the concept of mneme , introducing its new values, but creatively used them in his plays, whether to describe the main characters, or as an element influencing the action, or finally as a testimony of the past that is important for the plot.

On the Balto- Slavic term for “hand ”

[full article and abstract in Lithuanian; abstract in English]
 This paper focuses on the common Balto-Slavic term for “hand.” This somatonym is quite peculiar; despite the importance of its referent, it is not possible to reconstruct a common IE. root for “hand.” Here, the main extant etymological hypotheses on the Balto-Slavic forms are discussed.
 Special attention is paid to a less-known hypothesis, accounting for these forms as a direct reflex of IE. *penkwe. Horowitz (1992) believes that the original meaning of this lexeme was “hand,” and that it had only later shifted to “5.” This reconstruction would provide a direct etymological/semantical connection between the somatonym and the numeral, which parallels similar cases in many of the world’s languages. I will point out the reasons why such an etymology would be tempting and, at the same time, a number of crucial difficulties that should lead to its rejection. The traditional connection with the activity of collecting (Lith. riñkti) still remains the more plausible hypothesis; however, other explanations are also theoretically valid. Some final remarks are proposed that suggest regarding these forms as a Baltic innovation. Innovative aspects are found (i) in the semantic scope of these words (from the shoulder to the fingertips) and (ii) in the absence of a gender opposition between the hand and the foot (gender opposition being an archaic feature). The action of collecting may be regarded as a case of global etymology, i.e., a root shared by several macro-families. Conversely, the root *(w)renk- is attested only in Baltic languages (Lithuanian). So, it is reasonable to believe that the somatonym originated in the Baltic and was later borrowed by the Slavic during the period of maximum proximity between these people.

“Varii errores qui ab origine mundi emerserunt”. The semantic scope of the term “heresy” in Philastrius’ of Brescia Diversarum hereseon liber

The bishop of Brescia, Philastrius, author of the first Latin catalogue of he­resies, written between 380 and 388, presented in his treaty an extremely large number of heterodox movements: 28 within Judaism and 128 in early Christianity. This comes as a result of a wide understanding of the term heresis. For Philastrius this term was synonymous with the term error, recognized as any deviation from the universal truth in the history of the world, inspired by Satan as “the father of lies”, ocurring primarily in Judaism and Christianity. Among the early Christian views defined by the bishop of Brescia as heresy five groups can be distinguished. The first group includes mainly the erroneous views on fundamental theological questions contained in the rule of faith, such as the concept of a creator God and saviour Jesus Christ. The second set of he­resies, closely related with the previous one, contains the erroneous doctrines of anthropology, such as questioning the resurrection of the human body or the view of the materiality of the human soul. The third group includes the views related to the misinterpretation of Scripture, especially exaggerated literal interpretations of the texts of the Old Testament, as well as the cosmological views which do not agree with descriptions contained within the Bible. The fourth group contains the moral issues related to the based on laxism or rigorism way of life, as well as to the attitude of lack of deference to the laws of the Church, but non-threatening the primary truths of the Christian faith. The fifth group of heresies includes the movements defined by the authors of the late patristic period as a schizm, while the term schisma is not at all used by the bishop of Brescia in his work. The semantic scope of the term heresis in Philastrius’ treaty went beyond the noncompliance with the regula fidei. According to the bishop of Brescia each offense – whether in doctrinal teaching or practice of life, as well as with regard to the understanding of the text of Scripture – is a heresy because it offends God and the Church. Therefore, in Philastrius opinion one should not differentiate between superior and minor error, but equally condemn them as attitudes directed against God as the Father of Truth.

Influence of Intonation, Morphology, and Syntax on the Semantic Scope of Wh-phrases in Kyeongsang Korean

Text Visualization and Concordance Retrieval Using Project Gutenberg. This paper investigates the influence of prosody, morphology, and syntax on the processing of the semantic scope configuration of wh-phrases in Kyeongsang Korean. Through a carefully designed perception experiment, we examined how intonation, sentence-final particles, and long-distance scrambling of wh-phrases affect the judgment on the wh-scope. The results of the experiment suggest that while intonation and the surface syntactic position of wh-phrases do have a certain effect, wh-scope interpretation depends mostly on the sentence-final particles. However, the gang-up effect of intonation and long-distance scrambling was found: when they both indicate a matrix scope reading, the wh-phrase is likely to receive a matrix scope reading even if the sentence-final particle indicates an embedded scope reading. In sum, our study confirms the influence of intonation on wh-scope and newly discovers the influence of long-distance scrambling but observes that neither of them is as strong as morphological marking. We also found a general preference for an embedded scope reading that does not violate the wh-island constraint, which explains the alleged wh-island effect in the previous literature. Overall, however, our data confirm the more recent argument that the wh-island constraint is violable in Korean.

The challenge of polygrammaticalization for linguistic theory

Abstract Transcategorial morphemes share the common ability to be used synchronically across different syntactic categories (synchronic grammaticalization). This paper first shows that transcategoriality is a general property of linguistic systems, variously exploited by languages, then addresses the theoretical questions raised by these morphemes. A new model accounting for this transcategorial functioning, named “fractal grammar”, is proposed and illustrated by various examples. The analysis for this particular functioning relates the polysemy of these morphemes to their syntactic flexibility in a dynamic way: the variation of the syntactic scope of the morpheme (“fractal functioning”) is triggered by its environment and produces its polysemy (variation of the semantic scope). Fractal grammar is thus defined by two basic mechanisms: the construal of a common image-schema (“scale invariance”), accounting for the unity of the morpheme, and the activation of “scale (or level) properties”, accounting for the semantic and syntactic variations. A typological sketch of transcategoriality is then sketched, in relation to the strategies used by linguistic systems for the distribution of grammatical information. Three types of transcategorial strategies are distinguished: “oriented”, “generic”, and “functional” transcategoriality. The status of linguistic categories is then discussed in the light of the analysis of these particular morphemes.

Pianism as a Metasystem: Hermeneutical Development of the Scope

The aim of the paper is to develop the notion of pianism as a metasystem that contains a set of subsystems based on the application of the method hermeneutical analysis of the concept.Research methodology. The study is based on the methods of induction, deduction, principle of historicism, analysis and synthesis, as well as hermeneutical research method.Results. Every single definition of pianism does not reveal the full semantic scope and does not take into account the features of pianism. The fullness of the ideal definition of pianism depends on the consideration of the internal components in the inherent content. The definitions of pianism often appear as being mutually exclusive. However, the solution of the problem concerning the interpretation of pianism as a hierarchical system leads to the following definition of pianism.The piano is presented as a metasystem consisting of a number of interrelated subsystems (they are formed by the receptions; the technique of playing the piano; style; the type of performance; the types of music culture; schools; mastery; artistry; arts). The complexity of the components of the pianism enables to interpret its contents as a hierarchical system formed due to the known logic of unity, a kind of microcosmic content and functional entities, which are organically included in the semantic scope of the concept as multi-tiered integrity.Novelty. When studying and analyzing the given definitions of pianism, generalizing their meaning, an attempt is made to formulate the definition of pianism that will reflect the diversity of the interpretation of the notion.The practical significance. The evidence from this study suggests a variety of approaches to studying, generalization and systematization of the known definitions of pianism; establishing relations between its elements enables the application of its provisions in the field of piano performance and musicology.