Article
Historical development of labile verbs in modern Russian
The article deals with the phenomenon of lability (ambitransitivity), in other words, the ability of a verb to be either transitive or intransitive. I analyze the historical development of verbs which are currently labile in modern Russian. The main group of Russian labile verbs contains verbs of motion. On the basis of corpus and dictionary data, I conclude that the behaviour of the lexemes under analysis is far from being uniform. However, interestingly, for most of them, e.g., lit' 'flow', gonjat' 'urge, drive', and kružit' 'roll', the proportion of the intransitive use grows throughout the period under analysis, though for the verb kapat'/kapnut' 'drip', in contrast, the transitive use becomes more and more frequent.
In the cases when the intransitive use becomes more frequent, the semantic change matches the statistical one. In the beginning, verbs of this subtype were only used intransitively in a restricted type of contexts (e.g., for gonjat', hunting contexts represent this restricted class), where the intransitive use might be a result of object omission. Later on, the semantic range of the intransitive use became wider and the lability was no longer semantically related to object omission. I conclude that the semantic change of the uses of labile verbs often go together with semantic changes. Importantly, the borderline between A- and P-lability is not as strict as it is put sometimes: P-lability (the causative/non-causative alternation) can in some cases be traced back to A-lability (object omission).
This is an interdisciplinary volume that focuses on the central topic of the representation of events, namely cross-cultural differences in representing time and space, as well as various aspects of the conceptualisation of space and time. It brings together research on space and time from a variety of angles, both theoretical and methodological. Crossing boundaries between and among disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, philosophy, or anthropology forms a creative platform in a bold attempt to reveal the complex interaction of language, culture, and cognition in the context of human communication and interaction.
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In my article, I address the factors which favor using a verb as labile (both transitive and intransitive, with no formal change required).
Haspelmath (1993) proposes that the key feature which conditions a way of marking (in)transitivity of verbs in the transitive / intransitive verb pair is the spontaneity parameter.
However, the statistical analysis of Haspelmath’s data shows that for labile / ambitransitive verb the main parameter is the lexical semantic class of the verb, not the degree of spontaneity. This lets us discover a more general principle: phenomena which are not purely grammatical, but rather lexico-grammatical (as lability) depend on lexical features, not on generalized grammatical or semantic parameters.
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The paper looks into the contemporary state of the problem of decision-making and preference of some alternatives over others, discussing intransitivity of relations of superiority: one object is superior to another in a certain aspect, while the second is superior to the third and the third is superior to the first (A>B, B>C, C>A). The authors analyze two broad groups of theories and empirical studies reflecting opposite views on the nature of the relations and rationality of intransitivity of relations of superiority. The authors argue that understanding of intransitivity of superiority relations is no less important line of cognitive development than understanding of transitivity; they should be studied as complementary subjects. Thus it is necessary to study individual differences in cognitive sets with regard to transitivity/intransitivity of superiority, as well as individual characteristics of solving problems of that kind.
In this article we present the results of research into discourse features characterising a lexico-semantic group of synonyms denoting a human being: human being, person, individual, personality and man. The main tool for analysis was language corpora, which made it possible not only to determine more precisely the functional styles the lexemes tend to be used in, but also to describe thematic characteristics of the texts in which the analysed lexical units show the highest frequency of use
The paper is focused on the study of reaction of italian literature critics on the publication of the Boris Pasternak's novel "Doctor Jivago". The analysys of the book ""Doctor Jivago", Pasternak, 1958, Italy" (published in Russian language in "Reka vremen", 2012, in Moscow) is given. The papers of italian writers, critics and historians of literature, who reacted immediately upon the publication of the novel (A. Moravia, I. Calvino, F.Fortini, C. Cassola, C. Salinari ecc.) are studied and analised.
In the article the patterns of the realization of emotional utterances in dialogic and monologic speech are described. The author pays special attention to the characteristic features of the speech of a speaker feeling psychic tension and to the compositional-pragmatic peculiarities of dialogic and monologic text.