Book
Perspectives on Semantic Roles. Typological studies in language 106
Semantic roles have continued to intrigue the linguists for more than four decades now, starting with determining their kind and number, with their morphological expression, and with their interaction with argument structure and syntax. The focus in this volume is on typological and historical issues. The papers focus on the cross-linguistic identification of semantic-role equivalents, on the regularity of, and exceptions concerning change and grammaticalization in semantic roles, the variation in encoding the roles of direction and experiencer in specific languages, presenting evidence for identifying a new semantic role of speech addressee in Caucasian languages, on semantic roles in word formation, and finally a cross-linguistic comparison of the functions and the grammaticalization of the ethical dative in some Indo-European languages. The book will be of interest to anyone involved with case and semantic roles, with the syntax semantic interface, and with semantic change an grammaticalization.
In Standard Average European (SAE), addressees of speech verbs are marked with dative or, in languages lacking cases, with dative-like prepositions. This merger is commonly explained through a metaphor: the information transferred in a speech act is said to be construed as the object being transferred, or Theme, and the addressee as its Recipient. This status of the addressee as a derived concept, a metaphor of the Recipient, and its dative marking in many languages rather than in SAE alone, is the reason why the addressee is usually not considered to be a separate semantic role. Based on data from East Caucasian languages that use different marking for Recipients and addressees of speech, I argue that speech addressees constitute a separate semantic role, also an animate Goal, but not a metaphor of the Recipient. Focusing on case marking assigned by the main speech verb, speech acts are shown to be construed in East Caucasian as spatial configurations: the crucial component is their directedness towards the addressee. In the conclusion, I come back to SAE and question the status of the dative addressees. Taking into account that the dative often develops from lative markers, it is suggested that, in the languages with dative addressees, one should also consider an alternative to the conventional explanation: merging the Recipient and the addressee in one marking may result not from a metaphorical extension but from formal under-specification of two different animate Goals.
Progressive periphrases in German are analyzed in a quantitative and qualitative way. The subject of the analysis is progressive constructions in the XVII–XIX centuries. It is stated that the process of their formation was not homogeneous, as there were two forms of progressive periphrases during the IX–XV centuries that were existing concurrently and were interchanging. It is determined that in any period the most frequent periphrases are im-construction and am-construction, moreover, the frequency of the latter is increasing. It is confi rmed that the process of grammaticalization mostly referred to contraction of locative prepositions and defi nite articles, which lost their lexical meaning in the development of progressive periphrases.
This book is a collection of articles dealing with various aspects of grammatical relations and argument structure in the languages of Europe and North and Central Asia (LENCA). Topics covered with respect to individual languages are: split-intransitivity (Basque), causativization (Agul), transitives and causatives (Korean and Japanese), aspectual domain and quantification (Finnish and Udmurt), head-marking principles (Athabaskan languages), and pragmatics (Eastern Khanty and Xibe). Typology of argument-structure properties of ‘give’ (LENCA), typology of agreement systems, asymmetry in argument structure, typology of the Amdo Sprachbund, spatial realtors (Northeastern Turkic), core argument patterns (languages of Northern California), and typology of grammatical relations (LENCA) are the topics of articles based on cross-linguistic data. The broad empirical sweep and the fine-tuned theoretical analysis highlight the central role of argument structure and grammatical relations with respect to a plethora of linguistic phenomena.
Case study method has been used for a long time to develop intercultural communication competences in non-linguistic universities. However, the cases represented in textbooks have some disadvantages which make the intercultural case study less interesting and effective. To eliminate these problems the article suggests new approach to intercultural case study on the basis of theme intercultural case blocks.
The volume includes proceedings of the 23th Scandianvian Conference of Linguistics (SCL 23) that was held at Uppsala University 1–3 October 2008. It includes studies covering a wide spectrum of approaches to linguistics, for example, cross-linguistic typological studies, linguistic variation and language change in contact situations as well as studies relating to bilingualism and to second and foreign language learning.
In Standard Average European (SAE), addressees of speech verbs are marked with dative or, in languages lacking cases, with dative-like prepositions. This merger is commonly explained through a metaphor: the information transferred in a speech act is said to be construed as the object being transferred, or Theme, and the addressee as its Recipient. This status of the addressee as a derived concept, a metaphor of the Recipient, and its dative marking in many languages rather than in SAE alone, is the reason why the addressee is usually not considered to be a separate semantic role. Based on data from East Caucasian languages that use different marking for Recipients and addressees of speech, I argue that speech addressees constitute a separate semantic role, also an animate Goal, but not a metaphor of the Recipient. Focusing on case marking assigned by the main speech verb, speech acts are shown to be construed in East Caucasian as spatial configurations: the crucial component is their directedness towards the addressee. In the conclusion, I come back to SAE and question the status of the dative addressees. Taking into account that the dative often develops from lative markers, it is suggested that, in the languages with dative addressees, one should also consider an alternative to the conventional explanation: merging the Recipient and the addressee in one marking may result not from a metaphorical extension but from formal under-specification of two different animate Goals.
The paper describes Kalmyk complex predicates, based on the empirical data of linguistic fieldwork. The focus of this investigation is on the semantics and morphosyntactic properties of the complex predicates in Kalmyk. In Kalmyk, several auxiliaries (bää‑ ‘to be’, jov‑ ‘to go’, kevt‑ ‘to lie’ and suu‑ ‘to sit’) belong to the imperfective domain. Perfective semantics is the basis for complex predicates with the primary verbs ork‑ ‘to put’ and od‑ ‘to go away’, whereas the verbs av‑ ‘to take’ and ög‑ ‘to give’ express reflexive benefactive and benefactive meanings. The verb xaj‑ ‘to throw’ expresses intensivity and pluractionality. The study shows that the Kalmyk aspectual system arose as a result of grammaticalization.
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.