Агентивность как семантическая категория: онтологическая сущность языковой структуры

Вестник Московского городского педагогического университета. Серия: Филология. Теория языка. Языковое образование. 2025. № 2(58). С. 139–159.

Strizhak U.

The subject of this work is the agentive features of participants studied by their correlation with a set of characteristics that reflect the activity potential of a human personality.The research background of the agentivity theory demonstrates that the main controversial points discussed in grammatical descriptions of agentive structures largely reflect issues of everyday human existence. Objectification of these existential relations within linguistic agentive structures leads to construct an utterance in a certain way which is based on the corresponding ontological assumptions about what and how is arranged in the real world. It also makes it possible to measure the activity features with linguistic tools. Based on the methodological statement of the isomorphism of the real world structure and language structures, the ontological essence of the semantic category of agentivity is considered and the agent prototype in various spheres of scientific and public life is analyzed: in political science, psychology, law, religion, education and other discourses. It is substantiated that the ontological basis of agentive properties is the personal and activity potential of the agent as a referent of a linguistic sign. The purpose of this paper is to identify, to systematize and to hierarchize the agentive features of causality, autonomy, volition and individualization. Based on the examples from Japanese texts the ambiguity of the effect semantics in the structure of agentive predicates, as well as the heterogeneity of agentive features of their participants will be illustrated.

Keywords: японский язык, Japanese language, ontological knowledge, онтологическое знание, agentivity, агентивность языка