VARIANTS OF COMPLICATION OF A SIMPLE SENTENCE BY SEMI-PREDICATIVE TERMS (on the material of English-language fiction)

This study examines the characteristic features of the functioning of separate members in the structure of a simple sentence, reveals their syntactic connections with the word being defined and the additional meaning that indicates secondary predication in a simple sentence. The material of the research was about one thousand examples, including separate members of various filling, extracted from 15 works of English and American authors, mainly of the 20th century, with a total volume of about 6000 pages. The study of factual material is carried out through the context-semantic, transformational and oppositional methods. The relevance of the research topic is based on the fact that isolated minor members were identified by A.M. Peshkovsky in 1914 and since then they have been repeatedly described in general and special studies. However, many issues related to segregation still remain unresolved. In the work, separate definitions are characterized as members that reveal the actual syntactic aspect of the so-called semi-predicativeness of a simple sentence and allow qualifying semi-predicativeness as a special way of spreading a simple sentence, and semi-predicative relations as special syntactic relations.

Poly-predicative conditional constructions in Catalan (in comparaison with Spanish and French)

By poly-predicative conditional constructions we mean complex sentences that contain at least three simple sentences, each representing either a condition or a consequence. Poly-predicative sentences can in addition contain other simple sentences that represent neither condition, nor consequence. Poly-predicative constructions that, apart from one condition and one consequence, also include other simple sentences, are not classified here as poly-predicative conditional constructions. While poly-predicative constructions in general have already been in the focus of researches attention, this article seems to address them on Catalan material for the first time. The purpose of this article is an analysis of syntactic relations in poly-predicative conditional constructions. Its objectives include their comparison in Catalan, Spanish, and French, identification of the main types of these constructions, and an analysis of their characteristics. Since the use of tenses and moods in the constructions addressed coincides with that in prototypical bi-predicative conditional constructions, we do not examine it here. The methods, used in this study, included: sampling during corpus collection, classification, description, comparison, transformational analysis and synthesis. The study is based on Catalan texts and their translations into Spanish and French. The findings of the study include: 1) Poly-predicative conditional constructions with several condition and/or consequence clauses are possible. Condition and consequence clauses can occupy different positions in poly-predicative conditional constructions; 2) In contrast to Catalan and Spanish, French admits the replacement of the conditional conjunction si by que; 3) Prototypical conditional and poly-predicative constructions are invariably characterized by subordination relations, with coordination parataxis possible as well. In addition, more complex syntactic structures are possible like, e. g., parallel co-coordination; 4) A prototypical conditional construction being a complex sentence, this limits possible syntactic types of poly-predicative conditional constructions. They cannot be structured as a string of simple sentences connected by coordination or subordination. Consecutive subordination of three or more subordinate sentences is not characteristic of conditional constructions; 5) The study identified a similarity between poly-predicative conditional constructions in Catalan, Spanish, and French. The present research is a contribution into the syntax of Romance languages.

Morphemic and Syntactic Phrasemes

A morphemic phraseme is a phraseme (= a constrained combination of linguistic signs) composed of morphemes that are part of the same wordform. Like a lexemic phraseme, a morphemic phraseme has a segmental signifier. All logically possible types of morphemic phrasemes are presented and illustrated: morphemic idioms, collocations, nominemes and clichés. Formally, these can be phraseologized complex stems, phraseologized complex affixes and phraseologized wordforms. A syntactic phraseme is a phraseme that includes at least two minimal syntactic subtrees and whose signifier is non-segmental (it involves prosody or an operation). All syntactic phrasemes are idioms. A syntactic idiom must be distinguished from 1) phrases described by means of semantically loaded surface-syntactic relations; 2) phrases consisting of a lexical unit taken together with its actants; 3) lexemic phrasemes consisting of “light-weight” words, such as Rus. ˹nu i˺ [X]! lit. ‘Well and [X]’ = ‘What an amazing X!’, and 4) lexemic phrasemes with syntactic pecularities. The notion of fictitious lexeme, necessary for designating some syntactic idioms (those that are expressed only by prosody), is introduced. An illustrative list of 29 Russian syntactic idioms is presented, as well as the lexical entries for several Russian syntactic idioms.

A Cognitive Approach to Semantic Disorientation in Mandarin I —Theoretical Prerequisites and a Case Study

Semantic disorientation refers to the phenomenon where sentence constituents with direct syntactic relations have no direct semantic linkage. The phenomenon is ubiquitous in Mandarin and related structures have been frequent research topics in the field of Chinese language study. However, there’s no systemic description of their syntactic and semantic features, nor in-depth exploration of the linguistic and non-linguistic motivations. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, the current study approaches this phenomenon with a usage-based and non-derivational language view. The phenomenon is defined and categorized on the cognitive and psychological basis and a descriptive and explanative frame-work is built for a more accurate and adequate account of the phenomenon. The syntactic and semantic features, as well as the linguistic and non-linguistic motivations of the disoriented verb-complement constructions are addressed as a case study.

Comparative Investigation of English and Armenian Compound Patterns

The novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald published in 1925 is one of the timeless classics of world literature which was investigated from different linguistic perspectives. Its vocabulary is abundant in compound words with a variety of morphological, syntactic, semantic peculiarities. In this paper, we aim at studying compound words in “The Great Gatsby” to illustrate their patterns in English and Armenian. We have investigated the compounds from the morphological-categorial point of view, from the perspective of the syntactic relations between their constituent parts. We have also briefly touched upon some of their semantic features. At the same time, a close attention was paid to the different ways in which compound patterns were translated into Armenian. The study of the main target of the paper is based on Sona Seferyan's translation of the novel “The Great Gatsby” into Armenian. A lot of examples of both synthetic (closed) and analytical (juxtaposed) compounds have been picked out. In Armenian within synthetic compounds we differentiate between those with a linking element, e. g. “աշխարհամարտ” (where “ա” is the linking element) and the ones without а linking element, e. g. “արևելք”. We assume that the peculiarities of compounds revealed in this paper will have significance not only for the description of their characteristic features but also for the general typological characterization of the languages under study.

Matyash, S. (2017). Enjambement in Russian poetry (essays on theory and history). St. Petersburg: RGPU im. A. I. Gertsena. (In Russ.)

S. Matyash's book is preceded by years of research. The author appears equally interested in individual examples of poetics and in typology. Findings concerning the function performed by enjambement in works of a particular poet are accompanied by definition of its structure and are considered in the context of the principles guiding the use of enjambement in a given historical period. In her definition of enjambements Matyash relies on gradation of the density of syntactic relations, a rule proposed by M. Gasparov and T. Skulachyova, and later M. Shapir, and suggests the use of this rule to avoid inaccurate definitions of enjambements and to discover new ways of their classification. Despite O. Fedotov's argument that syntactic relations should be considered jointly with metrical ones due to their mutually complimentary nature, the system used by S. Matyash to define enjambements can be viewed as an achievement in the fields of prosody and poetics.

Trudności w opanowaniu odmiany liczebników w nauczaniu języka polskiego jako obcego na przykładzie studentów ukraińsko i rosyjskojęzycznych.

The aim of this paper is to describe the most common errors made by Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking people while learning infl ection of numerals for person and their causes. The applied comparative method permits a closer look at formal and syntactic relations as well as collocations of numerals and specifi c lexeme classes (this regards primarily agreement between cardinal numbers and masculine personal verbs, compound structures with the numeral jeden (one) and numerals showing adjectival infl ection). This study concentrates on a comparison of cardinal and ordinal numbers in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, which allowed an analysis of the causes of errors made while learning the infl ection of numerals by Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking students.