Kapatsinski, V. 2009. Adversative conjunction choice in Russian: Semantic and syntactic influences on lexical selection. Language Variation and Change, 21(2), 157-73. (original) (raw)
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Language Variation and Change, 2009
This article presents a multivariate analysis of adversative conjunction choice (among no, da, and odnako) in Russian, drawing implications for sentence production and semantic theory. The two main factors shown to influence conjunction choice are the types of the conjoined constituents and the semantic subtype of the adversative relation. One of the conjunctions, da, is favored when the conjoined elements are of different syntactic types and disfavored when they are of the same type, which is argued to suggest that the conjunction is chosen at a point in sentence production when the types of both of the conjoined constituents are known . In addition, the conjunction da is heavily favored by the "preventive" adversative meaning (Sannikov, 1989:177;, as in I would go but I don't have the money. This quantitative meaning-construction association is argued to support the view that the preventive adversative is a distinct semantic subtype of adversativity contra Foolen, 1991:84).
Explaining Conjunction Systems: Russian, English, German
2009
AbstractThe paper analyses the Russian conjunctions i, a and no, the English conjunctionsand and but and the German conjunctions und, aber and sondern in terms of spe-cialised additivity: special cases of the relation between sentences expressed by tooand also. The first section gives an overview of the analysis, the second sectiontries to give an explicit characterisation of additivity and its specialisations. Thethird section uses an OT-like framework to explain the complementary distributionof the conjunctions and the blocking effects that result. 1 Conjunctions A much debated issue in Russian linguistics is the precise demarcation of the conjunc-tions i, a and no. I corresponds to the English and, a has to be translated sometimesas and and sometimes as but, where all the uses of no seem to correspond to Englishbut. We refer to Jasinskaja and Zeevat (ms) for an attempt to do justice to the descriptiveproblems and the debate. In this paper, we try to look at the theoretical side of...
A contrastive analysis of Russian and Norwegian utterance-initial coordinating conjunctions
Oslo Studies in Language, 2010
In the study presented here, the three Russian basic additive and contrastive coordinating conjunctions i, a and no were compared to their two Norwegian counterparts og and men when used in utterance-initial position. By means of a direct comparison of sentences from Russian and Norwegian novels and their translations, both differences between the languages and languageinternal boundaries between the conjunctions were made apparent. As a result of the study, a core meaning was formulated for each of the five conjunctions. According to the analysis presented here, the Russian conjunction a connects in a way fundamentally different from i and no. Metaphorically speaking, i and no can be said to connect on a horizontal, or syntagmatic, line, whereas a connects elements on a vertical, or paradigmatic axis. Unlike i and no, the conjunction a is implicationally unmarked for linear, logical connections. In Norwegian, og simply has an additive meaning, whereas men signals the existence of an element of conflict. These core meanings account not only for the use of these connectives in general, but they can also explain certain specific qualities and conditions for pragmatic use in utterance-initial position. An analysis in terms of core meanings needs to be supplied by contrastive studies on the basis of corpora, which show actual use of the words in almost all possible contexts.
Conjunction Meets Negation: A Study in Cross-linguistic Variation / (with B Haddican) 2004
Journal of Semantics, 2004
The central topic of this inquiry is a cross-linguistic contrast in the interaction of conjunction and negation. In Hungarian (Russian, Serbian, Italian, Japanese), in contrast to English (German), negated definite conjunctions are naturally and exclusively interpreted as `neither'. It is proposed that Hungarian conjunctions simply replicate the behavior of plurals, their closest semantic relatives. More puzzling is why English-type languages present a different range of interpretations. By teasing out finer distinctions in intonation and context the paper tracks down missing readings and argues that it is eventually not necessary to postulate a radical cross-linguistic semantic difference. In the course of making that argument it is observed that negated conjunctions on the `neither' reading carry the expectation that the predicate hold of both conjuncts. The paper investigates several hypotheses concerning the source of this expectation. * This paper benefitted greatly from comments by an anonymous reviewer. We are grateful to Arto Anttila,
The Syntax and Semantics of Russian Non-Sentence Adverbials
Scando-Slavica, 2015
For the first time non-sentence adverbials in Russian are analyzed in their totality, i.e. from a lexical, syntactic and propositional-semantic point of view. They are classified, defined and interpreted according to four propositional structures identified in Russian: (1) state descriptions and (2) activity descriptionsboth created by simplex verbs; (3) event descriptions and (4) process descriptionsboth involving complex verbs. All four structures function as statement models and are used to represent semantic paraphrases of utterances in order to be able to show the exact contribution from an adverbial to the meaning conveyed by the entire utterance. The paraphrases allow us to define the domain of an adverbial, its scope and its subdomain possibilities corresponding to its possible meanings. They also allow us to describe lexical differences, i.e. the way a specific adverb differs from other adverbs belonging to the same synonymous group. It appears that members of various synonymous groups differ from one another with respect to subdomain, i.e. their differences in meaning are treated as being reflexes of originally deep syntactic differences. In this connection the so-called entailment structure of all verbs involving an activity description seems to have a special explanatory power.
Correlatives: Evidence from Russian
This paper is dedicated to correlative constructions in Russian. Cor-relatives have been actively studied in recent 15 years (Dayal 1996, Iz-vorski 1996, Vries 2002, Bhatt 2003, Lipták 2005, den Dikken 2005), but Russian constructions were usually not considered, although they provide useful material for better understanding of syntax of relativisation. Rus-sian has a very rich system of correlatives and they reveal some peculiarities (e.g. coordination of correlative clauses and stacking) that cannot be explained within the existing theories.
Explaining additive, adversative and contrast marking in Russian and English
The functional space covered by the conjunctions and and but in English is divided between three conjunctions in Russian: i ‘and,’ a ‘and, but’ and no ‘but.’ We analyse these markers as topic management devices, i.e. they impose different kinds of constraints on the discourse topics (questions under discussion) addressed by their conjuncts. This paper gives a detailed review of the observations from descriptive literature on the distribution of these markers in light of the proposed underlying classification of questions, and shows that our theoretical approach provides a uniform explanation to a large variety of their uses, as well as to the existing equivalences and non-equivalences between the Russian and the English counterparts.
2011
∎ This talk represents work joint with Vladimir Borschev, as well as work joint with Vladimir Borschev, Elena Paducheva, Yakov Testelets, and Igor Yanovich, with valuable suggestions from and discussion with more people than I can list here–see acknowledgments in our papers--but especially Olga Kagan for ongoing discussion, Alexander Letuchij for valuable corpus help, and Ekaterina Rakhilina for both. This work was supported in part by by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS-9905748 to Partee and Borschev.