Abstract
The present study analyzes a group of Russian discursive units with focus-sensitive semantics such as imenno (just/precisely), kak raz (just/precisely), to-to i ono (that’s just it/the point/problem), to-to i est’ (that’s just it/the point/problem) and to-to i delo (that’s just it/the point/problem). They are important elements of communication but have not yet been adequately described. Some of the analyzed lexical units – for example, imenno and kak raz or to-to i ono, to-to i est’ and to-to i delo – are near synonyms. Others, such as kak raz and to-to i ono, are not near synonyms, but they nevertheless belong to the semantic class of focus-sensitive elements. Thus they can all be put into a single group according to the principle of family resemblance. The material itself suggests the logic of the analysis – on the basis of pairs or groups of the semantically closest near synonyms: (1) imenno vs. kak raz; (2) imenno vs. to-to i ono, (3) to-to i ono vs. to-to i est’ vs. to-to i delo.
Near-synonyms within these groups can be distinguished from each other on the basis of semantics, pragmatics, and usage preferences. Identifying differences of various types requires a good corpus with numerous examples, for they can be present simultaneously on several levels: semantic and pragmatic, pragmatic and usual, etc. Often, although not always, pragmatic and/or usual differences are semantically motivated. Syntactic distinctions among near-synonyms, including those in certain syntactic patterns, are also generally motivated by differences in their semantics. In a number of cases the problem is solved through the use of translational equivalents, that is, not on the level of individual lexical units (words and phrasemes) but on that of the entire utterance. Using relevant lexicographic information, text corpora, including parallel corpora, and works of fiction, we shall:
-
(a)
clarify semantic and pragmatic properties as well as usage peculiarities of the focus sensitive discursive units imenno, kak raz, to-to i ono, to-to i est’ and to-to i delo;
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(b)
analyze their systemic and translational equivalents in English and Swedish.
Keywords
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- 1.
For descriptions of Russian discursive words see especially Baranov et al. (1993), Kiseleva and Paillard (1998, 2003), Kobozeva and Zakharov (2004), Kobozeva (2006, 2007), Paukkeri (2006), Šaronov (2009) which are specifically devoted to this layer of the lexicon. Such lexical units in other languages are studied, for example, in Fischer (2000), Sorjonen (2001), Travis (2005), Romero-Trillo (2009).
- 2.
We are interested only in the semantic, pragmatic (and to some extent syntactic) differences between imenno and kak raz and between other discursive units treated in the article. Prosodic differences, the importance of which is discussed on the basis of other discursive units in Kobozeva (2006, 2007), Kobozeva and Zakharov (2004), are a topic for a separate study.
- 3.
- 4.
For this reason, imenno is often used in contexts of identification (on contexts of this type cf. in more detail Padučeva 2014). As for kak raz, this discursive unit is more seldom used in such contexts, since the notion of chance coincidence is emphasized in its semantics.
- 5.
According to Levontina 2004, we are dealing with a special reading of imenno in this case, namely “imenno 1” ≈ ‘exactly’.
- 6.
The variant vot imenno occurs not only as a separate utterance, but – albeit more seldom – in the position of a focus particle within the utterance.
- 7.
Analysis shows that imenno as a separate utterance is very similar semantically to to-to i ono. The differences between them will be discussed in Sect. 3.
- 8.
- 9.
Mistranslation – them in the original.
- 10.
Mistranslation – she in the original.
- 11.
To facilitate understanding, the entry is translated into English
- 12.
A search in Google Books yielded 3 examples with to-to i est’-to and 3 examples with to-to i delo-to.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is based on work supported by the RFFI under Grant 13-06-00403. Thanks also go to Pierre-Yves Modicom (Université Paris-Sorbonne), who read a draft version of the present article, for an interesting discussion of theoretical issues raised by us, and to the anonymous reviewers for a number of valuable comments that we have attempted to take into account.
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Dobrovol’skij, D., Pöppel, L. (2015). Corpus Perspectives on Russian Discursive Units: Semantics, Pragmatics, and Contrastive Analysis. In: Romero-Trillo, J. (eds) Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2015. Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17948-3_10
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