Khrisonopulo Ekaterina. Alternations of clauses with anticipatory there and the evocation of knowledge structures in a literary text
One of the functional properties of English existential sentences with anticipatory there consists in their alternations with clauses headed by personal subjects: There were / He could hear some distant sounds; There was / He detected a note of surprise in her voice; There was / He had difficulty in solving the problem. This kind of alternations raises a question of those facets of content conveyed by anticipatory there that make it correlative with a referring subject in constructions with verbs of perception or having. The addressed issue is treated with reference to alternations of existential clauses in the story “Peter Pan” by J.M. Barrie. The analyzed data have included 150 examples of both existential sentences and their correlative clauses with personal subjects. Theoretically, the paper takes up the assumptions of cognitive linguistics on meaningfulness of all linguistic items independently of the language level they belong to and on the discursive shaping of meaning throughout the acts of designation and predication in generating utterances (E.S. Kubryakova). As evidenced by linguistic data, the cognitive semantics of anticipatory there is based on evoking the conceptual archetype “experiential region” that is correlative with the archetype “abstract setting” in R. Langacker’s cognitive grammar. Personal subjects of clauses that correlate with existential sentences evoke in turn the conceptual archetype “participant” treated in Langacker’s theory as a dynamic entity, typically a person. The archetypes “experiential region” and “participant” are differentiated in discourse as constituents of two knowledge structures: the scheme of experiential processing and an event frame, respectively. The distinction of these cognitive structures is further shown to motivate the choice of one of the correlating clauses. The distinction is also reflected in the potential for the extension of the clauses and in constraints on their uses in context.
Kondrashova Vera(St Petersburg State University, Russia), Pospelova Aleksandra(St Petersburg State University, Russia). Grаmmatical phenomena showing further development of the English language towards the isolating type in the 21stcentury
The article deals with the extension of the combinatorial potential of some adverbs and structural parts of speech in modern English. An attempt of giving a linguistic interpretation of the discussed phenomena is made. The adverb so can modify relative adjectives, adverbs of place, pronouns, nouns and verbs, which is quite unusual for this part of speech. So is used to intensify the speaker’s communicative intention by emphasizing some personal qualities, making a negative statement more emphatic, expressing a categorical judgment, commenting on the addressee’s behaviour. Substandard word combinations with adverbs very and too are similar, but they are not so common. The explicative construction as in can be used with many different parts of speech, as the preposition in loses its locative meaning and becomes part of а complex conjunctive adverb. These substandard word combinations are typical of conversational discourse. Our research indicates that intensifiers so, too and very are characteristic of emotional female speech, while the explicative construction as in is gender neutral. In our opinion, this tendency of using substandard word combinatorics shows a lack of clear-cut distinction between different parts of speech, which suggests further development of the English language towards the isolating type.
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Salier Tatiana(St Petersburg State University, Russia).Some semantic shifts affecting English predicates
The paper addresses the semantic shifts affecting predicative lexis – adjectives, verbs, nouns with value meaning. It is argued that these predicates display systemic semantic changes from concrete to a more abstract meaning. The tendencies are as follows: Relative adjectives acquire qualitative meaning (Iron Lady); qualitative adjectives acquire value meaning. Value adjectives acquire modal meaning when governing the infinitive. When the infinitive denotes a hypothetical action (unreal modality), an adjective with “good” value meaning becomes the reason to perform the action; the “bad” word blocks the action from being performed. When the action is presented as real, the adjectives keep their qualitative meaning. Verbs governing the infinitive become modals or quasi modals even if they have no modal meaning in other contexts. Their concrete meaning is gradually “washed away” within this structure, which is especially obvious in historical perspective. E.G., adjective “eager” meaning “very keen to do something” is derived from French “aigre” – sour. Verbs denoting physical discomfort come to mean “strong desire” when used within the infinitive construction. The transition of a fully meaningful verb into a modal auxiliary can be illustrated by the divergence of the verbs “can” and “to know” derived from the same root. Verbs governing predicative constructions become causatives in the active voice and modals in the passive voice: “We are called upon to do this work” Verbs governing an object clause acquire meanings of storing (to know), receiving (to hear, to to grasp, etc.) and releasing ( to say) information, even if they have different meanings outside this structure (He telegraphed that he would be late) Nouns with value meaning are derived from neutral words (bastard, tyrant, despot, etc.) and the initial concrete meaning is suppressed. The research shows that numerous types of predicate units undergo a transition from concrete to abstract meanings, determined by contextual, syntactic or pragmatic factors. This trend goes in one direction, examples of an opposite movement have not been registered.
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HISTORY OF ENGLISH
Bondar Vladimir. Habban+participleII in Old English poetry and prose: a contrastive study
At the present moment there is a question of how the semantics of habban+participle II used in prose differed from the one employed in poetic works. The given question is closely intertwined with the issue which has recently fueled heated discussions in the studies devoted to a diachronic investigation of the rise of the have-perfect in English and split the researchers into two opposing groups: one including those who think that it is not possible to talk about the have- perfect in Old English, and the second which comprises advocates of the fully-fledge perfect which with respect to its semantics and meanings (resultative, experiential, continuative, immediate and “hot news”) is almost identical to the have-perfect in present day English. Basing our study on the application of a range of morphosyntactic and semantic criteria to the contexts with the construction retrieved from Beowulf and the Old English corpus of prose texts which includes literary works from various stages of the Old English period, we argue that habban+participle II in poetry was semantically close to similar examples from late Old English prose texts. Presence both in prose and poetry of a variety of semantic characteristics of the construction makes it possible to claim that variation of the construction with resultative and temporal semantics is traced within the frame of a synchronic layer, the upper boundary of which was marked by the development of a peripheral meaning of the temporal-perfect semantics.
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Chupryna Olga. Semantics of Old English Words Traced Back to Proto-Indo-European Root *per- < *pr̥-
Considerable part of Old English vocabulary can be considered as further development of Indo-European word-formation models, roots and stems. Reconstruction of the semantics of a Proto- Indo-European root * per- ˂* pr ̥- reveals its spatial sense. The reliability of reconstruction is confirmed by lexeme and root parallels in a number of Indo-European languages. Two main semantic bunches ‒ spatial and temporal ‒ are characteristic of the Old English lexemes traced back to this root. These lexemes make up the noticeable part of the Old English lexicon covering different parts of speech: forð, fyrn, feor, fruma, fyrst, fyrmÞ, faran, feran, forðfaran, etc. In semantics of the majority of Old English derivatives the isomorphism of space and time perceptions appears to be distinctive. The spatial sense "ahead, before" of the Indo-European root *per- ˂* pr ̥ (˃ Old Germanic * fer-ro, fur-i, fur-mo) has been rethought as "initial, i.e. being before, first of all" time sense. It is argued that this transformation underlay representations of the concept of "the past" in Old English. Semantic reconstruction of the derivatives from IE* per- allows to establish a spatial archetype of the past as being in front or before human eyes.
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