Classification of the Russian verbal idioms Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

Ученые записки Крымского федерального университета имени В. И. Вернадского Филологические науки. Том 2 (68). № 2. Ч. 1. 2016 г. С. 262-267.

UDC 811.11; 81-119

CLASSIFICATION OF THE RUSSIAN VERBAL IDIOMS

Fukova T., Chornobay S., Baptista J.

University of Algarve - FCHS, Faro, Portugal, tatyanafukova@gmail.com

Crimean Federal V.I. Vernadsky University, Simferopol, Crimea, svetoniy@gmail.com

University of Algarve - FCHS, Faro/INESC-ID Lisboa - Spoken Language Lab, Lisbon, Portugal, jbaptis@ualg.pt

This paper presents the description of the classification of the Russian verbal idioms that were classified with the help of using the Lexicon-Grammar framework suggested by M. Gross. Over 1,000 verbal idioms were collected from the Russian Idiomatic dictionaries. The idioms were formalized into a tabular format, aiming at their computational processing and automatic identification in texts.

Keywords: Russian, verbal idioms, classification, lexicon-grammar.

INTRODUCTION

To this date, more than 1,000 Russian verbal idioms have been collected from phraseological dictionaries (Molotkov, 1986; Fedosov and Lapisky, 2003) and other sources, and classified most of them using the Lexicon-Grammar framework (Gross, 1996). The idioms were formalized into a tabular format, aiming at their computational processing and automatic identification in texts. This database is called a Lexicon-Grammar and it consists of a fine-grained description of the syntactic structure of those idioms, the lexical content of their frozen elements, the distributional constraints (human/non-human) on their free syntactic slots, and the transformational properties of the construction, that is, the alternative, para-phrastically equivalent, forms (or alternations) they can yield (e.g. Passive).

For each idiom, a word-by-word English translation and the relevant morphosyn-tactic (part-of-speech) information is provided, along with a free translation (or gloss) or the English equivalent, when available or known. An illustrative, 'artificial' example, produced with just the essential elements of the idiom is also provided. In these examples, verbs are usually in the past tense, the human noun free slots are fulfilled by a proper noun, etc.

RELATED WORK

1. Classification of Russian verbal idioms

The classification here adopted is inspired in that proposed by M. Gross (1982; see a later synthesis in M. Gross 1996), and already adopted for several other languages or language varieties.

Since Russian nominal morphology includes cases, the classification was adapted so that, instead of (or along with) prepositions, cases are used to mark the syntactic function of the verbs' arguments. Still, an effort has been made in order to ensure that the classification allows cross- linguistic comparison of data, so the classes thus construed are equivalent to those found in the references above.

Class C1, one of the largest classes, is defined by having a frozen direct object in the accusative case. In some cases the frozen noun cannot vary in number. For example, only the plural form is used in the following idioms:

Иван бьёт баклуши (Ivan b'et baklushi) Ivan/N0 beats/V spoons/N-acc 'Ivan is idle'

* Иван бьёт баклушу (Ivan b'et baklushu) Ivan/N0 beats/V spoon/N-acc Иван дразнит гусей (Ivan draznit gusey) Ivan/N0 teases/V geese/N-acc 'Ivan stirs things up'

o Иван дразнит гуся (Ivan draznit gusya) Ivan/N0 teases/V goose/N-acc 'Ivan teases goose'

The use of these nouns in the singular form renders the meaning of the expressions literal or the sentences may even become unacceptable. Conversely, only the singular form is used in some idioms, for example:

Мария бросила перо (Mariya brosila pero) Mariya/N0 threw/V feather/N-acc 'Mariya stopped literary activity' oМария бросила перья (Mariya brosila per'ya) Mariya/N0 threw/V feathers/N-acc 'Mariya threw feathers'

Many idioms of C1 class have a left modifier, which corresponds mostly to an adjective (Ad), namely жалкий (zhalkiy) 'poor', кислый (kisliy) 'sour' or a determiner, including determinative-adjective весь (ves') 'all', каждый (kazhdiy) 'every', новый (noviy) 'new', чужой (chuzhoy) 'another's'and numerals (Num):

Иван влачит жалкое существование (Ivan vlachit zhalkoe sushchestvovanie) Ivan/N0 drags/V poor/Adj life/N-acc, 'Ivan languishes in poverty' Иван делает кислую мину (Ivan delaet kisluyu minu) Ivan/N0 makes/V sour/Adj countenance/N-acc 'Ivan becomes dissatisfied'

Some idioms of C1 show possessive pronouns as determiners of the frozen noun, for example:

Олег сжигает свои корабли (Oleg szhigaet svoi korabli) Oleg/N0 burns/V his_own /Pron-pos boats/N-acc 'Oleg is breaking resolutely with the past'

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These possessive pronouns are always co-referent to the sentence's subject NP, otherwise the meaning becomes literal: o Олег сжигает его корабли (Oleg szhigaet ego (not Oleg's) korabli) 'Oleg burns his (not Oleg's) boats'

The largest class is CP1, where the first complement is either introduced by a preposition or it does not receive the accusative case (acc). For example:

Александр бьет в цель (Alexander b'et v tsel') Alexander/N0 beats/V in/Prep goal/N-acc 'Alexander is effective, he attains the desired result' Александр живет бирюком (Alexander zhivet birukom) Alexander/N0 lives/V wolf/N-instrum 'Alexander is unsociable'

Only some few idioms in this class present determiners. So far, only possessive pronouns were found in this class. Usually, they appear after the preposition, if there is any, and before the noun. As we mentioned before, possessives refer to the subject NP:

Иван входит в свои берега (Ivan vhodit v svoi berega)

Ivan/ N0 comes/V in/Prep his_own /Pron shores/N-acc

'Ivan takes the usual rhythm of life'

Иван отдувается своими боками

(Ivan otduvaetsya svoimi bokami)

Ivan/ N0 is_answerable/V his_own/Pron sides/N-instrum

'Ivan pays for smb. else's doings'

A noun in the genitive case is sometimes found as a right modifier of the C1 head noun, for example:

Иван краснеет до корней волос (Ivan krasneet do korney volos)

Ivan/ N0 turns_ red/V up_ to/Prep roots/N-gen hair/N-gen 'Ivan is ashamed'

The idioms of CP1 class do not admit Passive.

Similar remarks on determiners and modifiers could also be made for the remaining classes, but for succinctness, we do not repeat them. In the next paragraphs, we will then briefly present the defining features of those classes.

Class CAN is defined by having a frozen direct object in the accusative case and a free determinative complement, which can be used both in the genitive and dative cases, for example:

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Иван забривает лоб Олегу

(Ivan zabrivaet lob Olegu)

Ivan/ N0 shaves/V forehead/C-acc Oleg/N-dat|gen

'Ivan conscripts Oleg into the army'

This genitive-dative transformation in Russian idioms corresponds to the dative restructuring, described by LecUre (1995) for French and by Baptista (2004) and Baptista et al. (2014) for Portuguese. The effect of this alternation is to render the free noun more closely related to verb, removing it from its dependency of the frozen element, and making it a new, autonomous constituent, depending directly on the verb. In most cases, there is a meronymy (part-whole) relation between the C element and the free noun. This free noun is always a human noun.

Class CPN is characterized by having a preposition, introducing a frozen object in the appropriate case, and a free determinative complement, which can feature both the genitive and the dative case:

Путешествие ударило по карману Ивана (Puteshestvie udarilo po karmanu Ivana) Travel/Nn0 beat/V on/Prep pocket/N-dat Ivan/N-dat|gen 'The travel caused financial damage, loss to Ivan'

This genitive-dative alternation is the same transformation already explained in CAN. The idioms included in this class do feature neither determiner, nor modifiers and do not admit Passive.

Class C1PN is defined by a structure where the verb presents a frozen direct object in accusative and a free prepositional complement, which can be in a variety of cases, depending on the preposition that introduces it:

Иван бросил перчатку Олегу

(Ivan brosil perchatku Olegu)

Ivan/ N0 threw/V glove/N-acc Oleg/N-dat

'Ivan challenged Oleg to smth.'

Some idioms of C1PN have a left modifier, which corresponds mostly to an adjective (Adj) or a determiner, including numerals (Num): Вбить осиновый кол (vbit' osinoviy kol)

hammer/V aspen/Adj stake/C-acc into/Prep smth/N-acc 'destroy, put an end to smth.'

The class CNP2 is the third largest class in the LG and it is defined by having a free direct object complement in the accusative case and a frozen prepositional complement:

Оля держит Ивана под каблуком (Olya derzhyt Ivana pod kablukom)

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Olya/N0 holds/V Ivan/N-acc under/Prep heel/C-instrum 'Olya holds Ivan in complete subjection'

The class C1P2 is defined by having a frozen direct object in the accusative case and a frozen prepositional complement; the case of this later complement depends on the preposition that introduces it, for example:

Александр берет быка за рога (Alexander beret byka za roga) Alexander/N0 takes/V bull/C-acc of/Prep horns/C-acc 'Alexander takes the bull by the horns'

The class CPP includes just a small number of idioms and it is defined by having two frozen prepositional complements:

Иван валит с больной головы на здоровую (Ivan valit s bolnoi golovy na zdorovuyu)

Ivan/ N0 heaps_up/V from/Prep sick/Adj head/C-gen to/Prep healthy/Adj head/C-acc

'Ivan lays the blame on smb. else'

We found one idiom, where only the first complement is frozen but the second is distributionally free:

Иван попал в кабалу к Олегу (Ivan popal v kabalu k Olegu)

Ivan/ N0 appeared/V in/Prep bondage/N-acc to/Prep Oleg/N-Dat' Ivan was in slave, depended on Oleg'

As it would not make much sense to create a new class just for one idiom, we provi-sorily included this expression in the CPP.

The idioms included in this class do not admit Passive.

The class CADV is defined by having an adverb as a frozen constituent, for example:

Иван высоко летает

(Ivan vysoko letaet)

Ivan/ N0 flies/V highly/Adv

'Ivan occupies a prominent position in society'

Most adverbs presented in the idioms of this class are adverbs of manner and only some few idioms contain adverbs of place/movement.

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CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

The classification here adopted is inspired in that proposed by M. Gross (1982; see a later synthesis in M. Gross 1996), and already adopted for several other languages or language varieties: French and the four main varieties, from France, Belgium, Switzerland and Québec (Lamiroy, 2010), Greek (Fotopoulou, 1993), Italian (Vietri, 2015), Portuguese, both European (Baptista et al., 2004, 2014) and Brazilian (Vale, 2001) varieties.

To conclude this paper, the work of collecting the idioms from dictionaries and other sources is still going on, but, based on the length of the dictionaries already consulted to attain a reasonable lexical coverage, a reasonable estimate for the size of LG would consider around 2,000 and up to 3,000 of frequently occurring, frozen verbal idioms.

References

1. Baptista, J., Correia A. and Fernandes G. Frozen Sentences of Portuguese: Formal Descriptions for NLP, ACL: Barcelona. 54. (2004)

2. Gross, M. Lexicon-Grammar. Concise Encyclopedia of Syntactic Theories. Cambridge. Pergamon. pp.244-258. (1996)

3. Fedosov, I. and Lapitsky, A. Phraseological dictionary of the Russian language. (Федосов, И. и Лапицкий, А. Фразеологический словарь русского языка). Moscow: Unves. (2003)

4. Molotkov, A. Phraseological dictionary of the Russian language (Молотков, А., Фразеологический словарь русского языка). Moscow: ACT. (1986)

5. Leclère, C. Sur une restructuration da-tive. Language Research 31-1. Seoul: LRI- Seoul National Univ, pp. 179-198. (1995)

6. Fukova, T., Chornobay, S., Baptista, J. Lexicon-Grammar of Russian verbal idioms. Computerised and Corpus-based Approaches to Phraseology: Monolingual and Multilingual Perspectives. Tradulex: Geneva, pp. 139-153. (2016)

КЛАССИФИКАЦИЯ РУССКИХ ГЛАГОЛЬНЫХ ИДИОМ

Татьяна Фукова, Светлана Чернобай, Жорж Батишта

Университет Альгарве, факультет социальных и гуманитарных наук, Фару, Португалия, tatyanafukova@gmail.com

Крымский федеральный университет им. В. И. Вернадского, Симферополь, Крым, svetoniy@gmail.com

Университет Альгарве, факультет социальных и гуманитарных наук, Фару /INESC-ID -Лаборатория разговорного языка, Лиссабон, Португалия, jbaptis@ualg.pt

В данной статье представлена классификация глагольных идиом русского языка, выполненная в рамках подхода исследования лексики и грамматики, предложенного М. Гроссом. Более 1000 глагольных идиом были отобраны из фразеологических словарей русского языка. Идиомы были представлены в формате таблицы с целью их последующей компьютерной обработки, а также автоматической идентификации в текстах.

Ключевые слова: русский язык, глагольные идиомы, классификация, лексика и грамматика.

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