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25. Sundukova, N. S. Artists of the Kabardino-Balkar Republic. Nalchik: "Elbrus", (1998). ISBN 5-7680-11722.
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"NON-AGENT" SYNONYMIC CONSTRUCTIONS
Abstract
The article presents the results of the analysis of the deep semantic structure, namely the short-passive form and the generic construction with a dropped subject in Russian, which greatly differ in their abstract structure of configuration. Being identical in the expression of thematic relations and the topic-comment structure, they have subtle distinctions in pragmatic factors - reference and deixis. Scholars also pay attention to the differences in register, i.e. language variations: the passive voice in Russian is often used in formal writing, whereas the null-subject construction tends towards an informal setting. The problem of synonymic syntactic structures concerns frame semantics as well as psycholinguistics since the paired association task makes the speaker to produce sentences spontaneously and therefore enables to highlight the speaker's motives who is choosing one of two models. The experiment performed with the use of the paired association task verifies the results obtained in the course of linguistic analysis. The article might be interesting for specialists in the fields of semantics, second language teaching, translation and interpreting.
Keywords
the short-passive, the generic null-subject construction in Russian, abstract structure of configuration, the deep semantic structure, the semantic role of patient / recipient, topic-comment structure, pragmatic reference, deixis, register, (language variations), the paired association task
AUTHOR
Irina Mikhailovna Nekrasova
PhD, Associate Professor, Foreign Languages Department, Perm State Humanitarian Pedagogical University, Perm, Russia. E-mail: nekrasova142008@yandex.ru
Considering synonyms at the level of syntax as units that have the same meaning but differ in their abstract structure of configuration usually refers the examples of several word combinations [Rosenthal 1985]. The problem of synonymic sentence models remains a less investigated area, mainly due to the description of the sentence models themselves, even in one and the same language, e.g. from 4 [Roberts 1962] to 25 [Hornby 1992] in English. Nevertheless advancements in semantics made in the second half of the passed century, provided a basis for investigation of the deep semantic structure of sentences which greatly differ in their surface structure. The problem of synonyms at the level of syntax is significant in the practice of the second language teaching as well as in translation or interpreting. Russian, belonging to so called pro-drop (or null-subject) languages and English, tending to a fixed order of all sentence constituents make the investigation of problem more interesting. The research carried out from contrastive point of view brings to light both the similarity and subtle distinctions of the short-passive construction (PC) in English and the generic null-subject construction (NSC) in Russian, which can be used as correlating means of translation. In both structures the agent is omitted as it is in some sense pragmatically inferable. The text of "Animal Farm" by G. Orwell and its Russian
translation, on the one hand, and "The Heart of a Dog" by M. Bulgakov and its translation into English, on the other hand, served as sources of the investigation [Некрасова 2014]. The research comprised 4 levels of analysis:
1) at the level of thematic relations the first participant of both structures can take a semantic role of a patient (He was universally respected... - Его уважали...) or a recipient (They were told ... - Им рассказывали.);
2) at the level of information structure the initial position of the "non-agent" - a subject in the PC and an object in the NSC - corresponds to the communicative function of the topic or theme (in 80 % of all sentences);
3) at the referential level PC and NSC can be considered synonymous if a dropped agent of the passive form refers to a person;
4) at the deictic level a dropped agent of the passive form has to exclude the speaker.
In that way the differences in reference and deixis meet an essential condition of synonyms: being similar but not identical. The results of the analysis are pictured in figure 1:
Table 1
Short passive construction (English)
Null-subject construction (Russian)
The level of thematic relations
A dropped agent; the 1st participant - patient / recipient
The topic-comment structure
Topicalization of the patient / recipient
Reference
Referent: person, animal, elemental forces
Referent: an indefinite person (persons)
Deixis
Inclusion of the speaker
Exclusion of the speaker
The idea of the synonymic relations of the generic null-subject construction and the passive form in Russian (both synthetic and analytic passive) is being developed in Russian philology [Жк^та http]; in German the sentence with an indefinite personal pronoun "man" is also pointed out as synonymous to the short passive [Schendels 1970]. As a rule, the absence of identity of synonymic structures is attributed to their differences in register, i.e. language variations. The passive voice in Russian is considered to be used in formal writing, whereas the null-subject construction tends towards an informal, colloquial setting. It is also emphasized that their synonymic relations occur in instructive but not prescriptive texts, such as recipes: «лук нарезается, затем пассируется - лук нарезают, затем пассируют» [Жк^та http]. At the same time the fact of coexistence of synonymic structures can't be explained on the basis of linguistic analysis alone: it is connected to the speaker's motives who is choosing one of two models. Therefore the problem concerns psycholinguistics and cognitive science.
According to a three-level approach to syntax, a sentence, being "a singular and individual utterance-event", is at the same time "a part of context and situation" [Danes 1964: 229-230]. The way the speaker represents the situation in speech can be different. Despite vast amounts of research, there is currently no single, all-inclusive model of speech production; at the same time all models seem to have some common features. Conceptualization is regarded as the first stage of speech production; scholars hit upon the idea of basic cognitive structures in the terms of "protoverbal elements" [Schlesinger 1971] or "semantic frames". The latter term was introduced by Ch. Fillmore who found out that syntactic structure can be predicted by semantic participants such as Agent, Benefactor, Instrument etc. forming the underlying semantic structure. Fillmore puts the hierarchy of "cases", or semantic roles for a universal subject selection rule [Fillmore 1968]. So the next stage of speech production is a syntactic stage where a sentence structure is chosen that words will be placed into.
There are several methods in psycholinguistics used to highlight the hidden "inner program" of the speaker who is producing an utterance, among them - an experiment known as the paired association task. Based on associating a stimulus with an idea, it elicits a response, either arbitrary or not. The controllable experiment has to be performed according to the instruction in order to
achieve the goal set by the experimenter and to minimize the number of wrong or undesirable reactions.
Our experiment conducted as a controllable one involved 63 first-year students of different faculties: Mathematics, Philology, History, and Information Technology. There was no special balancing of the participants of the experimental group: the only requirement was "a native language (Russian) speaker". Each participant was given a card with 3 questions (stimuli) that had to be answered in written form. The choice of the possible response was limited due to the instruction: to use the words offered. The questions / stimuli were formulated in a certain way to meet the following conditions:
1) the words offered in brackets marked the proposition with a dropped agent, so that the participant was caused to use in the answer one of the non-agent constructions - the PC or the NSC;
2) question 1 represented the situation whose referent could be both the 1st and the 3rd person, whereas question 2 excluded the speaker as a referent (this characteristic was irrelevant for question 3);
3) common words of a neutral register were used in questions / stimuli in order to eliminate stylistic differences of constructions to be chosen.
Table 2. The model of the task offered: (translation into english)
Ответьте на вопросы, используя предлагаемые слова в скобках: 1) Анна идет на вечеринку? Да, Answer the questions using the words given in brackets: 1 ) Is Ann going to the party? Yes,
(она /её, приглашать) 2) Они уже переехали в новую квартиру? Нет, (she /her, to invite) 2) Have they moved to the new flat yet? No,
(дом, еще не, строить) 3) Сколько у нас есть времени для решения задачи? (задача /задачу, решать, за 2 часа + значение необходимости). (the house, not yet, to build) 3) How much time do we have to solve the problem? (the problem, to solve, during 2 hours + the meaning of necessity)
The first semantic role in question 1 is offered in two case forms (she /her) that can be in Russian a stimulus for both the PC and the NSC.
Now let's look at the responses given and their analysis.
Stimulus № 1: 40 participants used in the response the NSC (Её пригласили / на вечеринку), 17 - the PC (Она / Анна приглашена), 6 students replied using other structures.
Stimulus № 2: 38 responses include the PC, mainly the analytic passive - Дом ещё не построен / достроен (36) and the synthetic passive (2); 22 participants used the NSC (Дом ещё не построили / достроили); 3 responses represent syntactic structures with omitted sentence constituents.
Stimulus № 3: 31 participants used modal forms необходимо / нужно / следует + Infinitive, only 2 persons used the ПК (Задача должна быть решена за 2 часа). A number of "other" responses is the biggest in this part of the task (48 %): а) the possessive construction mentioned in the question (У нас / вас есть...); b) a modal word combined with a prepositional group (Для решения задачи необходимо / нужно.); c) a modal verb in the 3rd person plural and the null-subject etc.
Here is the percentage of the responses given:
Table 3
NSC, % Stimulus PC, %
63, 5 1 27
35 2 60
49 3 3
As it can be seen from figure 2, the null-subject construction is dominating in responses 1 and 3. In the first case (63,5 %) we can attribute the speaker's choice to the deixis of the null-subject of the NSC, namely, the exclusion of the speaker: somebody invited, not I. A rather high percent of responses on stimulus 2 where the passive form was used (60 %) might be caused with the adverb "yet" (уже / еще) expressing the semantic of a result or completeness which is ascribed to the analytic passive in Russian: «в пассиве с глаголом быть подчёркнуто чувствуется семантическая черта результативности» [Russian Grammar 1980: 276]. Besides the second stimulus implies a hidden agent to a lesser extent than the first one which also makes a difference from the NSC. An extremely low percent of the PC in responses on stimulus 3 is certainly connected to the register: the construction modal verb + the Infinitive Passive (Задача должна быть решена) is predominantly used in formal writing.
In focus of our analysis there also was the topic-comment structure of utterances given in responses. Stimuli were made up with a purpose to elicit the topicalization of the patient. The initial position of the "non-agent" - a subject in the passive construction and an object in the null-subject construction is actually seen in all responses: 100 % (stimuli 1 and 3) and 98, 3 % (stimulus 2).
A large number of "other" responses representing syntactic structures with omitted sentence constituents, which is especially typical of stimulus 3, caused the question about the influence of the parameter "education" upon the result of the experiment. In this connection the same stimuli were addressed to the control group of participants consisting of college teachers (10 persons). As it was expected, the number of wrong or undesirable reactions proved to be as few as possible:
Table 4
NSC, % Stimulus PC, %
80 1 10
- 2 100
80 3 10
The results obtained verify the previous trend to using the null-subject construction in responses on stimuli 1 an 3, the passive form - in responses on stimulus 2.
Let's summarize the main points of the investigation. The experiment demonstrated the influence of two factors on the process of producing the utterance which included the choice between synonymic structures: the semantic factor and the register. The semantic factor includes: 1) the implication of a hidden agent to a greater (NSC) or lesser (PC) extent; 2) the inclusion (PC) or exclusion (NSC) of the speaker from a number of potential referents; 3) the semantic of a result or completeness which is more typical of the analytic passive construction than of the NSC. These semantic characteristics as well as the differences in register obtained in the course of our experiment coordinate with the previous linguistic analysis. It would be interesting to compare the percentage in the responses obtained with the frequency of the PC and NSC in the current Russian language; unfortunately there is no statistics on the subject, apparently due to the specific of the Russian syntax.
It stands to reason that the problem of synonymic structures combined with the investigation of speech production is a rather complicated task that requires an instrumental study of the neural mechanism of the human brain. But the answer could be found in the interdisciplinary approach to the problem, when the advancements achieved in various fields would be taken into consideration.
REFERENCES
1. Danes D. A. (1964). Three-Level Approach to Syntax. Travaux linguistiques de Prague (pp. 221-240). 1. Academia Prague.
2. Fillmore, Charles J. (1968) The Case for Case. In Bach and Harms (Ed.): Universals in Linguistic Theory (1-88). New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
3. Hornby, A.S. (1992). Constructions of the current English language. Moscow: Publishing House Booklet.
4. Nekrasova, I.M. (2014). "Non-agent" constructions: the contrastive analysis of the deep semantic structure. Russian and Foreign Philology. Perm University Herald. Issue 4 (28), ISSN 2073-6681. Founded in 1994. Perm State University Edition.
5. Nikitina, E.N. Indefinite impersonal sentences. Retrieved October, 18, 2016, from http://rusgram.ru/He0npege^eHH0-^UHHNe_npefl^0«eHUfl
6. Roberts, P. (1962). English sentences. New York: Harcourt Brace.
7. Rosenthal, D.E. & Telenkova, M.A. (1985). Synonymic constructions in Thesaurus of Linguistic Terms (p. 249). Moscow: Prosveshhenie (3rd ed.).
8. Russian Grammar (1980). Shvedova, N.Y. (Ed.). Vol. I. Moscow: Science.
9. Schendels, E.I. (1970). Polysemy and synonymy in grammar (on the material of verbal forms in current German). Moscow: Prosveshhenie.
10. Schlesinger I.M. (1971). Production of Utterance and Language Acquisition. In The Ontogenesis of Grammar (pp. 63-101). New York, 1971.
MEDICINE AND PSYCHOLOGY
DYNAMICS OF PSYCHO-EMOTIONAL STATE, SELF-ACTUALIZATION AND SUBJECTIVE CONTROL LEVEL OF DIVORCED WOMEN IN ORDINARY LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES AND IN CIRCUMSTANCES
OF PSYCHO-CORRECTIONAL INFLUENCE
Abstract
The analysis of psycho-emotional state, self-actualization and subjective control level of divorced women in ordinary life circumstances and in circumstances of psycho-correctional influence was made in the article.
Keywords
divorced women, psycho-emotional states, psycho-pathological symptomatology, anxiety, depression, psycho-social stress, self-actualization, subjective control level, maladjustment, posttraumatic growth
AUTHOR
Helen Evgenyevna Falyova
PhD, associate professor, Associate Professor, Department of Scientific Bases of Management and Psychology, Kharkov National Pedagogical University named by H.S. Skovoroda, Kharkov, Ukraine. E-mail: lena_f5@list.ru
Formulation of the problem.
Family is complex system of people's interaction. Destruction of this system, divorce, loss of the confidence in protection, stability leads to the stresses, family and psychological maladjustment. Divorce in modern European family from the position of psychology is not just disintegration of marital relations, but also destabilization of whole life style. Mental maladjustment is considered, from one side, as relatively short situational state which is result of influence of new, unusual stimulus of changed surrounding that is signalizing about violation of equilibrium between mental activity and needs of surrounding and encourage to preadaptation. In such case maladjustment is necessary compound component of adaptation process which is
