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6PHILOLOGICAL SCIENCES
SOME FORMAL iNDiCATiONS OF PLURALS iN ENGLiSH AND AZERBAiJANi LANGUAGES
(SEMANTiC APPROACH)
Nametova S.
PhD researcher, Khazar University, Baku, Azerbaijan Republic Ministry of Education, Teacher, English language department of Azerbaijan University of Languages https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6653976
Abstract
The article analyzes some lexical and semantic features of plurality in Azerbaijani and English languages. It explains that the lexical meaning of plurality cannot be extracted only from their formal structures, but form the semantics of its usage denoting the concrete momentums. Thus treating the lexical plurality is somehow connected with the conditions which are connected with the given semantic meaning at a definite time of expression.
Expressing plurality may vary from a language to a language. So it does, referring to the plural forms of the words of Azerbaijani and English languages while expressed in the plural forms of those lexical-semantic units peculiar to these languages. For example the rule of grammatical agreement may not happen to be mandatory in some Turkish languages and in Azerbaijani too.
Besides, there also exists the concept of empirical and ontological meaning which may coexist, and in variety of situations one can prevails over the other while expressing plurality in these two compared languages. In general, in both languages as a whole, the conceptual approach to the plurality depends on the internal features of the languages which are different.
The author confirms that despite the multitude ways of expressing plurality in both languages, there is still a firm confirmation that these devises are usually classified as covert or over methods of expressing plurality. That means along with the marked ways of plurality there are also some implicative (implicit) ways to denote plurality in both languages, though the morphological, lexical and syntactic features may appear in unequivocal settings.
Keywords: plurality, concept of quantity, semantics of plurality, lexical plural vs semantic plural, empirical and ontological plurality.
Every languages have got their own ways to express the category of number. As there exist the clearly expressed overt means to express plurality (lexical, morphological, syntactic) in each language setting, it is also not exception to appear some covert methods and techniques to express this. But the covert method expressing plurality appeared later. However, studying words as lexemes in isolation from their semantic meaning becomes insignificant because "each meaning of a lexeme taken separately is called a sememe where semasiology is regarded to study the scientific sememe and their semantic structure " [2, p.29].
English linguist Geoofrey Leech, who theoretically and linguistically explained the semantics while interpreting the expressions containing this meaning stated that in semantic meaning "the power of an integrated view is that it makes the interlingual transfer possible, but the expansion of the horizons of semantics in one direction restricts it to another direction "[7, p.x]. It means that, the precise analytical methods used in the study of grammar and phonology being applied only to the part of the meaning are traditionally called conceptual or cognitive, and the connotative or associative meanings and the other parts remain a bit outside of attention. From this point of view, L. Bloomfield, unlike his predecessors in the past, did not consider the language and thinking to be the same process in semantic meaning. In his book, called "Language" (1933) he described "the semantics of words creating a mental phenomenon between what
they call (thinking and symbols) and characterize this meaning as a process of acquiring scientific knowledge" [4, p.139]. Thus, the clarification of semantic meaning has created many complex issues in the semantics of plurals as well.
Expressing and marking the plurality are performed differently in variety of languages. For example, in the central and southern regions of Africa, where more than fifteen million people communicate the Bantu languages, this paradigm is expressed by both ways: by system of prefix as well as by gender. On the contrary, in most Indo-European languages, including Azerbaijani, we have plural suffixes. This is partly similar in English and French languages. In several African languages the plurality is formed simply by changing the tone of the word. French, Tibetan, Burmese, Vietnamese, Khmer, Filipino, and other languages usually use a particle before noun. In addition to this, the East Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Thai generally do not use plurals. It means that the languages of the world greatly differ from each other in terms of markedness plural requirement. Specifically, expression of plurality in some languages, as in Azerbaijani, is formed by different parts of speech, or it is expressed in lexical-semantic units peculiar to these languages. However, these units are very different in their sets of combinations, types of connections, the characteristic features of their formation and transmission of the idea or thought of collectiveness. Regarding to the the azerbaijani scientist G. S. Kazimov states that, "the
nouns used in the plural express not only a concret quantity of a substance, but also the sate of being a lot, more precisely, more than one" [5, s. 30].
While comparing the paradigm of plurality in Azerbaijani and English languages, although we see the similarities, there still exist some differences between them. For example, we can easily see this by comparing the means of morphological expression of pluralty, where the presence of plural morphology in English, at least in standard types of English, is compulsory in the context of numbers. For example, compare: be§ agac -five trees (s), sakkiz §agird-eight pupil(s). Within the similar morphological structures such as eight pupil(s) and so on the English plural suffix strictly requires agreement depending on whether the word is singular or plural (for example, seven floors but not seven floor), whereas this is not the case for Azerbaijani language; therefore we can express the plural simply by saying -yeddi martaba (i.e. without the plural ending "s"or in azerbaijani lar/lar). On the other hand, we do have similiar case in translation of the English complex phrase "a - seven - floor (ed)-building" as "yeddimartaba bina".
The differences in agreements by a person and number category of the verb can also be found in other expressions as: There are five pens on the table. -Stolun ustunda be§ qalam (not in plural as pens, but pen-in singular) vardir. Here we have important and different formal indicators -lar/la (s/es) that exist to express morphological plurality in these languages. That is, without plural ending s(es) -(lar/lar in azerbaijani) we can use the word as -seven floor, -five pen in both, writing and in oral speech. In other words, "in many Turkish languages it is possible to say goxlu kitab (many book), ug talaba (three student); it can not be said as ugtalabalar (three students), goxlu kitablar ( many books), qirx vzir (forty vezirs)" [6, s.86 ]. According to the opinion of the azerbaijani author, "sometimes the suffix -s is not correctly used in modern Turkish language" [6, s. 87].
The other authors states on this fact that due to the large number of spoken languages the plural suffix -lar/lar has created new variants; and even the Uzbek language which is included in Turkiye group of languages, uses only one variant -lar to express plurality. "Due to the fact that the spelling rules in some Turkish languages are still scientifically weak (more inclined to the phonetic principle), the variants of these suffixes have multiplied ... and in the modern Yakut language it has 16 variants" [11, p. 115]. Naturally, here the complex, incorporated nouns such as a-seven-storeyed-building, a-seven-storeyed-house or a-two-day-visit are not treated by the same way.
In general, in both languages, as a whole, the conceptual approach to the plurality depends on the internal features of the languages which are different, and on the quality of objects and events that are commonly accepted. Although this case has been widely discussed in linguistical, biological, philosophical, psychological and other sources, there is still a great deal of research on the tendency to accept such arguments.
The nature of plurality includes many events that
complicate the language system and, at the same time, they enrich it, including some transitional stages and historical aspects. The connection of this paradigm with a number of questionable features, especially with the events - such as community, duality, segmentation, etc., can also be applied here. Evidently, the idea of plural is reflected in the minds of different people not monotonously, but in dffrenent cognitive settings.
So, there are two important methods in the systematic approach to the paradigm of plurality in Azerbaijani and English languages: the marked plural indicators and unmarked (implicit) plural indicators. "In some cases, we call them open and closed - in two ways." [ 3, p. 1]. The indicators of markedness plurality are expressed by lexical, morphological and syntactic methods in both languages. The unmarked plural expression is stated by various modules and contextual-functional approaches, by virtual and other methods. Although the lexical expression of plurality is considered to be the most popular method in both languages, there are still some significant differences in their semantic fields, and in the the ways of their formation along with their historical developments. Azerbaijani researcher G. Mammadova rightly notes that "the individual words or their repetition started expressing plurality, majority and collectiveness in the most ancient periods of the language development" [8, s.95]. Some parts of nouns resources - words of mass nouns, a compound incorporated nouns or noun combinations, as well as the ones expressing the wholeness have also relatively different characteristics. Therefore, we will try to conduct some insights into a number of these important indicators.
Contemporary English linguist scholar from Oxford P. Acquaviva stated that "a comprehensive and detailed review of what is happening in plural allows us to see more clearly what refers to the 'special' section, rather than to 'contextual'." [1, p.2]. Thus, lexical meaning is defined as the meaning of a key or root word without regard to any prefix or suffix to which it can be added. It also means that any word that expresses plurality in its morphological structure is also regarded as plural in both of lexical and plural meanings. By other words, all nouns and words denoting completeness (wholeness), multitudiness, and mass are included here. In addition, plurality from the lexical point of view which is inherent to the root in English words such as - window-windows (pancara-pancaralar, sofa-sofas, divan-divanlar, etc.), as well as their abstract meanings as window and sofa also simultaniously participate in the semantic realization of these words in all cases of their usage while creating lexical base. In this meaning, the lexical base is expressed in the lexeme before the semantic meaning; therefore, many plural nouns are directly considered lexical sems as they are regarded to be an integral part of lexeme. However, we can also call this a semantic approach which rely on sems. This concept applies to common plural nouns (such as books), nouns denoting plurals and abstract notions and other types of words that are intuitively perceived as plurals in a way as if forming and describing the list of their semantic sequence. For this reason, sems of lexical and semantic
plurality also mean bringing phenomenal certainty and exactness to the empirical differences of this integrative relationship to clarify the extent of lexicalization of these words.
The empirical difference in the meaning and semantics of the word is related to the experience that arises at a very moment and in that context presented at a time. That is why modern French linguist F. Moltmann is completely justified to show that the words that determine the plurality in this meaning are fundamentally represented in two groups: "a) referring to the plural (Reference to a Plurality) and b) references to the plurality (Plural Reference) " [9, p. 93]. According to F. Moltmann and his colleagues, the first type the children - u§aqlar - refers to individual children, referring to each individual child (the ontological meaning) or - to the collective of a class -as a mass noun (referencial meaning), while the second group simply includes u§aqlar - the children /s =sum (children/s, children, children in plural), which are taken as a reference to the plural (empirical meaning), meaning mass loneliness and mass plurality. As can be seen, the semantic approach to the both lexical types of plurality (empirical and ontological) is not the same, as they are based on a tradition embracing different approaches, theoretical and empirical interests. For this reason, plurality expressed by formal indicators in linguistic semantics refers to a large volume or dimensions. So, it also means that the concept of lexeme itself brings the semantic dimension to the lexics of plurality. We consider that the semantic interpretation of such plurality is due to the fact that the nouns are lexemes that refer to beings and combine the conceptual integrity in themselves to which they refer. There is also a view that the semantic motivation or internal form also affects the synonymous relations of words because it plays an extremely important role "not only in the formation of meanings of the new lexical units, but also in their development and function" [10, c.237].
In addition to the ontological and traditional aspects of the semantics of plurality, it has also got a structural side. This is because lexemes and the root of a word appear not only in the meaning they contain in individual words, but also in specific syntactical context of how this lexical capacity is represented in the morphosyntactic base. From this point of view, while clarifying the semantic meaning of plurality, we should consider the mandatory leading determinant among the structural elements involved in the expression of meaning which is absolute, and the defining element (or elements) coming together along with a word that expresses plurality to be conclusive in semantics. This element, which we call the leading grammatical determinant, is considered a non-lexical unit, and here the lexical and grammatical opposites contribute to the formation of a lexical plural; though in inflected nouns denoting the plural, expressing plurality in a lexical way, the number (plentitude) is not considered. This process is not expressed through the grammatical morpheme, but through the root of the lexeme itself. However, do we apply this process to all cases where the words express plurality in both - English and Azerbaijani
languages, or not? Unequivocally, this situation applies not only to the lexosemantics of formal indicators of nouns that do not have a discrete plural, such as collective nouns, mass nouns, etc., but also to the formal indicators of plurals that are included into the root which have nothing to do with the syntactic context. Meanwhile, there arises an idea that the semantics of the formal indicators of the plural is also related to the part of word included to the structure of the word is encoded in the noun as part of a compound noun root.
Finally, the lexical indicators of the plurality cover not only the lexical level, but also a wider area because the lexical device is considered to be an absolute and multidimensional concept. Even, notwithstanding we perceive this simply as a dictionary meaning, it covers different types of syntactic, morphological, semantic, psychological and other descriptive features and are equally justified at different levels of analyses. In each case where in both - English and Azerbaijani languages the plurality is treated lexically, that means we analyze the dimensional areas simply in isolation from the context. It means, lexical expression of plurality is as an integral part of nominality, or its study from this aspect which does not refer to what we know about them in the meanings of words to deterministic grammar. It is also interesting that the meaning of such a plural does not apply to a completely unique and non-linguistic lexical parts. There is no doubt that in this sense the plural or the meaning of a word in the plural is not separate from the encyclopedic and grammatical meaning. They act together as a subsystem within the sphere of influence of these systems. We can clearly see this case in their plural forms, which are expressed in regular, irregular, collective, mass, abstract and other trypes of nouns. Thus, they are complex carriers of the indicated features, and their formal descriptions are analyzed only from one angle, from the criterium applied to the moment of their usage which we can analyse them as functionally as well as contextually. In the most accurate case, this plural expresses semantics that is perceived at the junction of the features as mentioned above.
The emergence of such a dichotomy was and still is related to the logical-cognitive and empirical conditions of the perception of plurality, which are sometimes treated as unity, and sometimes the unity to express plurality.
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