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УДК8Г255.4 ВОРОНЦОВА Ю.А.
кандидат педагогических наук, доцент кафедры иностранных языков, Брянский государственный технический университет E-mail: [email protected]
UDC 81'255.4 VORONTSOVA J.A.
Candidate in Pedagogy, associate professor, Department of foreign languages, Bryansk State Technical University E-mail: Voroncova.yu liya@mai Lru
ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИЕ КАТЕГОРИИ РУССКОГО И АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКОВ THE LINGUISTIC CATEGORIES OF ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN
Б статье говорится о лингвистических особенностях английского и русского языков в связи с языковыми категориями конкретности - абстрактности, эксплицитности - имплицитности, экспрессивности - нейтральности; сравниваются лексические эквиваленты в обоих языках; рассматриваются исследователи, занимавшиеся изучением лексической структуры английского и русского языков.
Ключевые слова: конкретность, абстрактность, эксплицитность, имплицитность, выразительность, нейтральность.
The article speaks about the characteristic linguistic properties of English and Russian in connection with the linguistic categories of concreteness - abstraction, explicitness - implicitness, expressiveness - neutrality; compares the lexical equivalents in both languages; considers the researchers studying the lexical structure of English and Russian.
Keywords: concreteness, abstractness, explicitness, implicitness, expressiveness, neutrality.
1. Introduction
The linguistic features of English and Russian speech are discussed below in connection with different ways of expressing thoughts in the English and Russian languages, namely in connection with the inherent linguistic aspects of greater or lesser degrees of concreteness - abstraction, explicitness - implicitness, expressiveness - neutrality.
2. The categories of concreteness - abstractness and explicitness - implicitness
"Abstract" and "concrete" are the pliilosophical categories. According to the definition, "abstract" (hereafter A.) in the dialectical tradition is understood in the traditional sense as "poverty", one-sided knowledge, and specific (hereinafter - C.) as Ms fullness, richness of content" [10, p. 23]. "Poverty", "unilateralism" is inherent to A. as A. (from lat. abstractio - distraction, removal) is "a mental image produced by distraction (abstraction) of those or other immaterial properties or relations of the subject to higlilight its essential features". Whereas C. (from lat. concretio - thick, solid) is "real, definite, accurate, substantive and material covered in all variety of properties and relations (in contrast to A.). C. in thinking is the concept reflecting objects or phenomena in their essential features" [10, p. 537].
Linguists (A. V. Kashechkin 1.1. Vvedensky, I.I. Rucker, V. Matezius, etc.), listing the properties of natural languages. indicate the languages inherent to greater or lesser degree of abstraction or specificity. I.I. Vvedensky, comparing the Russian language with Romanic and Teutonic, notes that German and English are highly distracted in comparison
with the Russian. V Mathesius suggests the vocabulary in languages with synthetic structure being more specific than vocabulary in languages with analytic structure. Y. Recker notes a greater degree of specificity and expressiveness of the Russian language in comparison with English.
It must be emphasized that the categories of concreteness - abstractness can only speak in relation to the lexical meaning of language units. However, the differences in these categories are not only in the lexical meaning of words in the English and Russian languages, but also in the methods of expression in the utterance that are characteristic of speakers of these two languages. In other words, in the English and Russian speech the explicitness - implicitness categories are differently implemented, i.e. the tendency to overt or covert expression in the utterance.
The problem of explicitness - implicitness is addressed to in the works of I.V. Arnold, I.R. Galperin E.N. Starikova, V.A. Kukharenko, K.A. Dolinina, VN. Komissarov, M.Y. Fedosyuk, A.D. Shveitser, A.V. Kashichkina, etc. The concept of implication is borrowed from logic where it refers to a logical connection: "if A, then B," when B is not expressed, but only implied.
Specialists in translation have not yet come to a uniform interpretation of the concepts of explicitness - implicitness. Thus, I.V. Arnold says about the implications, by which he means "an additional meaning which arises in the micro-context and is not directly limited to considered units of the language" [2, p. 4]. A.D. Schweitzer writes about the "two opposing tendencies of any natural language, a tendency to explication (i.e., to the explicit verbal expression) and the tendency to implication (i.e. implying)" [11, p. 121].
© Воронцова Ю.А. © Vorontsova J.A.
V.N. Komissarov uses the concept of "implicit meaning", which refers to "relations of implication (i.e. implying) between the two informative systems, one of which "antecedent", is directly expressed by linguistic means, and the other, "consequent", is only displayed from the first" [7, p. 52]. V.N. Commissarov considers two types of implicit expression of meaning: a textual implication and implicit elements in the semantics of lexical units. A.V. Kasliechkin notes that some authors mean by the implication "unspoken meaning", other authors mean by the implication "all manifestations of the meaning: as a process of the implying. and the implied meaning of the utterance, deriving from its explicit meaning" [5, p. 13]. Listing some properties of natural languages, M. Vondruska also mentions a tendency to explication inherent to languages, i.e., open clear expression, and the tendency for the implications, i.e. to implying.
Explicit and implicit elements of statements can be found in all languages. However, the detail level of describing the same situation in different languages often does not coincide. In particular, V.N. Komissarov draws attention to it: "...in different languages, the ratio of explicit and implicit meaning of the statement can be a different" [7, p. 127]. V.G. Gak points to the problem of redundancy or speech economy when describing the same type of situation by means of different languages.
Analyzing, in particular, the English and Russian languages in the aspect of categories of explicitness - implicitness, many specialists in translation come to the conclusion that the implication is more typical for the English language in comparison to Russian (V.N. Komissarov. A.V Kashichkin, T.G. Seidova, K.I., Kovalev, S.Y. Shmakov, etc.): "...in the English language in comparison with Russian the tendency to implicitly at the level of the language content is developed to a greater degree" [5, pp. 80-81]. According to T.R. Levitskaya and A.M. Fitennan, the characteristic feature of the modern English language is "compression, or "economy," or, in other words, conciseness of language expression" - a phenomenon particularly evident when comparing the English and Russian languages [8, p. 51]. Speaking about the trends of any natural language of explications and implications, T.G. Seidov also indicates a high degree of compression inherent to the English language. V.N. Komissarov drew attention to the fact that "English statements are often more implicit than Russian, that means in the original, the translation must be expressed explicitly" [7, p. 127].
However, a greater degree of implied in the English language is revealed only when comparing with the Russian language, and the English-speaking recipient is perceived as the normative way of describing the situation: "... English speech and texts quite often include in their semantic structure less signs in comparison with the Russian translation. The part of these signs remains beyond the plane of expression and it is taken for granted by an English recipient. At that the Russian recipient perceives as the norm a different way of representing reality, which is characterized by a greater degree of explicitness.
In addition to links to the phenomenon of implied in
English, A.V. Kashichkin traces the relationship between categories of implied and abstract in the English language: "the Implication of the phrases, single words ... in the English statements often is caused by ... a large amount of the meanings of English words and its high degree of abstraction" [5, p. 87].
Thus, the category of concreteness - abstractness, used in relation to the lexical meaning of the word, represents special cases of the phenomena of explicitness - implicitness, which point to two different ways of expression in the utterance. So, taking into account all mentioned above, we can confidently say that English speech is characterized by a high degree of abstraction and implicitly in comparison with the Russian one, which is characterized by a large degree of lightness and explicitness.
3. The categories of expressiveness - neutrality
Expressive properties of speech and language seen in the works of many scholars (Sh. Balli, V.V Vinogradov, T.G. Vmokur, EM. Wolff, VG. Gak, I.V Arnold. I.R. Galperin, E.M. Galkina-Fedoruk, V.A. Zvegintsev, N. Lukyanova, V.N. Telia, V.I. Shakhovskv. V.N. Gridina, M.A. Tariverdieva, etc.). However, such concepts as expressivity, emotionality, connotatively, expression, and af-fectivity, imagery, evaluation, intensity, etc. do not have universally accepted definitions.
Expressive emphatic is a property of an element or phenomenon, which gives the statement of the estimates. The relationship of expressiveness and evaluation was proved by many researchers. So, R.O. Jakobson meant by the expression "so-called emotive or expressive function" of the language, which "aims at a direct expression of the speaker's attitude to what he says" [12, p. 118].
I.V. Kolbukova interprets the expression ("emphasis", from lat. expressio - expression) as "the property of a certain set of language units to ensure they are able to convey the speaker's subjective attitude to the content or the speech addressee, as well as a set of qualities of the speech or text, organized on the basis of such linguistic units" [6, p. 25].
The relationship between expressivity and expression of the speaker's subjective attitude to the statement is also shown by Sh. Bally's: "the expressive trend enriches the language with the elements of specific affects and the speaker's subjectivity" [3, p. 85].
The compilers of the "Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary" define expression as "the set of semantic and stylistic features of language units, that ensure its ability to act in a communicative act as a means of subjective expression of the speaker's relationship to the possession or to the addressee of the question" [9, p. 543]. In other words, there is stressed the concepts interrelation of the expressivity and evaluation, or the speaker's subjective attitude to the statement.
O. V. Alexandrova, in addition to the evaluation component, allocates expressiveness and an emotional side, defining expressiveness as "the ability to express the speaker's emotional state, his subjective attitude to denoting objects and phenomena of reality" [1, p. 7]. The emotional compo-
nent is the basis of O.S. Akhmanova's definition, who thinks the expression is expressive-figurative speech qualities that distinguish this speech from the usual (or stylistically neutral) one and give it a figurative and emotive component.
In addition to the evaluation and emotional components, scientists defining expressiveness, point to the influence of the expression function. In particular, V.V. Vinogradov sees the main task of the language in its expressive function in influencing others. E.M. Galkina-Fedoruk defines the expression as increased expression of figurativeness, an increase in exposure of the said. In O. Ozarovskoy's view the notion "expressive" is the most common expression of special quality units associated with their expression implication with every increasing or unusual expression of thoughts, feelings and will in the speech.
Consider how the category concrete-abstract, explic-itness-implicitness and expressiveness-neutrality appear on the lexical and syntactic levels of English and Russian languages.
Semantically Russian-English lexical correlations are various. They may denote everyday objects and commonly used tilings; brutal - грубый, cold - холодный, ground -грунт, kettle - котел, kitchen - кухня, money - монета, sister - сестра, wolf - волк etc. The researchers studying the lexical structure of these languages pay attention to this. Compared with the lexical equivalents in English, Russian lexical units differ by an extent of concreteness, as it is considered by the drafters of the "Large English-Russian dictionary", edited by I.R. Galperin. Typically, concreteness is characteristic for the lexicon of the Russian language to a larger extent than the corresponding lexical units of English, which was repeatedly stated by linguists. It is specified that one word in the Russian language expresses a broader, undifferentiated notion that is meaning a wider class of detonates in another language, in English it may correspond to two or more words, each of which expresses the more narrow, differentiated, compared to the Russian concept, that is, it refers to a more limited class of detonates.
Thus, the drafters of the "Large English-Russian dictionary", edited by I. R. Galperin indicate wide meaning phenomenon, which is the most important typological feature of English lexical system. Wide meaning problem, "lexically empty" words-substitutions in the English language, is addressed in the works of V.N. Yartsev, I.V. Arnold, N. Amosov, R.R. Nikolaevskaya and others. In R.R. Nikolaevskaya's works it is stressed that there is the "tendency in modern English to use the words with the variety of meanings, "empty" in terms of their lexical content. At the same time in R.R. Nikolaevskaya's opinion, an English word in general often feels like a semantically "fuzzier" than the word in Russian or other inflected languages. As N.N. Amosova believes, broader meaning is determined as correlated with the concepts of a very broad volume, showing a high degree
of generalization in the language, but receiving a known restriction, specification in the speech.
The results of comparison methods of introducing direct speech in both languages show that a greater degree of expressiveness and specificity is inherent to the Russian language in comparison to English. It is well known that the process of introducing direct speech in the author's story has a great stylistic value. Typically, this is used in the Russian language, "marginal notes that complement the reader's conception about speaking character, clarify his remarks, help to understand the deep subtext, hidden in their meaning" [4, p. 406]. Verbs of specifically-shaped semantics are often used (whispered, blurted out, muttered, growled, snapped, hissed, growled, dropped, etc.); actions that accompany it (turned, thinking, confused, surprised, gesture, etc.); and adverbs and adverbial participle describing the character (on any hand, with a smile, fluently, after a pause, added roughly etc.).
Word formation in the Russian language is a source of rich expression thanks to the variety of assessment affixes. As I.B. Golub notes, "The Russian language lias an extraordinary wealth of word-building resources", which is caused by "a developed system of Russian word formation, productivity of assessing suffixes giving words a variety of expressive colors, and functional-style tightness of some word-formation models" [4, p. 193].
Examples of the use of expressive word-building potential of the Russian language can be found in the analysis of all the parts of speech. Nouns are distinguished by a prefix way of creating expressive shades (super-express, extra-beauty, extra-perfection, etc.), the suffixes of adjectives often convey the speaker's subjective assessment (iviox-onbK-uii-ploh-on 'k-ij, 3Ji '-yuf-uit- zl '-ushch-ij, cmpaui-emi-hifi -strash-enn-yj, etc.).
The researchers of the modern Russian language say that adding a prefix to the word does not usually change the meaning of the word radically, but only adds a certain connotation to it.
Thus, the greater degree of concreteness and expressive of Russian lexical units in comparison with the British ones is achieved by using, among other tilings, word-forming agents of the Russian language.
4. Conclusion
After analyzing the features of the implementation of concrete categories - abstract-implicitness-explicitness and expressiveness-neutrality on the lexical level in the English and Russian speech we conclude that it is inherent to the Russian lexical means of speech the great degree of expressiveness, specificity and explicitness in comparison to the English lexical means of speech to which it is inherent a lesser degree of expressiveness, a greater degree of meaning generality and implicitness.
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