Papers by Valentina Apresjan
Когнитивная наука в Москве: новые исследования. Материалы конференции 2023. БукиВеди, Московский институт психоанализа, 2023
We studied the mental representations of literal, metonymical, and metaphorical senses in Russian... more We studied the mental representations of literal, metonymical, and metaphorical senses in Russian nouns and adjectives. Previous studies suggested either a single representation, separate representations, or hybrid representations for different word senses (metonymy is stored with literal senses, metaphor is separate). We used primed recognition experimental tasks and tested recognition with consistent and inconsistent priming (primed by the same or different sense types). Expanding previous research, we hypothesized that recognition can be affected not only by consistency, but also by sense type (metaphor priming metonymy can yield different results from metaphor priming the
literal sense) and direction (metaphor priming metonymy vs. metonymy priming metaphor). Our hypothesis was confirmed: consistency helps recognition, but only for metaphor and metonymy; metaphoric primes help the recognition of metonymic senses but not vice versa. Literal primes were poorly recognized, as previously seen in both inconsistent and
consistent conditions. We interpreted our results as evidence supportive of the hybrid account; however, unlike previous research, metonymy appears to overlap with metaphor more than with literal senses. Apart from polysemy-related factors, recognition is apparently
affected by general mechanisms of memory: less regular and hence more salient usages (metaphor and metonymy) were recognized better than regular literal usages.
Грани Естественного Языка и Кинесики : Сборник статей к 75‑летию Григория Ефимовича Крейдлина, 2023
В статье рассматривается небольшой лексикографический тип, или
ЛТ [Апресян 2009: 148–150], в кото... more В статье рассматривается небольшой лексикографический тип, или
ЛТ [Апресян 2009: 148–150], в который входят глаголы со значением
‘быть видным наблюдателю’, а именно виднеться, вырисовываться, красоваться, возвышаться, выситься, вздыматься, возноситься, громоздиться, блестеть, блистать, сиять, сверкать, белеть, зеленеть, краснеться, белеться, золотиться и некоторые другие
Russian Linguistics, 2024
Full paper available here https://rdcu.be/dwhZx
We study factors influencing aspectual errors ... more Full paper available here https://rdcu.be/dwhZx
We study factors influencing aspectual errors in written texts of advanced learners of Russian with dominant English. Our study is based on the data from the Russian Learner Corpus, as well as a mini-corpus collected from a group of advanced Russian learners who are native speakers of English. Our findings suggest that the incidence, direction, and type of aspectual errors depend on the level of language mastery. On lower levels, there are more perfective-to-imperfective substitutions (*Я наконец делала уроки ‘I finally did.IPF my homework’ instead of Я наконец сделала уроки ‘I finally did.PF my homework’), possibly due to greater morphological simplicity of erroneous imperfective forms, as well as their earlier instruction and acquisition. However, on higher levels of language mastery, the number of imperfective-to-perfective substitutions increases (*Я не хочу купить ему подарок ‘I don’t want to buy.PF him a present’ instead of Я не хочу покупать ему подарок ‘I don’t want to buy.IPF him a present’). Perfective tends to replace imperfective, irrespectively of the morphological complexity, in cases when the required use of imperfective is driven by grammatical rules rather than the semantics of the form, e.g. in iterative or negative constructions. Possibly, it happens because learners are guided by the aspectual semantics (lexical aspect) and disregard the grammatical rules when they contradict it (morphological aspect). Additionally, it appears that both perfective-to-imperfective and imperfective-to-perfective substitutions are context-dependent. Both tend to happen less frequently in finite, factual past contexts, and more frequently in non-finite, non-factual contexts where aspectual oppositions are mitigated.
Processing of Different Types of Metaphors for Polysemous Words in Russian, 2022
Theories of storing the multiple senses of polysemous words in the mental lexicon suggest three k... more Theories of storing the multiple senses of polysemous words in the mental lexicon suggest three key approaches. Some theories assume that only literal senses are stored, while non-literal senses are derived from them via rules; other theories suggest that all senses are stored separately. There is also a hybrid approach which assumes that some non-literal senses can be stored as separate units, while others are derived from literal ones. However, the evidence in favor of hybrid models has been obtained mainly from data comparing either metonymy and metaphor, or else proximal and distal metonymy. In this paper, the predictions of hybrid models are tested on proximal and distal metaphors. With the help of an experiment involving a group of adult native speakers of Russian, we demonstrate a difference in sensicality judgment and processing speed between proximal and distal metaphors, as compared to the literal senses of verbs and adjectives. Adjectival distal metaphors are treated almost in the same way as literal senses. Proximal metaphors are processed more slowly and less accurately. For verbs, both proximal and distal metaphors are processed slower than literal senses and are more likely to be evaluated as nonsensical. Such results suggest that verbal metaphors and adjectival proximal metaphors are derived via a reference to the word’s literal sense during processing. Adjectival distal metaphors, in turn, are processed independently. The difference between adjectives and verbs in the processing of metaphors can be associated with the different nature of the mechanisms involved in the development of polysemy.
Russian Linguistics, 2023
The full paper can be viewed here:
https://rdcu.be/dfYuC
The article discusses the distribu... more The full paper can be viewed here:
https://rdcu.be/dfYuC
The article discusses the distribution of dative case and prepositional phrases with dlja ‘for’ in Russian. We consider factors affecting distribution both for verbs (for instance, verbs of acquisition, such as kupit’ ‘buy’ or verbs of creation, such as postroit’ ‘build’) and predicatives, such as udivitel’no ‘surprising’, xolodno ‘cold’. We demonstrate the following general tendency: dative tends to be used for marking situation participants who are affected by the situation to a larger extent than the participants marked by dlja-phrases. In terms of semantic roles, dative-marked arguments frequently refer to experiencers and beneficiaries, while arguments in dlja-phrases denote participants who merely assess situations or, if they are beneficiaries, are only indirectly affected. Moreover, dlja can also mark participants with no role in the situation itself. In such cases, it can be assigned the semantic role of a ‘restrictor’ (a participant that only serves as a reference point for the description of a state or property). This opposition, in turn, explains the fact that dlja is easily combined with syntactic heads (nouns and adjectives) that do not have a full-fledged argument structure, while dative marking is often incompatible with these types of heads. Although there is an affinity between certain semantic classes and dative vs. dlja syntactic marking, sometimes members of the same semantic class demonstrate different lexicalization patterns and “choose” one of the two possible markings, while prohibiting the other. Also, marking depends on many contextual factors: apart from the differences in semantic role construal, dative vs. dlja can also reflect differences in referential status and in information structure.
Русская речь, 2019
Цель исследования — мультидисциплинарное изучение феномена полисемии (многозначности) языковых ед... more Цель исследования — мультидисциплинарное изучение феномена полисемии (многозначности) языковых единиц с помощью теоретических, экспериментальных и статистических методов. Хотя полисемии посвящено большое количество работ, это явление ранее не
исследовалось комплексно. Коллективом авторов было проведено исследование, которое сочетало элементы словарного описания, статистического анализа, опросов, а также изучение электроэнцефалограмм
и движений глаз. Исследование показало, что при развитии полисемии
используется большее количество различных семантических сдвигов,
помимо хорошо известных метафоры и метонимии. Эти сдвиги составляют сложную иерархическую систему и часто комбинируются друг с
другом при образовании новых значений. Наше восприятие значения
как нового связано с когнитивным «расстоянием», которое различается для разных типов сдвигов: так, метафорически образованное значение воспринимается как более далекое от исходного, чем метонимическое значение. Словарное представление значений только отчасти
коррелирует с устройством ментального лексикона и с частотностью
разных значений. Лексикографическое представление, основанное на
семантических принципах, более удобно для восприятия, чем представление, основанное на частоте употребления. В ходе исследования
возникли новые вопросы, в частности, различаются ли представления
далекой и близкой метонимии в нашем ментальном лексиконе.
COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS AND INTELLECTUAL TECHNOLOGIES
The paper is a corpus study of Russian frequency adverbs chasto ‘frequently’, zachastuju ‘often’,... more The paper is a corpus study of Russian frequency adverbs chasto ‘frequently’, zachastuju ‘often’, redko ‘rarely’, izredka ‘rarely’, etc. In Russian lexicographic tradition, frequency adverbs either lack separate entries and are explained via references to their adjectival counterparts or are treated exclusively as denotations of intervals between events. As our study demonstrates, this covers only a small fraction of their actual corpus usage. Many frequency adverbs can quantify over subjects, and thus resemble classical quantifiers such as ‘many’ or ‘few’. Even when frequency adverbs quantify over predicates, they mostly refer not to intervals between events, but merely to their number. In some cases, they quantify over aspects of events, expressed by adjectives. There are also other important properties of Russian frequency adverbs missed by the dictionaries yet revealed by corpus analysis. Most frequency adverbs have a strong preference for topic or focus position, as motivated b...
Russian Journal of Linguistics
Our study tackles Russian interrogative-relative pronouns ( wh -words) as a lexicographic type wh... more Our study tackles Russian interrogative-relative pronouns ( wh -words) as a lexicographic type which requires a unified treatment. Our objective is to give a systematic description and explanation of the numerous collocational and constructional properties of the Russian wh -words using lexicographic and corpus methods. The dataset and statistics were extracted from the Russian National Corpus, at least 100 examples for each of the pronouns were analysed. Methodologically the study is based on the principles of the Moscow School of Semantics (namely, integral description of language and systematic lexicography) which are to a large extent rooted in the “Meaning⇔Text” theory. They include analysis of linguistic items on all levels of language; a focus on their semantic and combinatorial properties; acknowledged validity of dictionary as an instrument of linguistic research. The paper considers semantic, syntactic and co-occurrence properties shared by many Russian interrogative prono...
ВАПросы языкознания: мегасборник наностатей, 2020
Apresjan, Valentina & Boris Iomdin. 2022. Russian interrogative pronouns as a lexicographic type. Russian Journal of Linguistics 26 (4). 1078–1113. https://doi.org/10.22363/2687-0088-30714, 2022
Our study tackles Russian interrogative-relative pronouns (wh-words) as a lexicographic type whic... more Our study tackles Russian interrogative-relative pronouns (wh-words) as a lexicographic type which requires a unified treatment. Our objective is to give a systematic description and explanation of the numerous collocational and constructional properties of the Russian wh-words using lexicographic and corpus methods. The dataset and statistics were extracted from the Russian National Corpus, at least 100 examples for each of the pronouns were analysed. Methodologically the study is based on the principles of the Moscow School of Semantics (namely, integral description of language and systematic lexicography) which are to a large extent rooted in the "Meaning⇔Text" theory. They include analysis of linguistic items on all levels of language; a focus on their semantic and combinatorial properties; acknowledged validity of dictionary as an instrument of linguistic research. The paper considers semantic, syntactic and co-occurrence properties shared by many Russian interrogative pronouns and analyzes the reasons for their almost entire lack in the pronouns zachem 'what for' and pochemu 'why'. As demonstrated in the study, most of the constructional and co-occurrence properties typical of Russian interrogative pronouns (for example, co-occurrence with particles imenno 'exactly' and khot' 'at least', constructions with mnogo 'many', malo 'few', etc.) are motivated by the semantics of multiplicity and choice, which are incompatible with 'what for' and 'why'. In addition, as the findings show, different interrogative pronouns have different frequencies of occurrence in the described constructions, which is explained not by their general corpus frequencies or by the animacy hierarchy, but by the compatibility of their semantics with the meanings of multiplicity and choice. The obtained results suggest that combinatorial properties of wh-words are motivated by their semantics which, in turn, reflects the meta-linguistic characteristics of the situations to which they refer.
Apresjan V., Kopotev M. Autonomous bi-pronominal distributive constructions in Russian. Voprosy Jazykoznanija, 2022, 4: 115–142., 2022
Работа посвящена одному типу русских дистрибутивных конструкций с двумя вопросительно-относительн... more Работа посвящена одному типу русских дистрибутивных конструкций с двумя вопросительно-относительными местоимениями вида кто куда, кто о чем, когда как со значением 'Разные X характеризуются разными Y'. Мы показываем, что конструкции без правого предиката образуют особую разновидность, отличную от косвенных дистрибутивных вопросов и квазирелятивов по своим семантическим, прагматическим, синтаксическим, сочетаемостным и коммуникативным свойствам. Опираясь на корпусные данные, мы показываем исторические механизмы их возникновения и современное употребление, а также описываем самые частотные варианты их реализации. Главный вывод работы состоит в том, что частотность употребления, синтаксические особенности и степень идиоматизации разных вариантов исследуемых конструкций имеют семантические, коммуникативные и прагматические основания. Ключевые слова: вопросительно-относительные местоимения, дистрибутивная конструкция, корпусная лингвистика, прагматика, русский язык, семантика, фразема Благодарности: Исследование частично поддержано грантом Министерства науки и высшего образования № 075-15-2020-793 «Компьютерно-лингвистическая платформа нового поколения для цифровой документации русского языка: инфраструктура, ресурсы, научные исследования». Мы благодарим анонимных рецензентов за ценные замечания к черновой версии статьи. Для цитирования: Апресян В. Ю, Копотев М. В. Автономные дистрибутивные конструкции с вопросительно-относительными местоимениями в русском языке.
Компьютерная лингвистика и интеллектуальные технологии: по материалам международной конференции «Диалог 2022», 2022
The paper is a corpus study of Russian frequency adverbs chasto 'frequently', zachastuju 'often',... more The paper is a corpus study of Russian frequency adverbs chasto 'frequently', zachastuju 'often', redko 'rarely', izredka 'rarely', etc. In Russian lexicographic tradition, frequency adverbs either lack separate entries and are explained via references to their adjectival counterparts or are treated exclusively as denotations of intervals between events. As our study demonstrates, this covers only a small fraction of their actual corpus usage. Many frequency adverbs can quantify over subjects, and thus resemble classical quantifiers such as 'many' or 'few'. Even when frequency adverbs quantify over predicates, they mostly refer not to intervals between events, but merely to their number. In some cases, they quantify over aspects of events, expressed by adjectives. There are also other important properties of Russian frequency adverbs missed by the dictionaries yet revealed by corpus analysis. Most frequency adverbs have a strong preference for topic or focus position, as motivated by their semantics. Some adverbs are preferable in generalized contexts, while others refer to specific events. Certain adverbs describe violations of the norm or undesirable events. Different adverbs quantify over different time periods: while some require a long time period, others may focus on very short stretches of time.
Journal of Pragmatics, Mar 1, 2022
Our study investigates clickbait – ambiguous misleading headlines, aimed at exploiting
readers’ ... more Our study investigates clickbait – ambiguous misleading headlines, aimed at exploiting
readers’ curiosity gap. Clickbait has two unequally conspicuous interpretations, where
the first interpretation is false with respect to the article content, while the second
interpretation is correct content-wise, but considerably less obvious. We aim at
identifying linguistic structures and pragmatic mechanisms employed in creating
Russian clickbait, as well as testing the effectiveness of clickbait headlines
experimentally. To answer our research questions, we compiled, annotated and
analyzed a corpus of Russian clickbait headlines, as well as designed and ran an
online experiment. We demonstrate that the main device employed in creating clickbait
is a false generalized conversational implicature (GCI), created by flouting Gricean
maxims of Quantity, Manner, or Relevance, which is subsequently canceled by the
content of the article. We identify language-specific contexts conducive to their
occurrence, and show how journalists explore semantic, syntactic, and referential
peculiarities of the Russian language to create GCIs inherent in clickbait. Finally, we
demonstrate that not all clickbait headlines are effective: in order to attract clicks,
clickbait must not be obviously false and must increase the potential appeal and
importance of insufficiently engaging news pieces on topics that do not require
specialized knowledge.
Cuadernos de Filología Inglesa, 1997
While there is plenty of research on emotion meraphors, monolingual, as well as cross -linguistic... more While there is plenty of research on emotion meraphors, monolingual, as well as cross -linguistic, there is still no answer to the question: why is it that certain emotion metaphors are the same across languages, while others display significant cross-linguistic variance? Whar triggers the conceptualization of emotions in language? In this paper, I propose a tentative answer to this problem. On the basis of the Russian and English data, I suggest that different emotions are linguistically conceptualized through different meraphorization mechanisms, and that linguistic and cross-linguistic behavior of an emotion metaphor depends on the metaphorizarion mechanism employed in its formation.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
We studied mental representations of literal, metonymically different, and metaphorical senses in... more We studied mental representations of literal, metonymically different, and metaphorical senses in Russian adjectives. Previous studies suggested that in polysemous words, metonymic senses, being more sense-related, were stored together with literal senses, whereas more distant metaphorical senses had separate representations. We hypothesized that metonymy may be heterogeneous with respect to its mental storage. “Whole-part” metonymy (“sad person” – “sad eyes”), which is cognitively closer to the literal sense and more regular, should be stored differently from temporal, causal or resultative metonymy (“sad person” – “sad time;” “sad person” – “sad news;” “lead.ADJ ball” – “lead.ADJ poisoning”), which is irregular and semantically distant from the literal sense. We conducted an online experiment with semantic clustering task in which the participants were asked to classify sentences with a literal, proximal metonymic, distal metonymic, or metaphorical sense of an adjective into virtu...
Folklorica, 2010
An endemic group of Malagasy spiders (Araneae: Archaeidae: Eriauchenius) called the gracilicollis... more An endemic group of Malagasy spiders (Araneae: Archaeidae: Eriauchenius) called the gracilicollis group is revised. The monophyly and phylogenetic relationships of the gracilicollis group are tested based on morphological characters. Archaeid spiders of Madagascar have evolved varying degrees of elongation in the cephalic area. Historically, it was believed that the extremely elongated cephalic area had evolved only once. These morphological data support the monophyly of the gracilicollis group and suggest that the elongated cephalic area has evolved more than once. All 14 species from the gracilicollis group are described and keyed, of which nine are new species: Eriauchenius ambre sp. nov., Eriauchenius anabohazo sp. nov., Eriauchenius borimontsina sp. nov., Eriauchenius griswoldi sp. nov., Eriauchenius halambohitra sp. nov., Eriauchenius lavatenda sp. nov., Eriauchenius namoroka sp. nov., Eriauchenius spiceri sp. nov. and Eriauchenius voronakely sp. nov. The morphology of the gracilicollis group is examined in detail and figures of the male and female genitalia are presented. The distributions of the gracilicollis group species are presented and discussed and higher species group relationships within the Archaeidae are discussed.
Русский язык в научном освещении, 2015
Валентность Стимула у русских глаголов со значением эмоций имеет гораздо более разнообразное морф... more Валентность Стимула у русских глаголов со значением эмоций имеет гораздо более разнообразное морфосинтаксическое выражение, чем валентность Экспериенцера. При этом роль Стимула при эмотивных глаголах в русском языке принципиально иная в семантическом и синтаксическом отношении, чем при перцептивных. Стимулы у перцептивных состояний семантически и синтаксически сближаются с Объектами (Theme в некоторых инвентарях семантических ролей). У эмотивных
глаголов отсутствует стандартный синтаксический способ оформления роли Стимула, а семантика Стимула может окрашиваться семантикой Места,
Адресата, Пациенса, Части. Разброс в наборах семантических ролей и моделей управления у эмотивных глаголов обусловлен различными онтологическими свойствами разных типов эмоций. Изучение частотных распределений разных МУ у глаголов эмоций позволяет обнаружить синкретичные
роли на месте валентности Стимула эмоции, что должно отражаться в толкованиях слов-эмоций и в целом — в лексикографических описаниях глаголов со значением эмоций.
Variations, 2017
The paper aspires to answer the question addressed by many
previous researchers of Mikhail Zoshch... more The paper aspires to answer the question addressed by many
previous researchers of Mikhail Zoshchenko’s short stories: what is the nature of Zoshchenko’s humor? Kreps 1986 suggests that Zoshchenko’s comical uniqueness lies in the
linguistic devices, or “humoremes”. Zholkovskij 1999 considers Zoshchenko’s comical short stories of the 1920–1930s through the prism of his later psychoanalytical novelsThe returned youth and Before sunrise and presents his humor as a mask hiding the author’s deep-seated neuroses. I suggest that Zoshchenko’s narrative cannot be divorced from his subject matter with its recurrent motives of death, violence, love, marriage, and that his humor functions on all levels – from lexicon and grammar to the storyline and social conventions.
The Incongruity Theory of Humor states that laughter is caused by violations of our expectations. This appears the main device that Zoshchenko uses to create humorous effects. He employs this device on all levels of his writing, using the following types of violation:
– Violation of semantic, syntactic and morphological rules on the sentence
level.
– Violation of semantic and pragmatic expectations on the level of the storyline.
– Violation of pragmatic expectations on the level of cultural conventions
(supposedly shared societal norms and values).
To an extent, all three types of violations can be interpreted as linguistic
phenomena. The first device best yields analysis in terms of construction
grammar, namely the phenomenon of coercion, whereby new meanings
are created by bringing together apparently incompatible linguistic items. The second device might be seen as a kind of a pragmatic garden path. Traditionally, “garden path sentence” refers to grammatically correct sentences that are constructed in such a fashion that their initial interpretation is incorrect. The paper extends this notion to cover pragmatic trickery, when the reader is lured by the narrator to form certain expectations about the plot that are upset later in the story. The third device is considered through the prism of Gricean implicatures, or implicit meanings that facilitate communication when shared by the communicants. Zoshchenko uses this device to introduce implicatures that intentionally conflict with an average reader’s established values.
Компьютерная лингвистика и интеллектуальные технологии: по материалам международной конференции «Диалог 2017», 2017
Отрицательно и положительно поляризованным языковым единицам
(ОП и ПП), т.е. единицам, не употреб... more Отрицательно и положительно поляризованным языковым единицам
(ОП и ПП), т.е. единицам, не употребляющимся вне контекста отрицания
или, наоборот, не употребляющимся в его контексте, посвящено большое количество лингвистической литературы, в том числе формальносемантической и типологической. Однако само явление поляризации
рассматривается на достаточно узком языковом материале. Так, описаны отрицательно и положительно поляризованные единицы в сериях
неопределенных местоимений типа any vs. some, в системе наречий времени типа yet vs. already. Известны также отрицательно поляризованные
фраземы типа not to lift one’s finger и положительно поляризованные выражения со значением отношения типа unfortunately и would rather. При
этом основные направления существующих исследований состоят в попытках определить и описать лицензирующие контексты (DE operators,
non-veridicality). В данной работе вводится обширный новый материал
языковых единиц, имеющих свойства ОП и ПП, предлагается семантическое объяснение поляризации для разных семантических подтипов
внутри классов NPI и PPI, демонстрируется, что отрицательная и положительная поляризация пронизывают гораздо большие участки языка,
чем было принято считать ранее, и показывается, что поляризация является шкалярным признаком. Рассматривается явление возникновения отдельных поляризованных значений у многозначных слов (в первую
очередь глаголов), которые не имеют свойства поляризованности в основном значении. Устанавливается семантическая связь между механизмами отрицательной и положительной поляризации. Степень поляризованности коррелирует с семантической структурой ОП и ПП единиц:
чем «весомее» модальная рамка, тем больше поляризована единица.
Компьютерная лингвистика и интеллектуальные технологии: по материалам международной конференции «Диалог 2017», 2017
The paper considers the less known aspects in the functioning of Russian
lexical “xeno” markers, ... more The paper considers the less known aspects in the functioning of Russian
lexical “xeno” markers, in particular, of the particle jakoby ‘allegedly, ostensibly’. Traditionally described as expressing the falsity of a proposition contained in somebody’s utterance, in conjunction with a negative assessment
of the utterer as aware of its falsity, jakoby displays very different usages
in the language of contemporary mass media. Namely, it is frequently used
as a mere marker of evidentiality, without an obligatory assessment of the
proposition as false or of its source as untruthful. In fact, it can even be used
to refer to statements that are treated as true within the very same text, only
to indicate that the source of this information is not the writer herself but
somebody else (e.g., a different news agency), in what might be termed
as “safety” strategy.
Besides, jakoby in its mass media usages demonstrates unusual syntactic behaviors, namely shifts in scope, where it is placed before the
speech verb rather than before the challenged proposition: jakoby utverzhdat’, chto P ‘jakoby claim that P’ instead of utverzhdat’, chto jakoby P ‘claim
that jakoby P’.
However, the study of the Russian-English parallel corpus reveals that
these usages are not as unusual as they may appear. In Russian translations
of English texts jakoby sometimes functions as a translation of the English
supposedly, allegedly, ostensibly or other (e.g., verbal) markers of uncertainty, but more frequently occurs with no apparent stimulus in the source,
merely to mark indirect quotation.
It appears therefore that there is a certain need in the Russian language
for a neutral evidentiality marker. It is occasionally filled with jakoby, which
in this case displays a tendency for grammaticalization: it expresses that
the source of information is other than the speaker herself (but contains
no other semantic components), and takes syntactic scope over the speech
verb instead of the proposition it challenges
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Papers by Valentina Apresjan
literal sense) and direction (metaphor priming metonymy vs. metonymy priming metaphor). Our hypothesis was confirmed: consistency helps recognition, but only for metaphor and metonymy; metaphoric primes help the recognition of metonymic senses but not vice versa. Literal primes were poorly recognized, as previously seen in both inconsistent and
consistent conditions. We interpreted our results as evidence supportive of the hybrid account; however, unlike previous research, metonymy appears to overlap with metaphor more than with literal senses. Apart from polysemy-related factors, recognition is apparently
affected by general mechanisms of memory: less regular and hence more salient usages (metaphor and metonymy) were recognized better than regular literal usages.
ЛТ [Апресян 2009: 148–150], в который входят глаголы со значением
‘быть видным наблюдателю’, а именно виднеться, вырисовываться, красоваться, возвышаться, выситься, вздыматься, возноситься, громоздиться, блестеть, блистать, сиять, сверкать, белеть, зеленеть, краснеться, белеться, золотиться и некоторые другие
We study factors influencing aspectual errors in written texts of advanced learners of Russian with dominant English. Our study is based on the data from the Russian Learner Corpus, as well as a mini-corpus collected from a group of advanced Russian learners who are native speakers of English. Our findings suggest that the incidence, direction, and type of aspectual errors depend on the level of language mastery. On lower levels, there are more perfective-to-imperfective substitutions (*Я наконец делала уроки ‘I finally did.IPF my homework’ instead of Я наконец сделала уроки ‘I finally did.PF my homework’), possibly due to greater morphological simplicity of erroneous imperfective forms, as well as their earlier instruction and acquisition. However, on higher levels of language mastery, the number of imperfective-to-perfective substitutions increases (*Я не хочу купить ему подарок ‘I don’t want to buy.PF him a present’ instead of Я не хочу покупать ему подарок ‘I don’t want to buy.IPF him a present’). Perfective tends to replace imperfective, irrespectively of the morphological complexity, in cases when the required use of imperfective is driven by grammatical rules rather than the semantics of the form, e.g. in iterative or negative constructions. Possibly, it happens because learners are guided by the aspectual semantics (lexical aspect) and disregard the grammatical rules when they contradict it (morphological aspect). Additionally, it appears that both perfective-to-imperfective and imperfective-to-perfective substitutions are context-dependent. Both tend to happen less frequently in finite, factual past contexts, and more frequently in non-finite, non-factual contexts where aspectual oppositions are mitigated.
https://rdcu.be/dfYuC
The article discusses the distribution of dative case and prepositional phrases with dlja ‘for’ in Russian. We consider factors affecting distribution both for verbs (for instance, verbs of acquisition, such as kupit’ ‘buy’ or verbs of creation, such as postroit’ ‘build’) and predicatives, such as udivitel’no ‘surprising’, xolodno ‘cold’. We demonstrate the following general tendency: dative tends to be used for marking situation participants who are affected by the situation to a larger extent than the participants marked by dlja-phrases. In terms of semantic roles, dative-marked arguments frequently refer to experiencers and beneficiaries, while arguments in dlja-phrases denote participants who merely assess situations or, if they are beneficiaries, are only indirectly affected. Moreover, dlja can also mark participants with no role in the situation itself. In such cases, it can be assigned the semantic role of a ‘restrictor’ (a participant that only serves as a reference point for the description of a state or property). This opposition, in turn, explains the fact that dlja is easily combined with syntactic heads (nouns and adjectives) that do not have a full-fledged argument structure, while dative marking is often incompatible with these types of heads. Although there is an affinity between certain semantic classes and dative vs. dlja syntactic marking, sometimes members of the same semantic class demonstrate different lexicalization patterns and “choose” one of the two possible markings, while prohibiting the other. Also, marking depends on many contextual factors: apart from the differences in semantic role construal, dative vs. dlja can also reflect differences in referential status and in information structure.
исследовалось комплексно. Коллективом авторов было проведено исследование, которое сочетало элементы словарного описания, статистического анализа, опросов, а также изучение электроэнцефалограмм
и движений глаз. Исследование показало, что при развитии полисемии
используется большее количество различных семантических сдвигов,
помимо хорошо известных метафоры и метонимии. Эти сдвиги составляют сложную иерархическую систему и часто комбинируются друг с
другом при образовании новых значений. Наше восприятие значения
как нового связано с когнитивным «расстоянием», которое различается для разных типов сдвигов: так, метафорически образованное значение воспринимается как более далекое от исходного, чем метонимическое значение. Словарное представление значений только отчасти
коррелирует с устройством ментального лексикона и с частотностью
разных значений. Лексикографическое представление, основанное на
семантических принципах, более удобно для восприятия, чем представление, основанное на частоте употребления. В ходе исследования
возникли новые вопросы, в частности, различаются ли представления
далекой и близкой метонимии в нашем ментальном лексиконе.
readers’ curiosity gap. Clickbait has two unequally conspicuous interpretations, where
the first interpretation is false with respect to the article content, while the second
interpretation is correct content-wise, but considerably less obvious. We aim at
identifying linguistic structures and pragmatic mechanisms employed in creating
Russian clickbait, as well as testing the effectiveness of clickbait headlines
experimentally. To answer our research questions, we compiled, annotated and
analyzed a corpus of Russian clickbait headlines, as well as designed and ran an
online experiment. We demonstrate that the main device employed in creating clickbait
is a false generalized conversational implicature (GCI), created by flouting Gricean
maxims of Quantity, Manner, or Relevance, which is subsequently canceled by the
content of the article. We identify language-specific contexts conducive to their
occurrence, and show how journalists explore semantic, syntactic, and referential
peculiarities of the Russian language to create GCIs inherent in clickbait. Finally, we
demonstrate that not all clickbait headlines are effective: in order to attract clicks,
clickbait must not be obviously false and must increase the potential appeal and
importance of insufficiently engaging news pieces on topics that do not require
specialized knowledge.
глаголов отсутствует стандартный синтаксический способ оформления роли Стимула, а семантика Стимула может окрашиваться семантикой Места,
Адресата, Пациенса, Части. Разброс в наборах семантических ролей и моделей управления у эмотивных глаголов обусловлен различными онтологическими свойствами разных типов эмоций. Изучение частотных распределений разных МУ у глаголов эмоций позволяет обнаружить синкретичные
роли на месте валентности Стимула эмоции, что должно отражаться в толкованиях слов-эмоций и в целом — в лексикографических описаниях глаголов со значением эмоций.
previous researchers of Mikhail Zoshchenko’s short stories: what is the nature of Zoshchenko’s humor? Kreps 1986 suggests that Zoshchenko’s comical uniqueness lies in the
linguistic devices, or “humoremes”. Zholkovskij 1999 considers Zoshchenko’s comical short stories of the 1920–1930s through the prism of his later psychoanalytical novelsThe returned youth and Before sunrise and presents his humor as a mask hiding the author’s deep-seated neuroses. I suggest that Zoshchenko’s narrative cannot be divorced from his subject matter with its recurrent motives of death, violence, love, marriage, and that his humor functions on all levels – from lexicon and grammar to the storyline and social conventions.
The Incongruity Theory of Humor states that laughter is caused by violations of our expectations. This appears the main device that Zoshchenko uses to create humorous effects. He employs this device on all levels of his writing, using the following types of violation:
– Violation of semantic, syntactic and morphological rules on the sentence
level.
– Violation of semantic and pragmatic expectations on the level of the storyline.
– Violation of pragmatic expectations on the level of cultural conventions
(supposedly shared societal norms and values).
To an extent, all three types of violations can be interpreted as linguistic
phenomena. The first device best yields analysis in terms of construction
grammar, namely the phenomenon of coercion, whereby new meanings
are created by bringing together apparently incompatible linguistic items. The second device might be seen as a kind of a pragmatic garden path. Traditionally, “garden path sentence” refers to grammatically correct sentences that are constructed in such a fashion that their initial interpretation is incorrect. The paper extends this notion to cover pragmatic trickery, when the reader is lured by the narrator to form certain expectations about the plot that are upset later in the story. The third device is considered through the prism of Gricean implicatures, or implicit meanings that facilitate communication when shared by the communicants. Zoshchenko uses this device to introduce implicatures that intentionally conflict with an average reader’s established values.
(ОП и ПП), т.е. единицам, не употребляющимся вне контекста отрицания
или, наоборот, не употребляющимся в его контексте, посвящено большое количество лингвистической литературы, в том числе формальносемантической и типологической. Однако само явление поляризации
рассматривается на достаточно узком языковом материале. Так, описаны отрицательно и положительно поляризованные единицы в сериях
неопределенных местоимений типа any vs. some, в системе наречий времени типа yet vs. already. Известны также отрицательно поляризованные
фраземы типа not to lift one’s finger и положительно поляризованные выражения со значением отношения типа unfortunately и would rather. При
этом основные направления существующих исследований состоят в попытках определить и описать лицензирующие контексты (DE operators,
non-veridicality). В данной работе вводится обширный новый материал
языковых единиц, имеющих свойства ОП и ПП, предлагается семантическое объяснение поляризации для разных семантических подтипов
внутри классов NPI и PPI, демонстрируется, что отрицательная и положительная поляризация пронизывают гораздо большие участки языка,
чем было принято считать ранее, и показывается, что поляризация является шкалярным признаком. Рассматривается явление возникновения отдельных поляризованных значений у многозначных слов (в первую
очередь глаголов), которые не имеют свойства поляризованности в основном значении. Устанавливается семантическая связь между механизмами отрицательной и положительной поляризации. Степень поляризованности коррелирует с семантической структурой ОП и ПП единиц:
чем «весомее» модальная рамка, тем больше поляризована единица.
lexical “xeno” markers, in particular, of the particle jakoby ‘allegedly, ostensibly’. Traditionally described as expressing the falsity of a proposition contained in somebody’s utterance, in conjunction with a negative assessment
of the utterer as aware of its falsity, jakoby displays very different usages
in the language of contemporary mass media. Namely, it is frequently used
as a mere marker of evidentiality, without an obligatory assessment of the
proposition as false or of its source as untruthful. In fact, it can even be used
to refer to statements that are treated as true within the very same text, only
to indicate that the source of this information is not the writer herself but
somebody else (e.g., a different news agency), in what might be termed
as “safety” strategy.
Besides, jakoby in its mass media usages demonstrates unusual syntactic behaviors, namely shifts in scope, where it is placed before the
speech verb rather than before the challenged proposition: jakoby utverzhdat’, chto P ‘jakoby claim that P’ instead of utverzhdat’, chto jakoby P ‘claim
that jakoby P’.
However, the study of the Russian-English parallel corpus reveals that
these usages are not as unusual as they may appear. In Russian translations
of English texts jakoby sometimes functions as a translation of the English
supposedly, allegedly, ostensibly or other (e.g., verbal) markers of uncertainty, but more frequently occurs with no apparent stimulus in the source,
merely to mark indirect quotation.
It appears therefore that there is a certain need in the Russian language
for a neutral evidentiality marker. It is occasionally filled with jakoby, which
in this case displays a tendency for grammaticalization: it expresses that
the source of information is other than the speaker herself (but contains
no other semantic components), and takes syntactic scope over the speech
verb instead of the proposition it challenges
literal sense) and direction (metaphor priming metonymy vs. metonymy priming metaphor). Our hypothesis was confirmed: consistency helps recognition, but only for metaphor and metonymy; metaphoric primes help the recognition of metonymic senses but not vice versa. Literal primes were poorly recognized, as previously seen in both inconsistent and
consistent conditions. We interpreted our results as evidence supportive of the hybrid account; however, unlike previous research, metonymy appears to overlap with metaphor more than with literal senses. Apart from polysemy-related factors, recognition is apparently
affected by general mechanisms of memory: less regular and hence more salient usages (metaphor and metonymy) were recognized better than regular literal usages.
ЛТ [Апресян 2009: 148–150], в который входят глаголы со значением
‘быть видным наблюдателю’, а именно виднеться, вырисовываться, красоваться, возвышаться, выситься, вздыматься, возноситься, громоздиться, блестеть, блистать, сиять, сверкать, белеть, зеленеть, краснеться, белеться, золотиться и некоторые другие
We study factors influencing aspectual errors in written texts of advanced learners of Russian with dominant English. Our study is based on the data from the Russian Learner Corpus, as well as a mini-corpus collected from a group of advanced Russian learners who are native speakers of English. Our findings suggest that the incidence, direction, and type of aspectual errors depend on the level of language mastery. On lower levels, there are more perfective-to-imperfective substitutions (*Я наконец делала уроки ‘I finally did.IPF my homework’ instead of Я наконец сделала уроки ‘I finally did.PF my homework’), possibly due to greater morphological simplicity of erroneous imperfective forms, as well as their earlier instruction and acquisition. However, on higher levels of language mastery, the number of imperfective-to-perfective substitutions increases (*Я не хочу купить ему подарок ‘I don’t want to buy.PF him a present’ instead of Я не хочу покупать ему подарок ‘I don’t want to buy.IPF him a present’). Perfective tends to replace imperfective, irrespectively of the morphological complexity, in cases when the required use of imperfective is driven by grammatical rules rather than the semantics of the form, e.g. in iterative or negative constructions. Possibly, it happens because learners are guided by the aspectual semantics (lexical aspect) and disregard the grammatical rules when they contradict it (morphological aspect). Additionally, it appears that both perfective-to-imperfective and imperfective-to-perfective substitutions are context-dependent. Both tend to happen less frequently in finite, factual past contexts, and more frequently in non-finite, non-factual contexts where aspectual oppositions are mitigated.
https://rdcu.be/dfYuC
The article discusses the distribution of dative case and prepositional phrases with dlja ‘for’ in Russian. We consider factors affecting distribution both for verbs (for instance, verbs of acquisition, such as kupit’ ‘buy’ or verbs of creation, such as postroit’ ‘build’) and predicatives, such as udivitel’no ‘surprising’, xolodno ‘cold’. We demonstrate the following general tendency: dative tends to be used for marking situation participants who are affected by the situation to a larger extent than the participants marked by dlja-phrases. In terms of semantic roles, dative-marked arguments frequently refer to experiencers and beneficiaries, while arguments in dlja-phrases denote participants who merely assess situations or, if they are beneficiaries, are only indirectly affected. Moreover, dlja can also mark participants with no role in the situation itself. In such cases, it can be assigned the semantic role of a ‘restrictor’ (a participant that only serves as a reference point for the description of a state or property). This opposition, in turn, explains the fact that dlja is easily combined with syntactic heads (nouns and adjectives) that do not have a full-fledged argument structure, while dative marking is often incompatible with these types of heads. Although there is an affinity between certain semantic classes and dative vs. dlja syntactic marking, sometimes members of the same semantic class demonstrate different lexicalization patterns and “choose” one of the two possible markings, while prohibiting the other. Also, marking depends on many contextual factors: apart from the differences in semantic role construal, dative vs. dlja can also reflect differences in referential status and in information structure.
исследовалось комплексно. Коллективом авторов было проведено исследование, которое сочетало элементы словарного описания, статистического анализа, опросов, а также изучение электроэнцефалограмм
и движений глаз. Исследование показало, что при развитии полисемии
используется большее количество различных семантических сдвигов,
помимо хорошо известных метафоры и метонимии. Эти сдвиги составляют сложную иерархическую систему и часто комбинируются друг с
другом при образовании новых значений. Наше восприятие значения
как нового связано с когнитивным «расстоянием», которое различается для разных типов сдвигов: так, метафорически образованное значение воспринимается как более далекое от исходного, чем метонимическое значение. Словарное представление значений только отчасти
коррелирует с устройством ментального лексикона и с частотностью
разных значений. Лексикографическое представление, основанное на
семантических принципах, более удобно для восприятия, чем представление, основанное на частоте употребления. В ходе исследования
возникли новые вопросы, в частности, различаются ли представления
далекой и близкой метонимии в нашем ментальном лексиконе.
readers’ curiosity gap. Clickbait has two unequally conspicuous interpretations, where
the first interpretation is false with respect to the article content, while the second
interpretation is correct content-wise, but considerably less obvious. We aim at
identifying linguistic structures and pragmatic mechanisms employed in creating
Russian clickbait, as well as testing the effectiveness of clickbait headlines
experimentally. To answer our research questions, we compiled, annotated and
analyzed a corpus of Russian clickbait headlines, as well as designed and ran an
online experiment. We demonstrate that the main device employed in creating clickbait
is a false generalized conversational implicature (GCI), created by flouting Gricean
maxims of Quantity, Manner, or Relevance, which is subsequently canceled by the
content of the article. We identify language-specific contexts conducive to their
occurrence, and show how journalists explore semantic, syntactic, and referential
peculiarities of the Russian language to create GCIs inherent in clickbait. Finally, we
demonstrate that not all clickbait headlines are effective: in order to attract clicks,
clickbait must not be obviously false and must increase the potential appeal and
importance of insufficiently engaging news pieces on topics that do not require
specialized knowledge.
глаголов отсутствует стандартный синтаксический способ оформления роли Стимула, а семантика Стимула может окрашиваться семантикой Места,
Адресата, Пациенса, Части. Разброс в наборах семантических ролей и моделей управления у эмотивных глаголов обусловлен различными онтологическими свойствами разных типов эмоций. Изучение частотных распределений разных МУ у глаголов эмоций позволяет обнаружить синкретичные
роли на месте валентности Стимула эмоции, что должно отражаться в толкованиях слов-эмоций и в целом — в лексикографических описаниях глаголов со значением эмоций.
previous researchers of Mikhail Zoshchenko’s short stories: what is the nature of Zoshchenko’s humor? Kreps 1986 suggests that Zoshchenko’s comical uniqueness lies in the
linguistic devices, or “humoremes”. Zholkovskij 1999 considers Zoshchenko’s comical short stories of the 1920–1930s through the prism of his later psychoanalytical novelsThe returned youth and Before sunrise and presents his humor as a mask hiding the author’s deep-seated neuroses. I suggest that Zoshchenko’s narrative cannot be divorced from his subject matter with its recurrent motives of death, violence, love, marriage, and that his humor functions on all levels – from lexicon and grammar to the storyline and social conventions.
The Incongruity Theory of Humor states that laughter is caused by violations of our expectations. This appears the main device that Zoshchenko uses to create humorous effects. He employs this device on all levels of his writing, using the following types of violation:
– Violation of semantic, syntactic and morphological rules on the sentence
level.
– Violation of semantic and pragmatic expectations on the level of the storyline.
– Violation of pragmatic expectations on the level of cultural conventions
(supposedly shared societal norms and values).
To an extent, all three types of violations can be interpreted as linguistic
phenomena. The first device best yields analysis in terms of construction
grammar, namely the phenomenon of coercion, whereby new meanings
are created by bringing together apparently incompatible linguistic items. The second device might be seen as a kind of a pragmatic garden path. Traditionally, “garden path sentence” refers to grammatically correct sentences that are constructed in such a fashion that their initial interpretation is incorrect. The paper extends this notion to cover pragmatic trickery, when the reader is lured by the narrator to form certain expectations about the plot that are upset later in the story. The third device is considered through the prism of Gricean implicatures, or implicit meanings that facilitate communication when shared by the communicants. Zoshchenko uses this device to introduce implicatures that intentionally conflict with an average reader’s established values.
(ОП и ПП), т.е. единицам, не употребляющимся вне контекста отрицания
или, наоборот, не употребляющимся в его контексте, посвящено большое количество лингвистической литературы, в том числе формальносемантической и типологической. Однако само явление поляризации
рассматривается на достаточно узком языковом материале. Так, описаны отрицательно и положительно поляризованные единицы в сериях
неопределенных местоимений типа any vs. some, в системе наречий времени типа yet vs. already. Известны также отрицательно поляризованные
фраземы типа not to lift one’s finger и положительно поляризованные выражения со значением отношения типа unfortunately и would rather. При
этом основные направления существующих исследований состоят в попытках определить и описать лицензирующие контексты (DE operators,
non-veridicality). В данной работе вводится обширный новый материал
языковых единиц, имеющих свойства ОП и ПП, предлагается семантическое объяснение поляризации для разных семантических подтипов
внутри классов NPI и PPI, демонстрируется, что отрицательная и положительная поляризация пронизывают гораздо большие участки языка,
чем было принято считать ранее, и показывается, что поляризация является шкалярным признаком. Рассматривается явление возникновения отдельных поляризованных значений у многозначных слов (в первую
очередь глаголов), которые не имеют свойства поляризованности в основном значении. Устанавливается семантическая связь между механизмами отрицательной и положительной поляризации. Степень поляризованности коррелирует с семантической структурой ОП и ПП единиц:
чем «весомее» модальная рамка, тем больше поляризована единица.
lexical “xeno” markers, in particular, of the particle jakoby ‘allegedly, ostensibly’. Traditionally described as expressing the falsity of a proposition contained in somebody’s utterance, in conjunction with a negative assessment
of the utterer as aware of its falsity, jakoby displays very different usages
in the language of contemporary mass media. Namely, it is frequently used
as a mere marker of evidentiality, without an obligatory assessment of the
proposition as false or of its source as untruthful. In fact, it can even be used
to refer to statements that are treated as true within the very same text, only
to indicate that the source of this information is not the writer herself but
somebody else (e.g., a different news agency), in what might be termed
as “safety” strategy.
Besides, jakoby in its mass media usages demonstrates unusual syntactic behaviors, namely shifts in scope, where it is placed before the
speech verb rather than before the challenged proposition: jakoby utverzhdat’, chto P ‘jakoby claim that P’ instead of utverzhdat’, chto jakoby P ‘claim
that jakoby P’.
However, the study of the Russian-English parallel corpus reveals that
these usages are not as unusual as they may appear. In Russian translations
of English texts jakoby sometimes functions as a translation of the English
supposedly, allegedly, ostensibly or other (e.g., verbal) markers of uncertainty, but more frequently occurs with no apparent stimulus in the source,
merely to mark indirect quotation.
It appears therefore that there is a certain need in the Russian language
for a neutral evidentiality marker. It is occasionally filled with jakoby, which
in this case displays a tendency for grammaticalization: it expresses that
the source of information is other than the speaker herself (but contains
no other semantic components), and takes syntactic scope over the speech
verb instead of the proposition it challenges
уступительное значение языковых единиц. В первой главе предлагается
и обосновывается семантический инвариант уступительности, в основе
которого лежат семантические примитивы условия и отрицания. Во вто-
рой главе формулируются основные направления семантических моди-
фикаций инварианта — конверсия, добавление валентности, вероятность,
желательность и степень. В третьей главе описывается семантика более
чем шестидесяти уступительных единиц русского языка. Четвертая глава
посвящена корпусному анализу семантических и сочетаемостных свойств
уступительных конструкций. В пятой главе уступительность рассматри-
вается в контексте близких системообразующих смыслов. В шестой главе
анализируются семантические связи уступительности. В седьмой главе
представлена лексикографическая трактовка уступительных единиц в Ак-
тивном словаре русского языка.