Филологические науки/4. Синтаксис: структура, семантика, функция

Chyzhykova I.V., Bilinskaya L.I., Bozhok A.I.

Prydniprovs’k State Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture

Semantic analysis of cases relations on the morphologo-syntactic and word-building levels of the language (on the basis of dictionaries and books)

It is common knowledge that semantics is such a language sphere in which all the units (in their close entirety of meaning and form) are correlated and interdependent. As for semantic research, linguists distinguish the so-called relational semantics. It is this sphere which the category of case belongs to. Following semantic approaches of Fillmore, Dokulil, Morokhovskaya, Zolotova and others, we accept the point of view, according to which, case is the lingual referential conceptual category which is characterized by the denotative ability to denote relations to things, properties, actions. Then we try to make the analysis of the semantic patterns of the Genetive Case, realized in microcontexts on the syntactic level, in which the role of left-hand elements (with -’s morpheme) predominates. Elements of transformational method are of great help here.

Some examples: the semantic pattern – the Genetive of Agent (“Subjective Genetive”) the man’s arrival- the man arrived, my uncle’s death, etc.; the semantic pattern – the Genetive of Patience (i.e. the reference of actions to their objects): the champion’s defeat – the champion is defeated, John’s expulsion – John is expelled. [7] Here it is also necessary to mention commentaries on the notion “semantic cases”, which are closely related to semantic sentence structure as they display semantic roles of the actants (the participants of the action). The latter are dependent components of the verbal action, namely: the agent of the action, its object, instrument, locational and temporal semantic roles. Ch. Fillmore was the first linguist to offer the term “semantic cases” for denoting concrete meaningful units in deep syntactic sentence structure. According to his opinion semantic cases are conceptual entities which are universal, since they are obligatorily verbalized by human languages but their lingual representation is various and can be related to various levels of the language. Semantic cases are relational notions; they reflect objective relations between things and phenomena of reality in all their variety. Semantic cases may be the following: Subjective, Objective, Possessive, Dative, Quantitative, Instrumental, Locative and Temporal. [5]

Such an outstanding linguist Mukhin A.M. contributed greatly to the development of theoretical syntax, when he created his own theory of syntaxemic analysis. The correlation of form and content is the basis of the elementary syntactic unit – syntaxeme. [3] The semantic model by Fillmore is based on the system of semantic roles in which the verb plays the most important role, as it is the verb which comprises states, actions, positions in their interrelations. Following the approach of a number of linguists we made an attempt to display these semantic cases (roles) through the notion of syntaxeme as the smallest meaningful unit in the semantic sentence structure. Apart from this, we also put an accent on the idea that valency properties of the verb itself contribute to defining semantic cases. Word-order is of great importance here too. It is typical of Modern English to express syntaxemes as prepositional variants which prevail over prepositional ones. [5]

e.g. The event was widely commented on by all the journalists (journalists – syntaxeme “prepositional” as the dependent component of the verb). [7]

Analysing the prepositional syntaxeme with “for” we also tried to show that one and the same syntaxeme can have different variants and express different semantic roles. Syntactic and semantic components do not always coincide:

e.g. I sent flowers to her. (the object) – She was sent flowers. (the subject).[7]

Here is another attempt to expose the correlation of semantic cases with derivational meanings in the process of word-formation. The existence of this correlation has been proved by such linguists as Dokulil, Kubryakova, etc. [1] Semantic cases are implicitly exposed in the definitions in which the motivating words are closely related to verbal actions and their actants. Above all, we mean here verbal derivatives of the suffixal type. The role of words-identifiers is of great help too.

e.g. fire-watcher – person whose duty was to watch fires started by bombs dropped from the air (here “person” the word identifier, “to watch” and “fires” motivating words connected with the semantic role is the agent of the action). One and the same derivative can involve different semantic roles. [4]

To sum it up, we must state, that the lingual referential conceptual category of case is closely correlated with different language levels (morphological, syntactic, derivational). Related to different language levels this category comprises different lingual devices representing specific semantic patterns which, taken in their entirety, can be looked upon (in content) as the universal category displaying objective relations existing in extra-lingual surrounding reality.

Literature:

1. Докулил М. К вопросу о морфологической категории//ВЯ.- 1967 №6.-с.3-16

2. Золотова Г.А. К дискуссии о соотношении синтаксиса и семантики// Сборник научных трудов. Вып.112.-М., 1977. с. 61-70

3. Мухин А.М. Синтаксемы и средства их выражения// Сборник научных трудов. Вып. 112. – М., 1977. с. 70-82

4.Кубрякова Е.С. семантика синтаксиса и некоторые вопросы словорбразования// Предмет и методы синтаксической семантики. – М.: Наука, 1977-129с.

5. Филлмор Ч. Дело о падеже// Новое в зарубежной лингвистике.-1981.Вып.10, с.369-495

6. Blokh M.Y. A course in theoretical grammar. –M., 1983.-283p.

7. Hornby A.S. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford University Press, 1980. - 1037p.