The paper proposes a semantic analysis of the Russian inde nite adverb kak-nibud’ based on the data collected from the French-Russian, Italian- Russian, and English-Russian parallel subcorpora of the Russian National Corpus, as well as from the Data Base of the Russian Discourse Markers and their French equivalents. The study applies the “unidirectional method” of contrastive analysis within which the translation by a professional trans- lator is viewed as a quasi-lexicographic explication of a given unit reveal- ing implicit components of its semantics. Our analysis demonstrates that kak-nibud’ is a highly language-speci c Russian word. It re ects in a high percentage of null equivalents of this unit in the three languages under in- vestigation, for both Russian taken as the source or target language. The study has also allowed us to show that the analyzed adverb can function as a marker of non-controllability of a hypothetic event similar to the func- tion of the subjunctive mood in Romance languages. On the other hand, the use of kak-nibud’ (‘anyhow’, ‘poorly’) in a purely evaluative meaning cited by monolingual and bilingual dictionaries has shrunk in contemporary Rus- sian compared to the Russian of the 19th century.
Russian kak-nibud' through the prism of parallelo corpora
denissova galina
2018-01-01
Abstract
The paper proposes a semantic analysis of the Russian inde nite adverb kak-nibud’ based on the data collected from the French-Russian, Italian- Russian, and English-Russian parallel subcorpora of the Russian National Corpus, as well as from the Data Base of the Russian Discourse Markers and their French equivalents. The study applies the “unidirectional method” of contrastive analysis within which the translation by a professional trans- lator is viewed as a quasi-lexicographic explication of a given unit reveal- ing implicit components of its semantics. Our analysis demonstrates that kak-nibud’ is a highly language-speci c Russian word. It re ects in a high percentage of null equivalents of this unit in the three languages under in- vestigation, for both Russian taken as the source or target language. The study has also allowed us to show that the analyzed adverb can function as a marker of non-controllability of a hypothetic event similar to the func- tion of the subjunctive mood in Romance languages. On the other hand, the use of kak-nibud’ (‘anyhow’, ‘poorly’) in a purely evaluative meaning cited by monolingual and bilingual dictionaries has shrunk in contemporary Rus- sian compared to the Russian of the 19th century.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
