scholarly journals A Contrastive Study of Reflexive verbs in English and French

Author(s):  
Hafissatou KANE

This paper describes and compares reflexive verbs in English and French. In collecting the data, a number of books and research works related to the subject have been analysed, using the contrastive method. Results of the analysis indicate that reflexives display a great difference between the two languages. The main observed similarity occurs with the emphatic form. Indeed, the English pronouns “myself”, “himself”, “ourselves” etc, and their French counterparts moi-même, lui-même, nous-mêmes are used in the same way. Points of differences are presented as follows: while French puts the pronominal clitics me, te, se, nous, vous before the verb, English places pronouns after e.g., se blesser “to hurt oneself”. One of most important differences that several verbs take reflexive pronouns in French while their English counterparts don’t e.g., se demander “to wonder”. It has also been noted that, in English, the same pronouns are used to express both emphatic and non-emphatic forms while French distinctively uses toi-même, elles- mêmes etc. to emphasize; and the pronominal clitics in simple forms. In the reciprocal voice, the English pronouns “each other” and “one another” are less ambiguous than their French corresponding ones. For instance, Nous nous aimons means both “we love ourselves” (reflexivity) and “we love each other / one another” (reciprocity). Finally, it is shown that some English verbs do not appear with reciprocal pronouns but their French equivalents do e.g., “to meet” se rencontrer.

Author(s):  
Juliana Goschler

AbstractThis paper reports the results of a quantitative contrastive study of English and German in the area of syntactic vs. semantic concord - the agreement of number of subject and verb if the subject is semantically plural but syntactically singular. Based on English and German newspaper corpora, I look at constructions with quantifying nouns of the form [a number/bunch/heap of N


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Åke Viberg

From a typological perspective, the verbs of sitting, standing and lying have been described relatively extensively. Against this background, the present paper provides a contrastive study of the lexical semantics of the Swedish posture verbs sitta ‘sit’, stå ‘stand’ and ligga ‘lie’ based on the Multilingual Parallel Corpus (MPC), which contains extracts from Swedish novels and their published translations into English, German, French and Finnish. Since the corpus is a very rich data source, the study is focused on the use of posture verbs as locative verbs. It turns out that it is possible to arrange the languages along a continuum with respect to the use of posture verbs versus the copula to describe the location of inanimate objects. In Finnish the copula dominates completely, in English there is more of a balance (in this kind of written text), whereas the posture verbs dominate in German and Swedish. French stands out as a completely different type in this comparison, since the copula is used very little and posture verbs hardly at all. Actually, there is a tension in French between the use of a small number of verbs with a general locative meaning as translations and the use of a large variety of reflexive verbs and resultative constructions with past participles (e.g. être fixé ‘be attached’) which convey fine-grained information about the placement. Among the languages that use posture verbs as locative predicates, there is a general similarity with respect to the factors that condition the choice between lie and stand, whereas even closely related Germanic languages differ with respect to the semantic factors that condition the choice of sit as a locative predicate.


Author(s):  
Ksenia G. Kostina

Introduction. Any language’s verb system has many resources for denoting various actions of people. The relations of the action or state of the subject to its object are determined by the grammatical category of the voice, represented in the Udmurt language by the pairs of causative – non-causative, reflexive – non-reflexive forms of voices. The article considers the functioning of the verb’s reflexive voice in the modern Udmurt language, including the etymology of the voice’s affix, the grammatical meanings of reflexive verbs. Materials and Methods. The main material of the research is based on the Udmurt-Russian Dictionary (2008) and the texts of Udmurt writers included into the National Corpus of the Udmurt Language. The article used a set of such research methods as descriptive, continuous sampling, contextual analysis, taking into account the situational conditioning of the verb voice. On specific examples, the use of these methods makes it possible to consider the structure, dynamics and features of the functioning of the reflexive voice of the verb in the Udmurt language. Results and Discussion. As a result of the research, for the first time, among the reflexive voice’s groups we include verbs of passive voice. The reason of it is the low probability of using passive constructions in colloquial speech. The frequent cases of using passive meanings of verbs in the literature and in the press are defined by the calcified translation of foreign-language constructions. Conclusion. The grammatical structure of the Udmurt language is represented by two binary voice’s forms: reflexive/non-reflexive voice and causative/non-causative voice. Specific indicators of reflexive voice are affixes -ськ(ы)-/-ск(ы), -иськ(ы)-/-üськ(ы)-. From the point of view of semantic content, five semantic groups of returnable pledges are distinguished: reflexive, medial, reciprocal, impersonal, passive. The proposed classification is determined by the specifics of the relations between the subject and the object of action.


2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (PR) ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
TEODORA RABOVYANOVA

The paper presents a summary of the observations on the tranisitivization and dereflexivization of Bulgarian verbs as a means of attributing causativity. The majority of the newly formed verbs that we analyze are causative while others may, under certain conditions and in particular sentences, exemplify the causative rule. The lability of morphological identification regarding the transitivity – intransitivity distinction is the reason to examine the excerpted verbs as being either A- or Р-labile. The following tendency can be observed: P-lability has to do with causativity, while A-labile verbs are not-causative. In such cases the subject does not undergo changes neither in their intransitive nor in their transitive use. With P-labile verbs, the subject of the intransitive verb becomes the object of the transitive verb. There are some ambiva-lent verbs, such as minavam (pass), premina (pass over), svetna (light up), spomagam (facilitate), stigna (reach), treniram (train). Although the second group contains 40 causatives and the third group has 3 verbs, the lability procedure is not applicable because of the difference between the reflexive with the se- (се) marker and the transitive verb, i.e. the mismatch in form also means non-lability. The examples in the third group can also be viewed as the absolute use of the transitive verb meaning. The changes in the verbs indicate a change in the way contemporary Bulgarians think – the causative verbs serve as an expression of an active position, while the interplay between transitive and intransitive and/or reflexive and non-reflexive verbs has mostly pragmatic purposes, such as achieving a certain communicative effect, attractiveness, informality. Keywords: labile verbs, A-lability, P-lability, the lexico-grammatical category of transitivity ‒ intransitivity, causativity, Bulgarian language


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-259
Author(s):  
Karin Aijmer ◽  
Bengt Altenberg

The Swedish adverb gärna, related to German gern(e), has no obvious equivalent in English. To explore this cross-linguistic phenomenon the English correspondences of gärna are examined on the basis of the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus, a bidirectional translation corpus. The study shows that gärna has a wide range of English correspondences (translations as well as sources), representing a variety of grammatical categories (verb, adjective, adverb, noun, etc). In addition, the English texts contain a large number of omissions and unidentifiable sources (zero). The most common function of gärna is to express willingness or readiness on the part of the subject, but in the absence of a volitional controller it can also indicate a habitual tendency and even convey implications such as reluctance. It is also used in speech acts expressing offers, promises and requests and in responses to such speech acts. To compare the Swedish adverb with its German cognate gern(e) a similar contrastive study of the English correspondences of this adverb was made on the basis of the Oslo Multilingual Corpus. The studies clearly demonstrate the rich multifunctionality of the two adverbs and the advantages of using bidirectional parallel corpora in contrastive research.


Author(s):  
Dmitry Ganenkov ◽  
Natalia Bogomolova

This chapter introduces the inventory of anaphoric expressions attested in languages of the Caucasus and discusses their basic properties. It shows that Nakh-Dagestanian, Kartvelian, and Northwest Caucasian differ in the division of labor between nominal expressions and verbal inflection in reflexive constructions. It demonstrates that exempt uses of anaphors are found in Nakh-Dagestanian, but not in Kartvelian or Northwest Caucasian, and that different types of reflexive pronouns in Nakh-Dagestanian have distinct restrictions on locality, while Kartvelian anaphors are strictly local. The chapter also describes the well-known pattern of ‘reverse binding’ in Nakh-Dagestanian, where the reflexive or reciprocal appears in the subject position above the antecedent. It is shown that some instances of reverse binding can be explained by factoring in the distinction between syntactic binding and coreference. Georgian reflexives are also known to be grammatical in the subject position, with non-trivial implications for the semantic interpretation. Personal pronouns in Nakh-Dagestanian and, possibly, other Caucasian languages can undergo indexical shift in finite embedded reports.


2019 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 45-78
Author(s):  
Ngoc Vinh Hang Nguyen ◽  
Deok-yu Park

Author(s):  
Peter John Glanville

Chapter 4 examines the semantics of Arabic reflexive verbs formed in pattern VII, which produces anticausative verbs, and pattern VIII, associated with the middle voice. It argues that these patterns result from the conversion of full reflexive pronouns into reflexive affixes, and considers the difference between them in the framework of an agency continuum. It then offers an analysis of reflexive verbs that do not participate in a verb alternation. The chapter argues that once a reflexive verb pattern comes about due to affixation, it becomes a morpheme paired with a reflexive semantic structure, and is then no longer restricted to producing verbs that alternate with an unmarked base verb. The chapter shows that verbs marked with this morpheme may be derived from a variety of base nouns and adjectives, or may not be derived at all, but simply marked because they construe a reflexive action.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nam Hye Hyun

Данная работа рассматривает абсолютивную конструкцию переходных глаголов в русском языке в соотношении с антипассивом. Переходные глаголы определяются как глаголы, имеющие возмож-ность сочетаться с прямым объектом, т. е. обладают пациентной валентностью. Однако по разным причинам они могут не реализовывать пациентную валентность.Поскольку безобъектное употребление глагола – это результат синтаксической невыразимости пациентного аргумента, логично подходить к нему как к результату сокращения валентностных потенций. С этой точки зрения можно предположить, что безобъектная конструкция переходных глаголов имеет определенные диатетические характеристики. Мы постулируем, что невербализа-ция пациентной валентности сигнализирует о переносе пациентного аргумента на семантическую, коммуникативную периферию, и, следовательно, о его синтаксическом понижении.Выделяются три типа невербализации пациентного аргумента: контекстный эллипсис, семанти-ческая инкорпорация объекта в значение глагола и генерализованная презентация ситуации. Нас интересует прежде всего третий тип, и именно относительно этого типа традиционно применяется термин «абсолютивная конструкция». В отличие от первого и второго типов, в которых невыражен-ный объект восстанавливается через контекст или семантику глагола, в абсолютивной конструкции объект действия не может быть специфицирован, или это делается с трудом. Поэтому абсолютивная конструкция не является неполной конструкцией.Aбсолютивное употребление переходных глаголов – это результат сокращения валентности ком-муникативно нерелевантного объекта, что порождает определенные семантические сдвиги; глагол обозначает не акциональное действие, направленное на какой-то объект, а нечто более стативное, постоянное свойство субъекта, что переносит глагол в иные семантические классы и обусловливает его употребление в определенных контекстах.Абсолютивная конструкция и антипассив имеют общее функциональное сходство, а именно низ-кую дискурсивную выделенность объекта действия и генерализованную репрезентацию ситуации как постоянного свойства субъекта. В русском языке типичным показателем антипассива являет-ся возвратная частица -ся. Поэтому в случаях несущественности, очевидности, неопределенности объекта действия абсолютивная конструкция и антипассивный возвратный глагол могут функцио-нировать синонимично. Ср.: Горчичник сильно жжет Ø / сильно жжется. Следовательно, в данной статье абсолютивная конструкция сравнивается с антипассивными рефлексивными глаголами типа Собака кусается. В русском языке семантический круг антипассивных рефлексивных глаголов от-носительно узок, и это объясняется тем, что их функцию вполне могут заменить невозвратные гла-голы в абсолютивном употреблении.Кроме того, остальные типы опущения пациентной валентности также имеют соотношение с возвратными глаголами других разрядов, но детальное обсуждение этого вопроса станет темой наших дальнейших исследований.This work examines the absolute construction of transitive verbs in Russian in relation to the antipassive. Transitive verbs are defined as verbs that can be combined with a direct object, i.e. they exhibit patient valency. However, for various reasons, this patient valency is not always realized.Since the objectless use of the verb is the result of the syntactic inexpressibility of the patient argument, it is logical to approach it as the result of valency-reducing derivation. From this point of view, it can be assumed that the objectless transitive construction has certain diathetic properties. We postulate that the non-verbalization of patient valency signals the transfer of the patient argument to the semantic, communicative periphery and, consequently, to its syntactic demotion.Three types of non-verbalization of the patient argument are distinguished: context ellipsis, semantic incorporation of an object into the meaning of a verb, and generalized presentation of the situation. We are primarily interested in the third type, for which the term absolute construction is traditionally used. Unlike the first and second types, in which the unexpressed object is reconstructed through the context or semantics of the verb, in the absolute construction, the object of action cannot be specified, or it is diffi cult to do so. Therefore, an absolute construction is not an incomplete construction.The absolute use of transitive verbs is the result of reducing the valency of a communicatively irrelevant object, which generates certain semantic shift s; a verb does not denote an action directed at a concrete object but instead denotes something more stative, a constant property of the subject, which transfers the verb to other semantic classes and determines its use in certain contexts.The absolute construction and the antipassive function similarly in that both rely on the low discursive saliency of the object of action and the generalized representation of the situation as a constant property of the subject. In Russian, a typical indicator of an antipassive is the reflexive -ся. Therefore, when the object of action is insignificant, obvious or ambiguous, the absolute construction and the antipassive reflexive verb can function synonymously (e.g. Горчичник сильно жжет Ø / сильно жжется). Therefore, in this paper, the absolute construction is compared with antipassive reflexive verbs such as Собака кусается. In Russian, the semantic circle of antipassive reflexive verbs is relatively narrow, and this is due to the fact that their function may be replaced by irreflexive verbs in absolute use.In addition, the remaining types of omission of patient valency also have a correlation with reflexive verbs of other categories but a detailed discussion of this issue will be reserved for future research.


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