ASPECT SYMMETRY AND ASYMMETRY IN UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN LANGUAGES

Abstract

Background. The problem of the semantic and formal comparability of lexical units of different languages is important for comparative research of the specific linguistic division and the linguistic picture of the world in general. It is also important for the practice of teaching language as a non-mother tongue, especially in the context of contact closely related bilingualism.

Purpose. The purpose of this article is to study the specifics of the relationship with the derivatives, forming its aspectual paradigm, individual meanings of polysemantic Russian verbs, compared to their Ukrainian semantic equivalents.

Methods. The main methodological technique is opposition analysis, applied to both units of the same language and different languages. The semantic structure of verbs is established according to lexicographic sources and is updated to reflect corpus-based approach. The composition of aspectual paradigms is established according to word-forming and reverse dictionaries, semantic relations are checked with the help of explanatory dictionaries by comparing interpretations.

Results. By the symmetry of the semantic structure of the basic verbs of different languages, we usually observe aspectual symmetry: rus белеть₁: забелеть – ukr. біліти – забіліти, rus. белеть₂: побелеть – ukr. біліти, білішати: побіліти, побілішати, rus. белеть₃: забелеть, побелеть – ukr.. біліти, дніти: задніти, побіліти. According to the asymmetry of the semantic structure of basic verbs, semantic equivalents often have similar derivatives: rus. гладить₁ – выгладить, погладить, разгладить – ukr. прасувати – випрасувати, попрасувати, розпрасувати; rus. гладить₂ – погладить, ukr. гладити – погладити; rus. гладить₃ – разгладить, ukr. рівняти – розрівняти. By the asymmetry of the semantic structure of basic verbs, partial aspectual asymmetry occurs: among aspectual derivatives, of the Russian verb болеть we find the verb of softening Aktionsart побаливать, похварывать і прибаливать, прихварывать and the verb баливать with a multiple meaning, the parallels of which are not found in Ukrainian material, in which we find: colloquial вихворіти and dialectic виболіти, похворіти (‘start being sick’ - about all or many).

Discussion. Inspite of the close relationship of languages, the semantic structure of polysemous verbs often does not coincide with them. Word-formation tools in each language are also their own, although Ukrainian and Russian have much in common due to etymological relationship. The concept of an aspectual paradigm of a basic verb allows to consider motivated verbs, that modify the aspectual meaning and are defined for each lexico-semantic variant separately, as a certain complex, that is a formal marker of the aspectual meaning of the motivator. In the formation of the aspectual paradigm, the leading role belongs to the semantic factor, therefore, the aspectual derivatives of different meanings of Russian verbs often differ from each other, but Ukrainian semantic equivalents, regardless of whether they are meanings of the same verb, whether they belong to various lexical units in the Ukrainian language, have aspectual paradigms similar to the Russian ones. Differences in the composition of aspectual paradigms of different languages are due to: the specifics of the development of prefix systems; features of word-forming structure of semantic equivalents of basic units; additional semantic shades of units used as interlingual equivalents. Comparative study of the semantic structure of the basic verbs of related languages and their aspectual paradigms helps to clarify the semantic structure of the units of each of the languages, and the establishment of their aspectual paradigms makes it possible to form a dictionary register. Vocabulary fixation of all aspectual derivatives of polysemantic verb is very important as a methodological technique for teaching language as a second one.

Keywords: polysemous verb, semantic structure, aspectual modification, aspectual paradigm, interlingual asymmetry, interlingual symmetry.