Vol 26, No 4 (2022): “Meaning ⇔ Text” Theory in the Linguistic Universe In honour of Igor MEL’ČUK

The introductory article to the special issue dedicated to Igor Mel’čuk summarizes the main tenets of his “Meaning ⇔ Text” theory, and outlines its contribution to the development of diverse areas of modern linguistics. This theory can be characterized as a formalized, semantically oriented, multilevel, structural, functional and global model of language which explains the way the speaker generates the meaning embodied in the text. Both the article and the volume as a whole show the relevance of this theory for the development of semantics, grammar, pragmatics, typology and lexicography and highlight its theoretical and practical implications for linguistic studies and interdisciplinary research. We then briefly present the articles in this issue. Some of them were written directly in line with the “Meaning ⇔ Text theory” and were influenced by Mel’čuk’s ideas; others were the result of the stimulus that this theory, like its author, gave to the comprehension of the complex issues arising from the description of various levels of the language system. But all of them are related to Igor Mel’čuk, both as a linguist and a personality, and they are dedicated to him.

This paper argues that “YOU” and “I” (“I” and “THOU”) are fundamental elements of human thought, present as distinct words (or signs) in all human languages. I first developed this thesis in my 1976 article “In defense of YOU and ME” (and before that, introduced it in my 1972 book Semantic Primitives; cf. also my 2021 article “‘Semantic Primitives’, fifty years later”). Since then, it has been confirmed by wide-ranging cross-linguistic investigations conducted in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework. But neither the truth of this thesis nor its importance have become widely recognised in linguistics or anthropology. Influential scholars in both these fields continue to undermine the notion of the fundamental unity of humankind and to put total emphasis, instead, on the diversity of languages and cultures. As cross-linguistic investigations of the last fifty years show, however, despite the phenomenal diversity of human languages a shared “alphabet of human thoughts” was not just a figment of Leibniz’s imagination but a fitting metaphor for something real and immeasurably important. As the present article aims to show, “YOU” and “I” (“I” and “THOU”) are two twin cornerstones of this reality. To quote the entry on “Psychic unity of humankind” in the Encyclopedia of Anthropology, “Ineluctably, the idea [of a deep psychological unity of humankind] has ethical significance. For attempting to inform humans about what they are and what they have in common is not a neutral act” (Prono 2006). As the present article seeks to demonstrate (and as Martin Buber compellingly affirmed a century ago), “I” and “THOU” are an ineluctable part of who we are: how we think, how we speak and how we relate to others.

Contemporary Russian lexicon is characterized by rapid change which involves borrowings, the use of new words and expressions as well as the development of new meanings from the existing word forms. The new meanings are indicative of new attitudes or the reinforcement of the existing ones. In this context, the paper considers the recently emerged colloquial use of the word zhest’ (from the primary meaning of zhest’ ‘tin’ as a type of metal) and the increase of use of the words zhestkii ‘hard/tough/firm’ and zhestko ‘firmly/toughly’ as examples of ‘internal’ language processes. The word zhest’ is a colloquial word mainly used in youth slang, but also infiltrating other types of discourse. We analyze its use as an interjection, as well as a noun in predicative and attributive functions. Zhestkii and zhestko are shown to rise in use and to be prevalent in the political discourse as a sign of power. The paper aims to trace the rise in frequency of the words under the analysis, study their semantics and establish links between the meaning of the words and broader Russian cultural themes. This kind of linguistic analysis with focus on cultural aspects allows us to identify culturally prevalent ideas in present day Russian. The paper uses the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) as a method of semantic analysis relying on data from the Russian National Corpus. Based on a detailed semantic analysis, the paper proposes NSM explications of zhest’ , zhestkii and zhestko , identifies connections between their meanings and the cultural themes of ‘emotionality’, ‘not being in control’ and ‘strait talk’, and recognizes the increased cultural salience of these words in present day Russian. The study uncovers trends of the contemporary Russian language uses and can be applied in culture-enhanced language teaching and cross-cultural training.

The combination of perfective aspect and present tense is frequently considered as an example of semantically incompatible grams. If verbal forms including markers of both perfective aspect and present tense do exist in a language, they tend not to express present resp. perfective in the strict sense. Thus, in Russian such forms usually convey the future, as in napishu ‘I will write’. The article discusses a specific type of contexts where these forms develop a less trivial meaning of what can be called “prospective present”. Obligatory components of these contexts are first person of the verb and negation. We focus on three instances of this kind : ne skazhu (lit. ‘I won’t tell’), ne dam (lit. ‘I won’t give’) and ne pushchu (lit. ‘I won’t let’)’. With the data of Russian National Corpus (RNC) and notably of the parallel corpora within RNC, we demonstrate that in certain uses, these constructions correspond to speech acts of refusal or prohibition and can be viewed, accordingly, as expressing a kind of performative meaning. As performatives, these verbs refer to a present situation: the speaker’s refusal or prohibition comes into operation at the moment of utterance, and not at some point in the future. The present-tense reference is corroborated by the translational counterparts of ne skazhu / ne dam / ne pushchu from parallel corpora, as other languages regularly use present forms in these contexts. Thus, performative-like constructions provide new data on potential non-future meanings of perfective present forms.

Though political discourse is in the mainstream of modern studies, scholars haven’t so far paid much attention to compiling political discourse-oriented dictionaries. The need to further develop lexicographic theory and practice for specific purposes and advance new methods to dictionary making is a challenge that linguists are facing today. The aim of the case study is twofold: to work out the principles for making an Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary (ECD) of English political conflict lexis and the microstructure of an ECD entry. The source of the data is the NOW corpus; the material is current American political discourse (2022). The ECD is generally consistent with Mel'čuk’s Meaning-Text theory (MTT). The authors describe a process of collecting and processing the data: corpus search and analysis, automatic and manual text processing, glossary compilation with the use of lexicographic, semasiological, and etymological methods and present an example of an ECD entry consisting of semantic, phonological, and cooccurrence zones. The findings prove that the use of electronic text corpora offers an effective way for compiling a specialized discourse-based dictionary. The research illustrates the validity of MTT: though based on the data of “language in context” , the dictionary is synthesis-oriented: it aims at speech production. The paper is the first result of a bigger project sketching the overall framework of the discursive ECD of political conflict lexis, which subsequent studies will hopefully develop with more precision and detail. The dictionary will be helpful for scholars in linguistics, discourse analysis, media and communication, political science, and conflict studies.

In linguistic theory, there is no common point of view on the question of whether verbs in aspectual pairs are in inflectional or derivational relations. At the same time, the prefix and suffix methods of forming aspectual pairs are contrasted in this respect. The publications (e.g. Janda & Lyashevskaya 2011) pointed out the need to develop new quantitative approaches to this aspect of the text corpus. We propose two new approaches that compare the quantitative characteristics of aspectual pairs of both types. One approach is based on the Google Books Ngram corpus and analyzes the dynamics of the frequency of the use of words in pairs. The aspectual pairs from the databases created by Janda and Lyashevskaya are considered. For a numerical assessment of the degree of proximity of the frequency graphs, the Pearson correlation coefficients were used. The second approach introduces a numerical characteristic of the semantic proximity of verbs in pairs using modern computer methods. Semantic proximity of verbs is calculated as a standard cosine measure between vectors representing the compatibility of the considered verbs in the corpus. Several computer models and text corpora are considered. Both proposed approaches did not reveal significant numerical differences in semantic proximity between verbs in aspectual pairs with prefix and suffix pairing. This is in good agreement with the results of an early study by Janda and Lyashevskaya (2011). Together with the results of this work, our research shows that the suffixal and affixal ways of forming aspectual pairs have an equal status in terms of their classification as inflectional or derivational.

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