Theory of Translation (English and Russian)

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Theory of Translation (English and Russian) ZOYA PROSHINA THEORY OF TRANSLATION (ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN) 3d edition, revised Vladivostok Far Eastern University Press 2008 ББК 81.2-923 П 78 Рецензенты: В.П.Кочетков, канд. филол. наук, профессор; Элизабет Стэнсиу (языковой редактор), магистр гум. наук, волонтер Корпуса мира Прошина З.Г. П 78 ТЕОРИЯ ПЕРЕВОДА (с английского языка на русский и с русского языка на английский): Уч. на англ. яз. – Владивосток: Изд-во Дальневост. ун-та, 2008 (3-е изд., перераб.), 2002 (2-е изд., испр. и перераб.), 1999 (1-е изд.) ISBN 5-7444-0957-2 Учебник по теории перевода предназначен для студентов переводческих отделений. Созданный на основе типовой программы по переводу, он раскрывает такие разделы, как общая и частная теория перевода; последняя основывается на сопоставлении английского и русского языков. Может быть рекомендован студентам, преподавателям, переводчикам-практикам и всем тем, кто интересуется вопросами изучения иностранных языков и перевода. П 4602000000 ББК 81.2-923 180(03)-99 (С) Издательство Дальневосточного университета ISBN 5-7444-0957-2 2008 2 CONTENTS ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ 6 PART I. GENERAL ISSUES OF TRANSLATION 7 CHAPTER 1. WHAT IS TRANSLATION? 7 § 1. TRANSLATION STUDIES ......................................................................................................... 7 § 2. SEMIOTIC APPROACH .......................................................................................................... 8 § 3. COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH ............................................................................................ 9 § 4. DIALECTICS OF TRANSLATION .......................................................................................... 11 § 5. TRANSLATION INVARIANT ................................................................................................... 12 § 6. UNIT OF TRANSLATION ....................................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER 2. TYPES OF TRANSLATION 14 § 1. CLASSIFICATION CRITERIA ................................................................................................ 14 § 2. MACHINE TRANSLATION ..................................................................................................... 15 § 3. TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING ................................................................................ 17 § 4. FUNCTIONAL CLASSIFICATION ......................................................................................... 21 CHAPTER 3. EVALUATIVE CLASSIFICATION OF TRANSLATION 21 § 1. ADEQUATE AND EQUIVALENT TRANSLATION ................................................................ 21 § 2. LITERAL TRANSLATION ....................................................................................................... 23 § 3. FREE TRANSLATION ............................................................................................................. 25 § 4. THE CONCEPT OF ‘UNTRANSLATABILITY’ ...................................................................... 26 CHAPTER 4. TRANSLATION EQUIVALENCE 28 § 1. TYPES OF EQUIVALENCE .................................................................................................... 28 § 2. PRAGMATIC LEVEL .............................................................................................................. 29 § 3. SITUATIONAL LEVEL ........................................................................................................... 30 § 4. SEMANTIC PARAPHRASE ..................................................................................................... 30 § 5. TRANSFORMATIONAL EQUIVALENCE .............................................................................. 31 § 6. LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE ................................................................ 32 § 7. THE LEVELS OF EQUIVALENCE HIERARCHY .................................................................. 32 CHAPTER 5. WAYS OF ACHIEVING EQUIVALENCE 33 § 1. TYPES OF TRANSLATION TECHNIQUES ............................................................................ 33 § 2. TRANSLATION TRANSCRIPTION ......................................................................................... 34 § 3. TRANSLITERATION ............................................................................................................... 36 § 4. CАLQUE TRANSLATION ....................................................................................................... 39 § 5. GRAMMAR TRANSFORMATIONS ......................................................................................... 40 § 6. LEXICAL TRANSFORMATIONS ............................................................................................ 41 § 7. COMPLEX TRANSFORMATIONS ......................................................................................... 44 CHAPTER 6. TRANSLATION MODELS 46 § 1. TRANSLATION PROCESS ...................................................................................................... 46 § 2. SITUATIONAL MODEL OF TRANSLATION ......................................................................... 47 § 3. TRANSFORMATIONAL MODEL OF TRANSLATION ........................................................... 49 § 4. SEMANTIC MODEL OF TRANSLATION ............................................................................... 50 § 5. PSYCHOLINGUISTIC MODEL OF TRANSLATION ............................................................. 51 PART III. GRAMMAR PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION 52 CHAPTER 1. FORMAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SOURCE TEXT AND TARGET TEXT 53 CHAPTER 2. TRANSLATING FINITE VERB FORMS 54 §1. TRANSLATING TENSE AND ASPECT FORMS ...................................................................... 55 §2. TRANSLATING PASSIVE VOICE FORMS .............................................................................. 57 §3. TRANSLATING THE SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD FORMS ........................................................... 60 CHAPTER 3. TRANSLATING NON-FINITE VERB FORMS 62 §1. TRANSLATING THE INFINITIVE ........................................................................................... 62 §2. TRANSLATING THE GERUND ............................................................................................... 65 §3. TRANSLATING THE PARTICIPLE ......................................................................................... 66 §4. TRANSLATING ABSOLUTE CONSTRUCTIONS .................................................................... 69 CHAPTER 4. TRANSLATING CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS 73 §1. TYPES OF CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS .......................................................................... 73 §2. CONSTRUCTIONS WITH CAUSAL VERBS ............................................................................ 73 3 §3. CONSTRUCTIONS WITH THE VERBS TO HAVE, TO GET .................................................. 74 §4. CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS WITH NON-CAUSAL VERBS ............................................ 76 CHAPTER 5. TRANSLATING PRONOUNS 77 §1. TRANSLATING PERSONAL PRONOUNS .............................................................................. 77 §2. TRANSLATING POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS ............................................................................ 80 §3. TRANSLATING RELATIVE PRONOUNS ................................................................................ 81 §4. TRANSLATING THE PRONOUN ONE ................................................................................... 82 §5. TRANSLATING THE PRONOUNS КАЖДЫЙ / ВСЕ ............................................................. 83 §6. TRANSLATING PARTITIVE PRONOUNS SOME / ANY ......................................................... 84 §7. TRANSLATING DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS .................................................................. 85 CHAPTER 6. TRANSLATING THE ARTICLE 87 §1. TRANSLATING THE INDEFINITE ARTICLE ......................................................................... 87 §2. TRANSLATING THE DEFINITE ARTICLE ............................................................................. 89 §3. TRANSLATING THE ZERO ARTICLE .................................................................................... 90 CHAPTER 7. TRANSLATING ATTRIBUTIVE CLUSTERS 92 §1. FEATURES OF THE ATTRIBUTIVE PHRASE ....................................................................... 92 §2. TRANSLATING THE ATTRIBUTIVE CLUSTER. .................................................................... 93 CHAPTER 8. SYNTACTIC CHANGES IN TRANSLATION 96 §1. COMMUNICATIVE STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN SENTENCE ............ 96 §2. WORD ORDER CHANGE DUE TO THE FUNCTIONAL SENTENCE PERSPECTIVE ........ 98 §3. SENTENCE PARTITIONING AND INTEGRATION ................................................................ 99 CHAPTER 9. DIFFERENCE IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN PUNCTUATION 101 §1. PRINCIPLES OF PUNCTUATION IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN ........................................ 101 §2. DIFFERENCES IN COMMA USAGE .................................................................................... 102 §3. USING THE DASH ................................................................................................................. 105 §4. USING QUOTATION MARKS ............................................................................................... 105 §5. USING THE COLON AND SEMICOLON ............................................................................. 106 §6. USING THE ELLIPSES .......................................................................................................... 107 PART IV. SEMANTIC PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION
Recommended publications
  • Russian Constructions with Syntactic Reduplication of Colour Terms: a Corpus Study
    Russian Journal of Linguistics 2018 Vol. 22 No. 3 653—674 Вестник РУДН. Серия: ЛИНГВИСТИКА http://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics DOI: 10.22363/2312-9182-2018-22-3-653-674 Russian Constructions with Syntactic Reduplication of Colour Terms: A Corpus Study Valentina Apresjan National Research University Higher School of Economics 20 Myasnitskaya st., Moscow, 101000, Russia Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences 18/2 Volkhonka st., Moscow, 119019, Russia Abstract Russian reduplicated constructions with colour terms have never previously been an object of a comprehen- sive corpus study. Nevertheless, they present considerable interest for a researcher because comparative ability of colour terms to be reduplicated reflects their semantic and pragmatic differences, whereas semantics and pragmatics of reduplication construction are revealed in the properties of colour terms that can fill its slots. Thus, the goal of the paper is to study semantic and pragmatic properties of Russian colour terms and Russian syntactic reduplication construction by analyzing their co-occurrence. We apply corpus methods to the data from the Russian National Corpus, RuTenTen Corpus on Sketch Engine and RuSkell corpus. We analyze absolute corpus frequencies and collocation patterns of Russian non-reduplicated colour terms, as well as their relative frequencies and collocation patterns in the construction of syntactic redupli- cation with a hyphen (belyj-belyj ‘white-white, very white, spotlessly white’). Drawing on this data, we establish that absolute frequencies of non-reduplicated colour terms in Russian reflect both Anna Wierzbicka’s “universals of visual semantics”, as well as certain language and culture-specific tendencies, as evidenced by the prominence of goluboj ‘light blue’ and ryzhij ‘carroty-red’ in Russian.
    [Show full text]
  • Fenomena Munculnya Interlanguage (Inglish) Di Indonesia
    FENOMENA MUNCULNYA INTERLANGUAGE (INGLISH) DI INDONESIA Rosita Ambarwati FPBS IKIP PGRI Madiun Abstrak The process of learning a new language is difficult. Even so, when the second language is finally formed, the language would have a continuous effect on the person’s mother tongue ability (Association for Psychological Science, 2009). On the other side, someone who is learning a new language, would also have trouble to understand the grammar in translation. In the translation skill, they move from the original language to the literal gloss before it reaches the new language (Saygin, 2001). Both sides show the same symptom, the birth of new terms that are actually combinations from both language elements. Some nations, suffer some sort of desperation where it is so difficult to learn English that leads them to a compromise. The compromise gave birth to numerous and vary new vocabularies, and almost can be recognizable as a language. Key words : Interlanguage, Inglish Pendahuluan Belajar bahasa baru itu sulit. Semakin sulit seiring meningkatnya usia. Walau demikian, saat bahasa kedua telah terwujud, bahasa tersebut akan berpengaruh sinambung pada kemampuan seseorang berbahasa asli (Association for Psychological Science, 2009). Di sisi lain, seorang yang mempelajari bahasa baru, akan mengalami kesulitan memahami grammar dan menterjemahkan. Dalam ilmu penerjemahan, mereka berangkat dari bahasa asli menuju ke literal gloss sebelum sampai ke bahasa baru tersebut (Saygin, 2001). Kedua sisi menunjukkan gejala yang sama, munculnya sekumpulan istilah yang merupakan perpaduan dari unsur-unsur kedua bahasa. Sebagian bangsa, mengalami sebuah keputusasaan, begitu sulitnya mempelajari bahasa Inggris sehingga membawa mereka pada kompromi. Kompromi ini memunculkan kosakata yang luar biasa banyak dan beragam, yang hampir dapat diakui sebagai bahasa.
    [Show full text]
  • Bakalářská Práce
    Univerzita Karlova Filozofická fakulta Ústav germánských studií Bakalářská práce Katarína Boldižarová The contemporary Norwegians' understanding of Russenorsk Jak současní Norové chápou Russenorsk Praha 2021 Vedoucí práce: PhDr. Pavel Dubec, Ph.D. Nejprve bych ráda poděkovala svému vedoucímu, dr. Pavlu Dubcovi, za cenné rady ohledně obsahu a formy práce. Chtěla bych také poděkovat profesorovi Ernstu Jahrovi, jehož odborné znalosti byly neocenitelné při formulování výzkumných otázek a metodiky. Kromě toho bych ráda poděkovala Mariánu Sidlárovi a Blance Galikové za technickou podporu. I would first like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Pavel Dubec, for valuable advice on the content and form of the thesis. I also want to thank Professor Ernst Jahr, whose expertise was invaluable in formulating the research questions and methodology. In addition, I would like to thank Marián Sidlár and Blanka Galiková for their technical support. Prohlašuji, že jsem bakalářskou práci vypracovala samostatně, že jsem řádně citovala všechny použité prameny a literaturu a že práce nebyla využita v rámci jiného vysokoškolského studia či k získání jiného nebo stejného titulu. V Praze 20.3.2021 Katarína Boldižarová Abstrakt Práce se zabývá srovnáním pidginu russenorsk se současnou norštinou (konkrétně její dominantní formou zvanou bokmål). Jejím cílem je jednak popsat podobnosti obou jazyků a jednak zjistit, do jaké míry je jazyk russenorsk srozumitelný pro současné Nory. Hlavní část práce porovnává pidžin russenorsk s norským jazykem na morfologické, syntaktické a lexikální rovině. Primárně se věnuje větným členům, slovotvorbě a struktuře vět. Práce se důkladněji věnuje zmíněnému pidžinu, z norské gramatiky jsou zmíněny pouze relevantní aspekty. Russenorsk má mnoho společných rysů s norštinou, avšak je to pidžin složený ze dvou jazyků a ruština v něm také hraje určitou roli.
    [Show full text]
  • AN OUTLINE of ROMANIAN PIDGIN ARABIC Andrei A. Avram University
    AN OUTLINE OF ROMANIAN PIDGIN ARABIC Andrei A. Avram University of Bucharest Abstract This paper looks at Romanian Pidgin Arabic, a contact language formerly in use on Romanian well sites in various locations in Iraq. The phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon of the language are described on the basis of a corpus of data collected during fieldwork. The data are discussed in comparison to those from other pidgins, with various lexifier languages. Romanian Pidgin Arabic is shown to exhibit features typical of the so-called pre-pidgins. Also discussed are the implications of the findings for the study of pidgin and creole languages, in general, and of Arabic-based contact languages in particular. 1. Introduction The present paper* describes a short-lived pidginized variety of Arabic used by Romanian and Arab oil workers in Iraq. The description is based on fieldwork conducted by the author in two locations, Kut (Eastern Iraq) and Rashdiya (north of Baghdad), over a period of five months (May- September 1984) and respectively six months (January-June 1985). The method used for collecting most of the data was participant observation (field notes). Supplementary data, in particular lists of lexical items, were elicited through interviews on location with four informants, who had been working on Romanian well sites in Iraq for periods ranging from two to five years. The sociolinguistic situation under which this Romanian Arabic Pidgin (henceforth RPA) emerged can be outlined as follows. The participants in the language-contact situation consisted of speakers of Romanian, Egyptian Arabic and Iraqi Arabic respectively. Only a very small minority spoke (some) English.
    [Show full text]
  • Assonance-No.20.Pdf
    ISSN 2394-7853 Assonance A Journal of Russian & Comparative Literary Studies No.20 January 2020 DEPARTMENT OF RUSSIAN & COMPARATIVE LITERATURE UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT KERALA, INDIA – 673635 Assonance: A Journal of Russian & Comparative Literary Studies No.20, January 2020 © 2020 Department of Russian & Comparative Literature, University of Calicut ISSN 2394-7853 Editors: Dr. K.K. Abdul Majeed Dr. Nagendra Shreeniwas Sub Editor: Sameer Babu Kavad Board of Referees: 1. Prof. Amar Basu (Retd.), JNU, New Delhi 2. Prof. Ranjana Banerjee, JNU, New Delhi 3. Prof. Kandrapa Das, Guahati University, Assam 4. Prof. Sushant Kumar Mishra, JNU, New Delhi 5. Prof. T.K. Gajanan, University of Mysore 6. Dr. V.K. Subramanian, Associate Professor, University of Calicut. 7. Smt. Sreekumari S., (Retd.) Associate Professor, University of Calicut 8. Dr. Balakrishnan K., NSS College, Manjeri, Kerala 9. Dr. Arunim Bandyopadhyay, Associate Professor, JNU, New Delhi 10. Dr. K.M. Sherrif, Associate Professor, University of Calicut 11. Dr. K.M. Anil, Assistant Professor, University of Calicut 12. Dr. Sanjay Kumar, Assistant Professor, EFLU, Hyderabad 13. Dr. Krishnakumar RS, University of Kerala, Kerala Published by: Department of Russian & Comparative Literature, University of Calicut, Thenhipalam, Malappuram, Kerala – 673635 Assonance is a multilingual blind peer reviewed annual publication of the Department of Russian & Comparative Literature, University of Calicut. It publishes only original and unpublished research articles in English, Russian, Hindi and Malayalam. Its primary focus areas are Russian Language, Russian Literature, Russian Culture, Comparative Literature and Translation Studies. Articles in the journal reflect the views of the respective authors only. 2 Notes for Contributors Assonance is a multilingual blind peer reviewed annual publication of the Department of Russian & Comparative literature, University of Calicut.
    [Show full text]
  • Retained Inflectional Morphology in Pidgins: 1 a Typological Study
    Retained inflectional morphology in pidgins: 1 A typological study Sarah J. Roberts and Joan Bresnan Stanford University 1. Introduction One oft-cited characteristic of pidgins is a lack of inflectional morphology. According to Romaine (1988:24), the process of language reduction which underlies pidginization strips everything from the lexifying language “but the bare essentials necessary for communication,” eliminating redundant and non-essential categories such as grammatical gender and agreement, while employing word order conventions to express syntactic relations. As Holm (2000:127) notes, some have even claimed that pidgins and creoles are “languages without any inflectional morphology whatsoever.” Most specialists rightly reject such a sweeping and inaccurate generalization, but pidgin and creole inflections are still generally treated as isolated exceptions to general patterns of language reduction. Some regard them as the residue that sneaked past the restructuring process of pidginization because of idiosyncratic factors (McWhorter 2005:64), while others view their existence in creoles as evidence against the view that creole genesis involves the kind of “break in transmission” that occurs in pidginization (see DeGraff 2001:232, 2003:399 with respect to Haitian Creole French). As it turns out, inflections are not uncommon at all in pidgins. In an earlier study on pidgin morphology, Bakker (2003) found that pidgins have even richer inflection than creoles though much of this may be due to the fact that most creoles are lexified by European languages. About half the pidgins surveyed in that paper have some form of inflectional morphology. But the following generalization does hold for all pidgins (as well as creoles): No pidgin has more inflectional morphology than its respective lexifier(s), and most (if not all) pidgins have comparatively fewer inflections.
    [Show full text]
  • Sussex, Cubberley 2006. the Slavic Languages.Pdf
    This page intentionally left blank THE SLAVIC LANGUAGES The Slavic group of languages – the fourth largest Indo-European sub- group – is one of the major language families of the modern world. With 297 million speakers, Slavic comprises 13 languages split into three groups: South Slavic, which includes Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian; East Slavic, which includes Russian and Ukrainian; and West Slavic, which includes Polish, Czech and Slovak. This book, written by two leading scholars in Slavic linguistics, presents a survey of all aspects of the linguistic structure of the Slavic languages, considering in particular those languages that enjoy official status. As well as covering the central issues of phonology, morphology, syntax, word-formation, lexicology and typology, the authors discuss Slavic dialects, sociolinguistic issues and the socio-historical evolu- tion of the Slavic languages. Accessibly written and comprehensive in its coverage, this book will be welcomed by scholars and students of Slavic languages, as well as by linguists across the many branches of the discipline. ROLAND SUSSEX is Professor of Applied Language Studies at the University of Queensland, and formerly Professor of Russian at the University of Melbourne. He has taught a wide variety of courses in linguistics and applied language studies, including the linguistic descrip- tion of the Slavic languages. He has previously published A Bibliography of Computer-Aided Language Learning (with David Bradley and Graham Scott, 1986), and Computers, Language Learning and Language Teaching (with Khurshid Ahmad, Margaret Rogers and Greville Corbett, Cambridge University Press, 1985). PAUL CUBBERLEY was Senior Research Fellow in Linguistics at the University of Melbourne until 2001, and was previously Head of Russian there.
    [Show full text]
  • Basic Argument Structure in Russian Sign Language
    UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Basic argument structure in Russian Sign Language Kimmelman, V. DOI 10.5334/gjgl.494 Publication date 2018 Document Version Final published version Published in Glossa License CC BY Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Kimmelman, V. (2018). Basic argument structure in Russian Sign Language. Glossa, 3(1), [116]. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.494 General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:23 Sep 2021 a journal of Kimmelman, Vadim. 2018. Basic argument structure in Russian general linguistics Glossa Sign Language. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3(1): 116. 1–39, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.494 RESEARCH Basic argument structure in Russian Sign Language Vadim Kimmelman ACLC, University of Amsterdam, Spuistraat 134, 1012VT Amsterdam, NL [email protected] In this paper, basic verb classes and argument structure alternations in Russian Sign Language (RSL) are described, and the implications of these data for the theory of argument structure are discussed.
    [Show full text]
  • 28Mfm Abstracts Booklet
    The Twenty-Eighth Manchester Phonology Meeting 28 f´»nÅl´dZi ABSTRACTS BOOKLET Wednesday 26th - Friday 28th May 2021 Not held in Manchester, but still there in spirit Organised by a collaboration of phonologists at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester, and elsewhere. This booklet contains the abstracts for all the papers presented at the twenty-eighth Manchester Phonology Meeting, held in cyberspace, in May 2021. The abstracts are arranged in alphabetical order by the surname of the (first named) presenter. The abstracts for the talk sessions are presented first, followed by the abstracts for the poster sessions. The final programme, available on the 28mfm website, gives the details of when presentations are scheduled. The 28mfm website is available here: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/mfm/28mfm.html Talks Glottal Stop Variation in Standard Arabic: OT-based Optionality Analysis Mohammed Al-Ariqy ( The University of Utah: [email protected] ) This paper analyzes optional [ʔ] deletion in Standard Arabic. This deletion is typically accompanied by lengthening or gliding of an adjacent vowel, and deletion can be blocked when this lengthening/gliding is not possible, and also when deletion would create homophony. This paper assesses the ability of various OT-based theories of optionality to account for [ʔ] deletion, arguing that the rank-ordered model of EVAL (ROE; Coetzee 2006) provides a better account than alternatives such as partially ordered grammars (PO; Anttila 1997, 2007) and serial variation (SV; Kimper 2011). The constraint HavePlace (HP) triggers deletion because [ʔ] lacks place features. When a coda [ʔ] is deleted, the preceding vowel is lengthened to satisfy Max-µ ([muʔna] ~ [mu:na] ‘subsistence’).
    [Show full text]
  • Xuj-Reduplication in Russian Russian Exhibits a Pattern of Expressive
    xuj-Reduplication in Russian Russian exhibits a pattern of expressive echo reduplication in xu(j)-: sélfi-xuélfi ‘selfie-RED’, startápy-xujápy ‘startups-RED’ with derogative / depreciative meaning. The word xuj ‘penis’ is strongly tabooed in Russian, and, for this reason, the phenomenon is rarely discussed in the Russian-speaking scientific community. It is telling that most papers mentioning this type of reduplication appeared in Russian Linguistics, a journal published outside Russia (Dreizin and Priestly 1982, Plähn 1987, Belikov 1990, Voinov 2012). The most extensive description of the pattern is provided by Belikov (1990): 1) if the base does not end in an open stressed syllable, its pretonic part is replaced with xuj- in the reduplicant (úlica-xujúlica ‘street-RED’, avtóbus-xujóbus ‘bus-RED’, tumán-xuján ‘fog-RED’); 2) if the base ends in an open stressed syllable, xue- is added to the last syllable of the base (oslý-xueslý ‘donkeys-RED’). These rules were inferred from introspection and disparate anecdotal examples. In order to test their validity on a large sample, we used the Araneum Russicum Maximum corpus of 13.7 billion tokens (Benko 2014). We ran a CQL query [lc=".*(.{1,})-xu.?\1"], looking for hyphenated words whose first component contains (i) any substring of 0 or more characters and (ii) a substring of 1 or more characters repeated in the reduplicant after xu and possibly one more character. The query yielded 3,801 hits. After manually filtering out words like čixua-xua ‘chihuahua’ or San-Xuan ‘San Juan’, which amount to more than 40% of results, we were left with 397 types and 439 tokens of xuj-reduplication.
    [Show full text]
  • Reduplication in Language
    Reduplication reflects uniqueness and innovation in language, thought and culture by Charles A. Kauffman York College of Pennsylvania In Hawaii, the state fish is called Humuhumunukunuku‘apua‘a, a word that employs reduplication which involves duplicating sounds to emphasize key aspects of the word and its meaning (“pig-like, short-snouted fish” – a triggerfish). In the world of linguistics, the term reduplication seems in itself to be ‘redundantly reiterative,’ for, after all, isn’t duplication the act of doubling something? Why the prefix re- (to do again)? Why not use the term doubling or, simply, duplication? From the Latin re- ‘again’ + duplicare ‘fold’ or ‘double,’ what is implied is the act of doubling sounds or entire words. Despite the arguments against redundantly coupling the meaning of the prefix re- to the word duplication, in linguistics the term reduplication has been widely accepted as the norm for well over a century or more. This superfluous debate over re-/duplication notwithstanding, the practice of (re-)duplicating words, roots, stems and contrived forms is found in most languages throughout the world – more in some and less in others. Many colorful examples of reduplication reflect upon the richness and uniqueness of language, thought and culture as expressed by those who use this form to create plurals, amplify meaning, change verb tenses or invent words to describe tangible or intangible parts of the world around us. Whether for practicality, necessity, amplification or animation, reduplicated words are a fascinating, and fun, aspect of language. There are buses in Hawaii called Wiki-Wiki, duplicating the word wiki ‘fast,’ emphasizing that the bus service is VERY FAST.
    [Show full text]
  • Expressive Ggemination in the Russian Language
    EXPRESSIVE GGEMINATION IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE Nadežda Christopher SOAS [email protected] Keywords: geminate, gemination, reduplication, double consonants, sound symbolism The matter of geminates in the Russian language is a fairly straightforward one as far as Russian grammar books are concerned (Lopatin, 2009). Dvoinie soglasnie (double consonants) mainly occur due to affixation or word compounding. However, a lot of these double consonants [CC] do not have the phonological extra length quality of a true geminate [C:]. In this paper I examine the previously undescribed Russian expressive geminates, and juxtapose them with the double consonants. I propose that the expressive geminates are the true geminates in Russian, arising from reduplication of phonological material. I also propose that further research can lead to the discovery of new linguistic universals, which expose the complex cognitive nature of many phonological phenomena cross- linguistically. Russian double (long) consonants are usually correspondent to two letters in orthography, however, two consonants in writing do not always indicate a phonological double consonant, as the examples in (1) show. The Russian words are followed by their transcription and meaning; stress is marked by the accent mark. (1) Россия – [rasíja] – ‘Russia’; кристалл – [kristál] – crystal; коррозия – [karózija] – ‘corrosion’). The examples in (2) contain words with double consonants that arose due to the morphological processes of affixation or compounding (the morpheme boundaries are indicated
    [Show full text]