Structural and semantic features of verbs of interpersonal relations in Russian and Chinese

Li Syuyui Postgraduate student, Department of General and Russian Linguistics, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukh-Maklaya str., 6 lixiuyu0525@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Increased interest in the systematic study of language, especially in the field of lexicology, appeared in the XX century and is characteristic of various areas of linguistics. At the end of the XIX century, the Russian scientist M. M. Pokrovsky for the first time set the task of systematic language learning, identifying systemic relations in vocabulary. According to M. M. Pokrovsky: "Words and their meanings do not live a separate life from each other, but are connected independently of our consciousness, into different groups, and the basis for grouping is similarity or direct opposite in the main meaning" ^{[4, pp. 15-17]}. He believed that the consistency of vocabulary from a semantic point of view is connected with the consistency of human ideas, which in turn reflected the thematic generality of the phenomena of socio-economic life of people.

Lexical classes as sections of a complex multilevel organization, all together form the lexical system of the language ^{[13, p. 409]}. The verb is represented by a class of words naming the process as an active action or activity, an active or inactive procedural state. Within the framework of theories describing the Russian and Chinese languages, the verb, as one of the most complex object topics, is the focus of attention of many linguists. On the one hand, the verb as a part of speech, denoting the action, state and attitude of the subject, has a huge potential for expressing countless actions, and on the other hand, the verb, changing in tenses, persons and numbers, performs an important inflectional and word-formation role in the Russian language. Compared with other parts of speech, the Russian verb is the most constructive and is represented by a complex system of form formation and word formation. According to the research of N. Y. Shvedova, "the most important characteristic of a verb is that it already has, as in a word, grammatically, formally, the ability to refer the named to time; this radically distinguishes the verb from all other classes of naming words" ^{[13, p. 410]}.

In this article, the research material is a thematic group of verbs with the meaning "interpersonal relations".

Interpersonal relationships are understood as a set of interactions between people and are characterized by the word "mutually". M. V. Frolova considers the concept of interpersonal relationships as "subjectively experienced relationships between people, objectively manifested in the nature and methods of mutual influences exerted by people on each other in the process of joint activity and communication" ^{[12, p. 8]}.

Recently, the idea of anthropocentricity of language is generally recognized and is considered the main feature of modern linguistics. Interpersonal relations are one of the basic anthropocentric concepts and an urgent human need. Many scientists consider the verbs of interpersonal relations as anthropocentric units ^{[1, 3, 10]}. The study of this group of verbs is significant not only for linguistics, but also for the development of anthropocentric thinking and intercultural communication ^{[9, p. 38]}.

From the point of view of the structural-semantic approach, the verbal vocabulary of the Russian and Chinese languages, expressing interpersonal relations, still remains insufficiently studied, and therefore research in the field of verbal semantics is relevant.

Structural and semantic features of verbs of interpersonal relations in the Russian languageSpeaking in a language as its main significant unit, the word always appears to us as a certain structural whole, somehow correlating in its structure with other words ^{[11, p. 149]}.

In Russian, the verb is characterized by grammatical categories. According to B. A. Ilyish, the verb as a part of speech denotes a process and is characterized by a developed system of morphological categories ^{[7, p. 31]}. In his classification, verbs are characterized by the categories of tense, type, mood, voice, person and number.

Comparative analysis of verbs of Russian and Chinese languages reveals a big difference in the formation of their inflectional forms. The form change in the Russian language in comparison with the Chinese language is more complex.

In the Russian language, the category of the type occupies an important place in the system of verb categories, since it is inherent in all forms of the verb. The category of the type is binary, it consists of perfect and imperfect verbs. For example: to believe – to believe, to offend – to offend. Most of the verbs in the Russian language form specific pairs that are lexically identical and differ only grammatically.

The person of the verb as a inflectional grammatical category expresses the correlation of the action with the participant of the communicative act and indicates who performs the action. For example, the verb hate – I hate, you hate, he/she hates, we hate, you hate, they hate: We are the kindest and therefore hate everyone, we are the last stronghold of spirituality, we love everyone, and everyone runs away from us, so it's good ^[8].

In modern Russian, most often the verb as a generating basis is the top of the word–formation nest for verbs with the semantics of interpersonal relations ^{[5, p. 7]}: verbs to ridicule – to ridicule – to ridicule; to laugh – to laugh, to laugh, to laugh, to laugh, to mock, etc. For example: But Tolik never laughed at him ^[8]. Meanwhile, one of them mocked the other, attracting attention ^[8].

According to the methods of formation, verbs are divided into prefixes (sing – sing), prefixes-suffixes (pain-to deprive), prefixes-postfixes (shout – to shout), prefixes-suffixes-postfixes (moon – to land), complex (to withdraw, to heat) ^{[14, p. 185]}. Such a variety of ways makes it possible to use prefixes and suffixes to get additional shades of meaning, which creates significant difficulties when translating them into Chinese. For example, when translating the verbs to ridicule – to ridicule, to laugh, to mock into Chinese, they are expressed in Chinese characters as ch?o xi?o or j? xi?o. However, there are differences in the use of these verbs in the Russian language, which create difficulties when translating them into Chinese. To correctly convey the exact meaning, it is necessary to take into account the context.

Structural and semantic features of verbs of interpersonal relations in the Chinese languageChinese belongs to the class of isolating languages.

Unlike the Russian language, in Chinese the meaning of the verb is expressed by a hieroglyph or hieroglyphs. Chinese verbs in a sentence are not connected by any prefixes or endings, and also do not have external form indicators, i.e. they do not change by gender and numbers and are not conjugated by persons. In Chinese, verbs are multifunctional, i.e., depending on the context, they act as other parts of speech, and express different meanings with the help of other auxiliary hieroglyphs.

The type and tense of the verb are expressed by special suffixes.

In Chinese, there is no category of type as a grammatical category, since there are no forms of inflection. In Chinese, there is formally no verbal category of the species, but the semantic expression of the perfect and imperfect species is expressed using additional hieroglyphs. For example, the specific pairs of the Russian verb to love /to fall in love are represented in Chinese by one hieroglyph i: ? ? (To love all people and get closer to the best, the most worthy); (Pelagius is finally ready to love himself) ^[2].

Verbs in Chinese differ in the grammatical expression of the verb tense category. Speaking about the temporal properties of the verb, S. E. Yakhontov writes that "the tenses of the Chinese verb are mixed species-temporal categories" ^{[15, p. 121]}. Verb forms expressing temporal meanings in Chinese are formed using the suffixes -le- (? le), -go- (? guo), -zhe- (? zhe). For example, the verb to love – ? ?ilovel/loveLa/loveLee – ??gu? ?i; the verb to condemn qi?n z?, 've been convictedof l/'ve been convictedof La/'ve been convictedLee – ?gu? qi?n z?. This is expressed in the sentence as follows: ??? (you I love);?? (I liked); ? (don't worry. If you buy something, I will not condemn you) ^[2]; , (And immediately remembered that his late grandfather condemned him for Levka).

In this study, the verbs of interpersonal relations in Chinese are structurally divided into four subtypes ^[6]:

1) Verbs are expressed in Chinese with one hieroglyph: verb i – to love; verb ? h?n – to hate, etc.

For example: ?, ( (A friend should be loved, but an enemy should be hated) ^[2].

2) The second basis of the hieroglyph is always verbal. There is no gap between the components. The following verbs belong to this type:

Chinese verbs:? sh?ng q? – to get angry (lit. meaning. ?: life, ?: to be angry); k? n?o – to be upset (lit. meaning. ?: bitterness, ?: to be upset); hu?i y? – to doubt (lit. meaning. ?: sinus, ?: to doubt); b? sh? - to despise (lit. meaning. ?: sneaky, ?: watch) and others.

For example: ? ( (Her father was very angry with her because of this); (No need to despise poor people) ^[2].

3) Verbs structurally consist of verbal and nominal bases that are in verb-object relations:

The verb gu?n x?n – to take care (letters. meaning. ?: to close, ?: heart); t?ng k? - to suffer (lit. meaning. ?: to be sick, ?: bitterness), etc.

For example: ( (I need someone who will take care of me more than himself) ^[2].4) Verbs always consist of two verb bases with a paired ratio, i.e. both components are equivalent:

The verb ?i f? - to caress (lit. meaning. ?: to love, ?: to stroke); y?n wu - to disdain (letters. meaning. ?: to get bored, ?: to hate); f?ng c? - to ironize (lit. meaning. ?: ridicule, ?: stab).

For example: (fondling children); ( (A friend made fun of his hypocrisy) ^[2].

The analysis of the structural, semantic and functional features of the verbs of the studied group allowed us to identify both their common and different characteristics. Compared to Russian verbs, which are formed with the help of affixes, Chinese verbs do not have external formal grammatical indicators for expressing different grammatical meanings. For example, the meaning of the Russian verb to believe/believe and its various forms (believe, believe, believed, believed and all others) is expressed in Chinese characters as xi?ng x?n. Using the example of interpersonal relations verbs, the peculiarity of Russian verbal inflection is presented, which has a whole system of forms in contrast to the Chinese language, in which there are no forms of inflection and, consequently, also semantic diversity.

In the Russian language, the word-forming types of verbs can lead to an expansion of their semantic scope, while the semantic possibilities of Chinese verbs are significantly narrowed due to the peculiarities of the word-forming types of this language.

Thus, a comparative study of the verbs of interpersonal relations in the Russian and Chinese languages revealed common and different in terms of their structure and semantics.