Features of some counting nouns in modern Russian and their national and cultural specificity

Basalaeva Elena Gennad'evna ORCID: 0000-0003-2830-0294 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Department of Language Theory and Intercultural Communication; Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University Office 206, Vilyuyskaya str., 28, Novosibirsk, 630126, Russia lena.bas@mail.ru

Spilman Marina Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0003-3931-6515 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Department of Modern Russian Language and Teaching Methods; Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University 630126, Russia, Novosibirsk, Vilyuyskaya str., 28, office 306 s.m.v@mail.ru

Introduction

According to V. N. Telia, the connection between language and culture is realized through cultural connotation, which arises as a result of interpreting the associative-figurative basis of a lexical unit by correlating it with cultural and national standards and stereotypes reflecting the national mentality ^[15].

Various types of culturally marked units are distinguished in the linguistic literature (see the works of A. Vezhbitskaya ^[2], E.M. Vereshchagin, V.G. Kostomarov ^[3], I.V. Rets ^[8], T.V. Slastnikova, A.N. Stinchkum ^[9], etc.), as well as various ways of their lexicographic interpretation (see, for example, the works of M.S. Ssorina ^[11] and E.B. Yakovleva ^[18]). On the one hand, we are talking about those cases when culturally significant information is embodied in the denotative aspect of meaning (words denoting the realities of material culture or concepts of spiritual and social culture), on the other hand, there are units in which culturally significant information is expressed in the connotative aspect of meaning and reflects cultural attitudes known to the speaker, which are often national-specific character. In other words, linguistic units often reflect not the objects of reality themselves, but their vision, which is formed in the mind of a native speaker on the basis of a representation, a concept about these objects. In this regard, as noted in the works of E.Y. Bulygina, T.A. Tripolskaya ^[1], Y.S. Stepanov ^[12], I.A. Sternin ^[13], the study of the national cultural space of the language makes it possible to identify the experience of mastering and comprehending reality, rules, norms and stereotypes of thinking recorded in it ^[17].

The so-called countable nouns (for example, a dozen, a dozen, a couple, etc.), which are often completely or partially equivalent in different languages, can be attributed to the group of lexemes showing national specificity.

It can be argued that deductive derivatives are reflected in all spheres of human life, therefore some of them may have several different values (quarter, three, two, etc.). In most cases, the root part of deductive derivatives reflects the corresponding numerical feature ^{[7, p. 184]}.

The purpose of the article is to systematize ideas about countable nouns, organize them into a lexical and semantic field, as well as identify the national and cultural specifics of countable nouns.

The work uses traditional methods of semasiological word research: component, definitional, distributive, contextual, discourse analysis, as well as the modeling method. Examples extracted mainly from the National Corpus of the Russian language serve as illustrative material (https://ruscorpora.ru /), as well as from Internet communication.

Problem statement

The category of quantification, according to O.V. Zabegalina, is systemically important for Russian grammar ^[4], while quantification in different languages is expressed by different lexical and grammatical means (see more about this in the issue of the Theory of Functional Grammar devoted to the categories of quality and quantification ^[16], as well as the work ^[19]).

The main morphological means of expressing quantification are numerals, which are associated with the representation of a mathematical number, and the grammatical category of the number of nouns.

However, in addition to these, different language tools are used to express this idea, which can be combined into a functional and semantic field of quantification. A.V. Bondarko, as noted by A.E. Suprun, refers the field of quantification to a functional and semantic field of a polycentric type with morphological and grammatical centers ^[14].

The morphological center consists of numerals as a specialized part of speech. Since they express the idea of number and quantity by the word itself, by its lexical meaning. This can be a specific number (one, one hundred, two), quantitative numerals can be called an integer (five, one thousand) or fractional (five and one thousandth); collective numerals express a quantitative aggregate (three, five). T.V. Parmenova refers to the core and ordinal numerals (third, fifth), which simultaneously enter the fields of quantification and attribution, since they denote the attribute of an object by quantity ^[6].

The grammatical center is represented by the grammatical category of the number of mutable words of all parts of speech: nouns (house – houses), adjectives (new – new), participles (knowing – knowing), pronouns (he – they), verbs (builds – builds).

The remaining lexical and grammatical ways of expressing quantification are located on the periphery of the specified functional and semantic field, they include word-formation means: suffixes (-ink - snowflake; -in – pea; -stvo - studentship, –ar - midges, -y – mosquitoes); morphological: pronouns-numerals and derivatives from them (how many, so many and several, so many), pronominal words and their derivatives (many, few and more, less); lexical: compound words with the first part of half/half (half a day, semicircle), words of different parts of speech formed from numerals (two, double, double, etc.), units of measurement (liter, meter, etc.), words that name an indeterminately large or small amount (darkness, a lot, a drop, a sea, etc.), as well as phraseological means: stable combinations with quantitative semantics (in full, with Gulkin's nose, the cat cried, though a dime a dozen, etc.). The researcher notes that "words with quantitative semantics are found among all significant parts of speech" ^[6].

The content plan of the functional-semantic field of quantification is represented by the following semantic types: single / multiple, definite / indefinite quantification. Regarding other semantic types of quantification, there are different points of view, for example, T. V. Parmenova identifies such microfields as accuracy / approximation, separateness / collectivity, integrity / fragmentation ^[6].

The countable nouns of interest to us, or, in other terminology, countable words, quantitative-subject words, countable names, definitively quantitative nouns, copulative nouns, etc.) belong to peripheral means of expressing quantification, and there is no single point of view regarding their partial affiliation, since in semantics their meaning of plurality (plurality) appears along with with a specific subject value ^{[5, p. 61]}. The problem of countable nouns is multifaceted, and the history of their study is interesting because it is associated with a whole range of issues that were solved in different ways at different times. In particular, the very concept of countable nouns does not have an unambiguous interpretation.

Despite the fact that in the educational literature there is such an understanding of countable nouns, in which the words table, sleigh, army belong to them, and courage, milk, youth belong to uncountable ones (see, for example, the manual: Litnevskaya E.I. Russian: a short theoretical course for schoolchildren. Moscow: Publishing House of Moscow State University, 2006 240 p.), i.e. the counted nouns are called countable, most scientists consider countable nouns as a sub-category of nouns denoting certain aggregates, objects, phenomena that are directly related to the set (quantity, number) and formed for the most part from the corresponding names of numerals ^{[5, p. 59]}. And even in this case, countable nouns are interpreted broadly and narrowly.

With a narrow approach (the point of view of G.I. Soina ^[10]), countable nouns are words in which the meaning of quantity is combined with the meaning of objectivity, and they are used as counting units. This group is small and closed, it includes words such as a pair, five, five, six, eight, ten, ten, dozen, third, quarter, quarter, quarter, thousand, hundred, hundred, forty, million, and they are necessarily combined with nouns in the genitive case – considered objects: a pair of shoes, a dozen eggs, a dozen spoons and a tray.

With a broad approach (for example, in the concept of S. G. Nikolaev ^[5]), countable nouns include all nouns that convey the idea of quantity: in addition to the above-mentioned words, these include nouns such as one, two, three, thirty, three, fifty, fifty, etc. In other words, in such nouns, the meaning of objectivity prevails over the meaning of quantity.

The results of the study

So, by countable nouns we mean such nouns that in their meaning contain the idea of objectivity, either combining it with the idea of quantification, or indirectly indicating quantity, while the meaning of objectivity prevails in them. Depending on whether the connection with the idea of number is expressed directly or indirectly in the noun, the meaning of objectivity is expressed in them differently. At the same time, the core of countable nouns are the words highlighted by G.I. Soina ^[10], since they name the exact number of objects to be counted and can easily be replaced by a combination of a numeral with a noun (cf.: a dozen eggs – ten eggs, a dozen books – twelve books, a pair of boots – two boots). At the same time, when changing the singular form to the plural form, such combinations lose the value of a certain number, compare: a dozen books – dozens of books. Such words are semantically close to numerals, but they have a meaning of objectivity.

In the nuclear zone there are nouns naming numbers: two, three, ten, etc. The meaning of these words contains the idea of an abstract definite number, but the subject meaning still prevails, so they do not require a dependent word. The peculiarity of this group of words is their scope of application: words from one to five are actively used as designations of school marks, cf.: "I don't want to go to school, they will put a two there, and my mother will swear" (A. Lugovskaya. If a child is afraid to go to school (2002)). At the same time, the word unit has a wider range of uses, because at school it is practically not used as an assessment, cf.: Young people instinctively avoid politics, and those units who want to go there hit their foreheads against a thick, impenetrable wall of officials (O. Golovin. Collective Mowgli, 2003) // "Tomorrow", 2003.08.13), here a unit is understood as an individual, a separate member of society.

On the periphery of countable nouns there are words in which the value of quantity is more likely to be guessed, since it is almost completely absorbed by the meaning of objectivity: nouns such as two, three, fifty, etc. In this case, words like troechnik, millionaire turn out to be in the zone of deep periphery.

Let's consider the peculiarities of the functioning of countable nouns in the modern language and note the national and cultural specifics of their meaning.

Some of the countable nouns of the nuclear group are gradually becoming obsolete and are used less frequently, others are not found in modern texts. So, the words dozen, five, eight have almost completely fallen out of use, they are still found in literary and journalistic texts, but they have almost completely disappeared from oral speech. For example, the word pyatok has been found only once in the oral subcorpus of the National Corpus of the Russian Language since the 2000s.: Here we would like to introduce it for five years... (Conversation with a sociologist on socio-political topics (St. Petersburg), 2003), the rest of the examples are also few, all earlier than 1988. The eighth occurs in oral speech, but it is already used without a dependent noun in the genitive case, which illustrates the process of transition from nuclear groups in the peripheral, i.e., where objectivity prevails over quantity, cf.: My favorite entertainment was to make an imprint by touch, closing my eyes, then tear it into eights, put it into a developer, and then slowly assemble it in parts, rethinking what I saw (A. Ilichevsky. Persian (2009)); Wincing, Vera cut them with eights, cutting out black spots where she came across (A. Hair. A trip to the virgin lands, 1954 // "New World", 2003). The word dozen is also very rare in oral speech, especially in the speech of young people, cf.: [Natasha, wives, 21, 1985, student] I'm not asking for three dozen orchids or a million scarlet roses! (Idle conversations, 2006); [Andrey Zaliznyak, husband, 77, 1935, scientist] There is no other Russian work in Old Russian / about a dozen such words are in the "Word about Igor's Regiment" (A. Zaliznyak. We are reading "The Word about Igor's regiment". The Academia Project (GTRK Kultura), 2012).

Other words of this group, for example, a pair are actively used in modern speech, and on a par with the usual use of objects and persons as a unit of account (The next day, Cookie, settling in her ear, demolished a pair of testicles (A. Dorofeev. Ele-Wrapper // "Murzilka", 2003)), units of time, distance, etc. (I can fly to the city and in a couple of hours already stand on stage (p. Tkachev. Tamara Gverdtsiteli: "I don't know how to learn from other people's mistakes", 2003)) are used in other meanings, for example: 'double lesson' (To go in pairs, reread lectures, prepare for each seminar ... (Forum: Univer (Institute) VS school. Advantages and disadvantages. Where is better in the end and why?, 2011)) or ‘people in romantic relationships' (Do you think that Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey are a strange couple? (Kate Winslet: "Our past should be with us" // "Screen and Stage", 2004.05.06)), in this case, we can also talk about the process of moving from the nuclear to the peripheral group of countable nouns.

The word ten in oral and written speech has a relatively new use with the meaning of age, cf.: Defense by the eighteenth year ... almost changes the fifth decade in age / and ... I do not even know / around whom to build a team (Monologue about the game of the Russian national team at the 2014 World Cup).

Thus, the countable nouns of this group are implemented differently in texts mainly to express the following meanings:

1) the unit of account of specific items (goods, people, etc.): They needed it: you give them five more bottles – and that's it! (A. Volos. Real Estate, 2000 // "New World", 2001);

2) the unit of measurement of something: In St. Petersburg, for example, the weaving of land costs more than 6 thousand dollars (Oksana Karpova. The truth is in the earth // Vremya MN, 2003); Throw up eight little thoughts about sign systems so that I can get this damn encyclopedist (Igor Adamatsky. The Comforter // "Zvezda", 2001);

3) the counting unit of time: I can fly to the city and in a couple of hours already stand on the stage (Svetlana Tkacheva. Tamara Gverdtsiteli: "I don't know how to learn from other people's mistakes" (2003) // "100% health", 2003.01.15); Thirdly, there is a lot of pink color again, but a dozen years ago it seemed that this extremely ambiguous and frivolous color is incompatible with such a serious subject as expensive watches (Ekaterina Blinova. Time does not matter // "Brownie", 2002.08.04);

4) the unit of distance: Or there are regions where there is only one dialysis unit and it is a thousand kilometers away (Valery Shilo, Vladimir Zhukov. Save the kidney // "Science and Life", 2009).

The same process goes on in the group of peripheral countable nouns. By developing new meanings, a countable noun increasingly loses the signs of a numeral, i.e. the idea of an abstract number. We will note only individual cases.

The word dvushka, for example, formed from the numeral two and originally had the meaning of a 2-kopeck coin, is now increasingly used in the meaning of a two-room apartment. At the same time, the word two–piece in both cases is used primarily to nominate an object - a coin or an apartment, and the idea of quantity goes to the deep periphery. In addition, the word two-piece (and less often three-piece) began to be used orally in the meaning of 'a plastic bottle with a volume of 2 liters.': A plastic bottle of 2 liters (two-piece) (position in the catalog); Why from July 1, bottling of beer in "two-pieces" and "three-pieces" will be banned (article title).

By analogy with this token, the word poltorashka appeared: A woman in Voronezh armed herself with a bottle and a half of beer and conducted an investigation (Typical Voronezh. Life in Voronezh, 2021); Drank a cup and a half in two minutes (Chat for artists. telegram Chat for artists (07/28/2021)). Less often this word occurs in the meaning of 1.5 million or 1.5 meters, cf.: I bought my baby for a penny and a half (Chat for artists. telegram Chat for artists (05/20/2022)); Maybe because I like to move comfortably, or maybe because I'm a "half-ass" tall glebovakat. Byutiblog, lifestyle (12/24/2020)); A friend promised me for a long time to show his poltorashka, he kept saying that it was cool, that I would like it. I thought he'd been given a one-and-a-half-liter bottle of some expensive alcohol. He came to visit, I opened the door, and he was there with a short, pretty girl. I couldn't think of anything better than to ask: "Why is poltorashka?" – "And she is 1.50 tall" (vk (03/24/2016)).

The history of the word half-truck is interesting, which in the texts recorded in the National Corpus of the Russian language is only in the outdated meaning of ‘with a load capacity of 1.5 tons’: And in those days / uh means/ there were semi-trucks / so-called/ with a load capacity of one and a half tons (A story about the history of the family (2014)]). In modern speech, this word can be found only in the context of mentioning such cars and the time when they were widespread. Now this word is used in the meaning of ‘double bed’ or ‘boat’, cf.: We have a common room – family room deluxe – with one large bed and two half-beds (Ekaterina Pokusaeva. Katya Pokusaeva Stylist (11/19/2019)); The boat is positioned as a two-seater, in fact a one-and-a-half (Help is needed! (2022)]).

The word fifty kopecks has also changed its meaning in modern language: first it meant a coin, then a 50–ruble bill, later – age, distance, for example: Here you bought such coins for school business for twenty kopecks or there for fifty kopecks, filled the boxes with them (Yu. O. Dombrovsky. The Curator of Antiquities, part 1, 1964); Coca-Cola is available, but we do not have Moldovan lei, and in rubles they want fifty kopecks per liter bottle. (Report on a cycling trip (2001)); But I swam the first "fifty kopecks" very well, I specifically chose this tactic – to start quickly (Andrey Mitkov. The turn of the century. Hugenband is a European champion, Popov is a silver medalist // Izvestia, 2002.08.01); It is believed that in the coming years, a simple blood test of a thirty–forty–year–old person can determine whether he is in danger of having a heart attack in the "fifty kopecks". (Dorian Gray's heart is light // "Knowledge is power", 2003). Russian Russian Argot Dictionary (Elistratov V. S. Dictionary of Russian Argot: Materials of 1980-1990: About 9,000 words, 3,000 idiomatic expressions. Moscow: Russian Dictionaries, 2000) notes this meaning of the word: Russian Russian jargon dictionary (Large dictionary of Russian jargon: 25,000 words, 7000 stable combinations / V. M. Mokienko, T. G. Nikitina; Ed. S. M. Snarskaya. St. Petersburg: Norint, 2001) fifty kopecks has the meaning of ‘eye', MS.: The first meeting with the army discipline is remembered for a lifetime. The duty officer, the senior lieutenant, "stared" at him with his fifty kopecks: – Why not shorn? (E. Tsvetova).

The revealed variety of forms and meanings of countable nouns, their relation to the realities of Russian reality, allows us to speak about their national and cultural specifics, which is particularly difficult when translating nominations that have specific connotations in different languages.

Russian Russian language corpus The results of comparing examples from the parallel corpus of the Russian and English languages of the National Corpus of the Russian language allow us to speak about a high degree of equivalence of Russian countable nouns.

So, in English there are no analogues of the lexemes fives, sixes, eights, quarters, poltorashka / dvushka (in the meaning of ‘a bottle of a certain volume’), quarters, fifty kopecks (in the meaning of ‘human age').

When translating countable nouns, various compensation strategies are implemented, which include the following:

1) introduction of an explanation revealing the semantics of the word: One of the assistants became the senior, the case was quickly completed, and my friend was sent to camp with a quarter //One of the assistants took his place, the case was quickly brought to an end, and my acquisition was dispatched to a camp with a "quarter" (twenty-five years). (Vladimir Bukovsky. "And the wind returns..." (1978) | Vladimir Bukovsky. To build the castle. My life as a dissenter (Michael Scammell, 1979));

2) omission of the counting word in the translated text, replacement with an analog that is appropriate in meaning, unrelated to quantity: I'm not asking you for three rubles for vodka, I want ... // It's not vodka money I'm after, what I want is ... (Vasily Shukshin. I believe! (1971) | Vasili Shukshin. I Believe! (Andrew Bromfield, 1980)); Otherwise they will come, the garden will be cut off. I have over four hundred there. // they'll be chopping a chunk off my allotment. I've got a whole strip more than what I'm entitled to (Vasily Shukshin. Cosmos, the nervous system and the fat lump (1966) | Vasili Shukshin. Outer Space, the Nervous System and a Slab of Fatback (Robert Daglish, 1980));

3) replacing a countable noun with a combination of a numeral and a noun; a complex adjective and a noun: And then I imagined a bad buyer, greedy and cunning, who does not give more than three and tries to cheat // Then I imagined a bad buyer, greedy and cunning, who wouldn't give me more than three thousand and tried to swindle me (Mikhail Elizarov. The Librarian (2007) | Mikhail Elizarov. The Librarian (Andrew Bromfield, 2015)); Turned to the Aragvi – there was a pay phone there. I found a "two–piece", dialed the number: - Kat! Hi! // He turned toward the Aragva restaurant; there was a pay phone there. He deposited a two-kopeck coin, and dialed. “Katya! (Lyudmila Ulitskaya. The Green Tent (2011) | Liudmila Ulitskaia. The Big Green Tent (Bela Shayevich, 2014)).

4) replacing a countable noun with a numeral: He reached into his pocket for his wallet, took out everything that was there – two tens, three and the promised five Perkhusha // He fished in his pocket for his wallet and took out all there was – two tens, a three, and the five promised to Crouper (Vladimir Sorokin. Blizzard (2010) | Vladimir Sorokin. The Blizzard (Jamey Gambrell, 2015)); Count out five mice // You count out five mice (Tatiana Tolstaya. Kys (2000) | Tatiana Tolstaya. The Slynx (Jamey Gambrell, 2007)); I silently took a pack of bucks out of my purse. I separated a fifty kopeck piece from her // I took the wad of money out of my purse, peeled off a fifty (Sergey Lukyanenko. Day Watch (1999) | Sergei Lukyanenko. Day Watch (Andrew Bromfield, 2007));

5) replacing a countable noun with a synonym with a common conceptual component, for example, a nickel is a coin, a fifty is small cash, a fifty is a tip, a two is a bad mark, a three is a hard worker, two are dummies, units are a handful and under.), for example: In a box with threads and buttons, grandma kept old silver fifty kopecks and copper nickels // My grandmother had had a little box of cotton and buttons in which she kept some old silver and copper coins (Anatoly Kuznetsov. Babi Yar (1965-1970) | Anatoly Kuznetsov. Babi Yar (David Floyd, 1970)); He ... strove to do everything "beautifully", spending thousands on the style, and haggling with his secretary for fifty kopecks // He ... strove to do everything in style, spending thousands for show and haggling with his secretary over a nickel (Vladimir Nabokov. The Gift (1935-1937) | Vladimir Nabokov. The Gift (Michael Scammel, Vladimir Nabokov, 1962)); From me, and especially from Lida, he borrowed fifty kopecks // From me, and probably also from Lydia, he used to borrow small cash (Vladimir Nabokov. Despair (1932) | Vladimir Nabokov. Despair (Dmitri Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov, 1965)); He killed his old Georgian teacher, killed him for teaching him the Georgian language at school. He put "deuces" // He killed his old teacher, a Georgian. Killed him for teaching him Georgian in school. He'd given him bad grades. (Svetlana Alexievich. Second-hand time (2013) | Svetlana Alexievich. Secondhand Time (Bela Shayevich, 2016)); a demob badge is a work of art, it is rubbed with a single skin, then a two, then a needle, felt ... // Shining the belt–buckle was a work of art. First you used medium, then fine, wire-wool, then a needle, then felt. (Svetlana Alexievich. Zinc Boys (1991) | Svetlana Alexievich . Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War (Julia Whitby, Robin Whitby, 1992)); They also did terrible things, and only a few went crazy // They also committed atrocities and only handfuls of them lost their minds. (Svetlana Alexievich. Second-hand time (2013) | Svetlana Alexievich. Secondhand Time (Bela Shayevich, 2016));

6) a literal translation in quotation marks, accompanied by a meta comment, which indicates the absence of an analogue: One of the assistants became the senior, the case was quickly completed, and my friend was sent to camp with a quarter // One of the assistants took his place, the case was quickly brought to an end, and my acquisition was dispatched to a camp with a “quarter" (twenty-five years) (Vladimir Bukovsky. "And the wind returns..." (1978) | Vladimir Bukovsky. To build the castle. My life as a dissenter (Michael Scammell, 1979)).

Conclusions

An analysis of scientists' points of view regarding countable nouns has shown that there is a different understanding of countable nouns. Thus, in the educational literature, counted nouns are called countable; in the scientific literature there is a broad and narrow understanding of this phenomenon. With a narrow approach, countable nouns are those that act as countable units: a pair, a dozen, a dozen, five, a hundred, etc. and they are combined with nouns in the genitive case (a dozen spoons, a dozen eggs). With a broad approach to counting, nouns such as two, five, fifty, two, etc. are also included. By countable nouns, we mean nouns that contain the idea of objectivity in their meaning, either combining it with the idea of quantification, or indirectly indicating quantity, while the meaning of objectivity prevails in them. Depending on whether the connection with the idea of number is expressed directly or indirectly in the noun, the meaning of objectivity is expressed in them differently.

Thus, there is not only the problem of distinguishing numerals and nouns that convey the semantics of quantity, but also the problem of the volume and composition of countable nouns. In addition, in modern speech, countable nouns function in different ways: some are outdated and out of use, others are actively used and at the same time develop new meanings. The identified linguistic units can be characterized as nationally specific, often having no analogues in other languages.