NEUTRALIZATION OF THE SEMANTICS OF DEFINITENESS AND ITS CONNECTION WITH THE HISTORY OF FORMS OF ADJECTIVE IN THE RUSSIAN AND LITHUANIAN LANGUAGES
Authors: Власова С.В. 
Published: July 2024

В статье речь идет о связи исторического развития прилагательного в русском и литовском языках с нейтрализацией семантики определенности/неопределенности. Исследование категории определен ности/неопределенности проводится с точки зрения функциональной грамматики и теории референции (детерминации). Материалом исследования явились прилагательные, собранные из текстов Успенского сборника XII–XIII вв. Сопоставление с литовским языком позволяет сделать некоторые уточнения, касающиеся развития членных форм прилагательных в славянских и балтийских языках.

The relationship the interplay between the historical development of the adjective in the Russian and Lithuanian languages and the neutralization of the semantics of a definiteness is examined in the article. The paper describes the peculiarities of the use of simple and pronominal forms of adjectives from the functional grammar and the theory of reference (determination) point of view (I.I. Revzin, N.D. Arutunova, A.D. Shmelev, S.A. Krylov, T.M. Nikolaeva). We takes into account the opinion of the linguists V.V. Kolesov, A.M. Kuznetsov, N.S. Trubetskoy. The conclusions of the research are based on the analysis of all contexts with simple and pronominal forms of adjectives contained in word-index to the Uspensky codex of 12th–13th centuries. We are dealing with 1235 adjectives which are used almost 9 thousand times: there are about 4 thousand samples of usage of simple forms and about 5 thousand of pronominal forms. We suppose more than 1500 cases of simple forms of adjectives in the Uspensky codex illustrate their usage for expressing the definiteness in case if it has already been expressed by lexical means (neutralization). Lithuanian material is analyzed according to the grammars of the Lithuanian language and articles on the adjective and the problem of the definiteness/indefiniteness category in the scientific literature in the Lithuanian language (authors Ambrazas V., Valeckienė A., Spraunienė B., Paulauskienė A., Mikulskas R., Holvoet A., Tamulionienė A.). Comparison of Modern Lithuanian and Old Literary Russian language texts allows to make some clarifications regarding the development of member forms of adjectives in the Slavic and Baltic languages. Due to inseparable pronoun-adjective joining, close and complex relations have developed between the meaning of definiteness and the semantics of different groups of adjectives. This is explained by the fact that the lexical meaning of a relative adjective itself, its word-building possibilities single out, identify the object and can present it as well-known. Distinctive semantics of adjectives would often determine sole usage of pronominal or simple forms. 164 Сравнительное языкознание In modern Lithuanian, an interrelation is also noticed between the possibility of making pronominal forms and classes of adjectives. It should be noted that this relationship is opposite in Old Russian and Modern Lithuanian. In the Uspensky codex of the 12–13th centuries, the category of definiteness is constantly expressed using pronominal forms in the cases where it has already been previously expressed by other means, i.e. demonstrative pronouns, proper names or lexical word meanings. It is vice versa in Lithuanian: when definiteness is expresses using lexical devices (e.g. relative and compound adjectives), such forms are not used or used inconsistently (with proper names, demonstrative pronouns and appeals). Comparison with the Lithuanian language suggests that in the Old Russian language such a situation was quite possible in the beginning.