Perception verbs in Slavic: lexicon and grammar
The project is carried out by Dr. Maria Ovsjannikova. In February 2024 – February 2025, it was funded by the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdocs from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
The project examines Slavic perception verbs, such as Bulgarian vidja ‘see(pf)’, Polish słuchać ‘listen(ipf)’, and Russian pakhnut’ ‘smell(ipf)’. Using the data of parallel corpora, the project addresses the lexical distribution and grammatical behaviour of verbs of perception in Slavic.
The lexical distribution will be explored by way of establishing lexical correspondences between Slavic perception verbs on the basis of parallel texts and investigating the contexts that deviate from these correspondences and thus give rise to variation between languages. The analysis of these contexts will indicate which features contribute to the fuzziness of the pre-established linguistic categories structuring the domain of perception such as agentivity and sensory mode. Another research question will concern the relations between the basic and the more peripheral members of the class; in particular, the question of whether and how verb’s frequency and meaning are associated with the degree of correspondence between the languages and thus with semantic change and lexical renewal.
The facets of grammatical behaviour of perception verbs addressed by the project include (i) aspectuality and Aktionsart, viz. the correspondences between perfective and imperfective verbs and the presence and semantics of the prefix; (ii) argument structure and voice, in particular the choice between experiencer-subject and stimulus-subject verbs as well as the presence and semantics of the reflexive marker; (iii) the distribution of clausal complementation strategies.
The project will contribute to the research on the perception verbs and the interaction between lexicon and grammar in Slavic languages, as well as to the general understanding of the domain of perception cross-linguistically.
Sight verbs across Slavic
In this study, I explore the structure of the domain of sight based on the parallel corpus data from three Slavic languages, Bulgarian (South Slavic), Polish (West Slavic), and Russian (East Slavic). Aiming at a maximally exhaustive coverage of sight verbs in the three languages (113 verbs in total), I analyse the frequencies of their pairwise correspondences in a parallel corpus. I identify the pairs of the best matching verbs in the three language pairs using log-likelihood score and show that more frequent verbs tend to have a higher degree of correspondence than the pairs of verbs with lower frequencies. I also address several aspects of semantic generality in the domain of sight. First, I examine how frequently the verbs of sight of one language correspond to basic verbs of sight of the other two languages under analysis. Second, I measure the degree to which the distribution of the verbs of one language is spread among non-basic verbs of sight in the other two languages. The study testifies to the importance of the traditional distinction between ‘see’-verbs and ‘look’-verbs, which is also relevant for the structuring of non-basic verbs. There are more verbs that are similar to ‘look’-verbs than to ‘see’-verbs. The analysis of semantic generality suggests that lexical renewal is more likely to take place among ‘look’-verbs.
The Structure of the Sight Domain: Slavic Verbs of Visual Perception in a Parallel Corpus. Submitted to Russian Linguistics. Submitted draft.
Agentivity distinction in sight and hearing verbs: Evidence from Slavic
This study addresses one of the major distinctions in the domain of perception verbs, which has been described as an opposition between activity and experience verbs (Viberg 1983, 2001), agentive and experiential verbs (Divjak 2005), explorative and opportunistic verbs (Wälchli 2016). This distinction can be exemplified by the English pairs look and see or listen and hear. My study explores this distinction in Slavic by analysing basic sight and hearing verbs in parallel texts in six Slavic languages. I propose the semantic analysis of these pairs whereby the verbs like ‘look’ and ‘listen’ assert the direction of attention but do not specify whether the fact of perception took place, whereas the verbs like ‘see’ and ‘hear’ assert the fact of perception but do not specify whether there was the direction of attention by the experiencer. I examine the parallel contexts where the languages do not show consistency in the use of the one or the other type of verbs and argue that it mostly arises when the distinction between directing attention and the fact of perception is neutralized. In particular, irreal context types, such as imperatives and modal contexts, as well as first person future contexts, show more variation than other context types. In these contexts, the fact of perception cannot be asserted and the direction of attention is specified by the modality of the clause. A higher frequency of contexts with variation in the type of verb was also found for hearing as compared to sight. This may be due to the fact that for auditory stimuli, the object of directed attention and the object of perception cannot be normally distinguished.
Experience vs. activity distinction in Slavic perception verbs. Talk given at the 19th Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Conference, 13-15 November 2024, Kraków. Slides.
‘Feel’-verbs across Slavic
In study, I address various aspects of the semantics and grammatical behaviour of Slavic verbs with the meaning ‘feel’ using parallel contexts with the major ‘feel’-verbs in seven Slavic languages. I propose a data-driven classification of semantic types covered by ‘feel’-verbs. I found that the most frequent semantic types described by ‘feel’-verbs are emotions, cognitive inference based on the perceived circumstances, and bodily sensations. At the same time, the semantic types more consistently expressed by ‘feel’-verbs across Slavic languages are environment (the sensations related to air temperature and movement), touch, and self-assessment with respect to one’s own status and appearance. The major construction types attested for Slavic ‘feel’-verbs are reflexive, transitive, and constructions with complement clauses of ‘that’- and ‘how’-types. Reflexive constructions are especially frequent in contexts which describe self-assessment and general well-being, transitive clauses are more frequent for contexts featuring external stimuli, such as the feelings of other people, smells, and environment. Constructions with complement clauses are mostly used to describe situations with a cognitive component. Many languages possess more than just two ‘feel’-verbs (imperfective and perfective). There is no systematic association between semantic types and lexical distinctions. However, in the languages with multiple ‘feel’-verbs, self-assessment and well-being tend to be treated separately from external stimuli, i.e., environment, smells, and feelings of another person.
What it means to feel in Slavic: An exploration into the semantics of Slavic ‘feel’-verbs. Submitted to Prace filologiczne. Submitted draft.
Verben des Fühlens im Slawischen: Grammatische und Lexikalische Unterscheidungen in parallelen Texten. Invited talk at the Institute for Slavic und Caucasian studies, University of Jena. Slides.
(Quasi-)synonymity in the perception domain: Russian verbs smotret′ and gljadet′
This study addresses one of the cases of synonymy in the domain of perception, namely the pair of Russian verbs smotret′ and gljadet′ ‘look’. The first verb is considered basic and is much more frequent, but semantically, the two verbs are usually considered fully synonymous. Based on both the synchronic and diachronic corpus data, I investigate the distribution of these verbs with respect to morphological forms, constructions, and registers. I also identify and compare the discourse uses attested for the two verbs. Apart from the transitive use, which is almost impossible for the verb gljadet′, synchronically, the two verbs show nearly identical distribution of morphological forms and constructions. The only striking difference in the distribution of their morphological forms is that the converb smotrja is attested less frequently than converbs of imperfective verbs on average and by far less frequently than the converb gljadja. The two verbs also differ in terms of the distribution across registers: the verb gljadet′ is mostly attested in fiction, whereas for smotret′ the distribution across registers is more even. The verb gljadet′ is also more widely used in idiomatic expressions. Overall, the distribution of these verbs shows a tendency towards gradual loss of gljadet′, with the exception of the converb, where the form gljadja acts almost as a suppletive form of the verb smotret′.
Русские глаголы смотреть и глядеть: взгляд из корпуса [The Russian verbs smotret′ and gljadet′: A view from a corpus]. Lecture given at the Department of Russian language and literature, Masaryk University, Brno. Slides.
