Russian Linguistic Bulletin (Apr 2021)

SYNTACTIC SEMANTICS OF RUSSIAN APHORISTICS

  • Korolkova, A.V.,
  • Tishina, A.E.

DOI
https://doi.org/10.18454/RULB.2021.25.1.35
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2021, no. 1 (25)
pp. 71 – 76

Abstract

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The article deals with one of the aspects of the syntactic nature of Russian aphorisms. For a complete analysis of an aphorism as a separate linguistic unit, it is necessary to analyze its syntactic structure related to the semantic content of the utterance. The main aim of the research is to identify the relationship between the syntactic structure of an aphorism and its semantic content. The semantic-syntactic method is used as the main research method. The analysis is based on the corpus of aphorisms recorded in the Dictionary of Aphorisms of Russian Writers. The aphoristics of Russian (Russian-speaking) writers is characterized by the tendency for brevity, however, the utterances syntactically expressed in a simple complicated/uncomplicated sentence are about 11% of the total number of aphoristic units of the dictionary. This fact can be explained by the complexity and ambiguity of the semantic content of aphorisms that require complex syntactic constructions.

Keywords