Grammatical Constructions of Time and Date Nominations in the Russian and Chinese Languages

Abstract

The work is the comparative study of lexical and grammatical means of expressing the idea of time in the Russian and Chinese languages. The main research method is the reverse reconstruction method, in which the studied grammatical model of the Russian language is first translated into Chinese, then the Chinese language model is sequentially reconstructed word for word in Russian while preserving the grammatical features of the Chinese language. The result of the work is an opportunity for the researcher (including the teacher of the Russian language who works in the Chinese audience and does not speak the students’ native language) to understand how the Russian lexical and grammatical model is seen by the native speakers of the Chinese language. With the help of this method the prepositionalcase constructions with the meaning of time (89 units) were investigated, the similarities and differences in the grammatical structure of these models were established. The textbooks and the teaching aids on Russian as a foreign language became the source of definition of these models. All studied lexical and grammatical models are combined into a parallel catalog created by reverse reconstruction and showing the zones of grammatical discrepancies when expressing the idea of time in two languages.

Keywords

• expression of time
• russian and chinese
• parallel catalog of constructions