Lexico-Semantic Group of Verbs of Interpersonal Relations in Russian and Chinese: based on the Translation of F.M. Dostoevsky’s Novel “Crime and Punishment”

Abstract

This study is devoted to the analysis of lexico-semantic group of verbs, which express attitude to someone in Russian and the ways of their translation into Chinese. A group of emotional and evaluative verbs included in the lexico-semantic field of interpersonal relations is analyzed. The choice of the study material is determined by the fact that this group of verbs is one of the most frequent in the use and widely represented in the novel “Crime and punishment” by F.M. Dostoyevsky, occurring 561 times. The significance of this research lies in the absence of a special systematic study of this lexico-semantic group on the material of literature in Russian and Chinese languages, as well as in the need to develop a comprehensive research methodology, methods of comparative and contextual analyses. The study reveals the semantic features of verbs in the Russian and Chinese languages. It is established that the lexico-semantic group under study consists of verbs that are perceived as categorical-lexical semes “relation” and can have both positive and negative semantic meaning. The semes ‘positive attitude’, ‘love’, ‘faith’, ‘respect’, ‘compassion’, ‘pity’ and ‘negative attitude’, ‘suffering’, ‘doubt’, ‘fear’ are subjected to study. These features determine the structure of the group in question in the lexical and semantic system of the Russian and Chinese languages, are expanding the understanding of the content and structure of the group of verbs. The result of the study is that the analysis of interlingual gaps reveals the presence of incomplete lexical correspondence to a foreign language word. The analyzed linguistic material made it possible to identify similarities and differences in the semantics of verbs when translating the text of the novel into Chinese.

Keywords

• emotional and evaluative relationships
• equivalents