Verbs Bearing Reciprocal Semantics in the Russian and English Languages (Categorization and Translation)

Abstract

There are various verbal means that express reciprocity in the Russian and English languages. Some verbs express reciprocity if they are used within the construction with the special pronominal reciprocal markers, such as each other, drug druga (Rus.), etc., other verbs like razgovarivat` or talk express the idea of reciprocity inherently, there are more subgroups of verbs defined by their contextual and morphological specificity of reciprocity expression. These classes of lexemes are typologically relevant as they represent interlanguage correspondence. Necessary for reciprocal sense actualization in both languages contextual parameters serve as objective criteria of systemic correlations between the languages, which enables us to work out the comparative Russian-English typology of verbal reciprocal means that consists of three main classes of verbal lexemes: inherent, contextualinherent and context-oriented. Such typology is crucial for understanding differences and similarities in Russian and English language categorization of various reciprocal situations.

Keywords

• reciprocity
• unilateral action
• language categorization
• contextual parameters
• typology of means of expression