Harmonization of linguistic terminology: prepositional equivalents of the word

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Harmonization of linguistic terminology: prepositional equivalents of the word

О. Posobchuk

This paper deals with the problem of harmonization of linguistic terminology, in particular of that related to prepositional equivalents of the word. It is assumed on the basis of a number of linguistic facts that different languages undergo similar development processes, which results in arising of transitional language units in such languages. The analysis of linguistic terminology used to designate such phenomena has revealed a correlation between the terms in many languages used by various scholars. The author suggests unifying and harmonizing such terminology by referring to the respective items as “prepositional equivalents of the word”.

Keywords: equivalent of the word, prepositional equivalent of the word, grammaticalization, harmonization of terminology.

Статтю присвячено проблемі гармонізації лінгвістичної термінології, зокрема тієї, що стосується прийменникових еквівалентів слова. На основі певної кількості лінгвістичних фактів зроблено припущення, що різні мови проходять схожі процеси розвитку, які спричиняються до утворення перехідних одиниць у таких мовах. Аналіз лінгвістичної термінології на позначення таких явищ виявляє певні подібності між термінами, що вживаються різними вченими. Автор пропонує уніфікацію та гармонізацію такої термінології, використовуючи на позначення відповідних одиниць термін «прийменникові еквіваленти слова».

Ключові слова: еквівалент слова, прийменниковий еквівалент слова, граматикалізація, гармонізація термінології.

The modern linguistic studies more and more focus on the elements of transitional levels of the language system. Such an interest of the scientists can be explained by the fact that studying the language dynamics in synchrony gives an opportunity to predict the ways of development of particular parts as well as of the whole language system.

The language as a special sign system is not something frozen or forever given. According to D. Shmeliov, “there is `an open boundary' between the morpheme (word part) and the word, between the word and word phrase. The existence of units that are on the border of the word and the morpheme, the word and the word phrase is an obvious fact of the language itself” [8, p. 55].

Equivalents of the word that raise more and more interest of the linguists with each year are a telling illustration of such dynamics in synchrony. Such units do not belong to any structural language categories and are considered in linguistics to be the elements of transitional levels of the language system [2, p. 95].

In each period of language existence there are elements that are being born and elements that are dying. The parallelism of such elements often results in variability of grammatical and lexical phenomena leading to continuity in the system development [9, p. 17].

The illustration of the dynamics of lexical- semantic system is the fact that according to some criteria the equivalents of the word are classified as words, and according to others as word phrases or idioms.

In Russian linguistics transitional language structures were picked out and sorted in the “Dictionary of Equivalents of the Word” by R. Rogozh- nikova (Moscow, 1991). Later, the author compiled “Explanatory Dictionary of Structures Equivalent to the Word” (Moscow, 2003). In the theoretic grounding of the classified units, the equivalents of the word or phrases that are equivalent to the word are referred to as “set phrases that are characterized by stability, unity of meaning and mainly constant invariable form. In the speech they have one syllabic accent.” [7, p. 4] Significant achievement of Ukrainian linguistics is development of the methodology of description of equivalents of the word by A. Luchyk [1] and compilation of “Russian-Ukrainian and Ukrainian- Russian Dictionary of Equivalents of the Word” [3], “Dictionary of Equivalents of the Word of Ukrainian” [4], “Ukrainian-Polish Dictionary of Equivalents of the Word” [5].

While studying these units in Polish Cz. Lachur refers to them as secondary prepositions. The linguist notes that “rapid development of secondary prepositions is undoubtedly related to significant processes taking place in Polish syntactic system during the last several decades” [6, p. 79]. He also assumes that similar processes occur in other Slavic languages as well. The study of prepositional equivalents of the word in many Indo-European languages is evidence of the fact that these phenomena are present not only in Polish and Slavic languages. There are many examples of prepositional equivalents of the word with different level of lexicalization in French, Spanish, Italian, Irish, English, Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Danish, and Swedish:

French: en face de, en depit de, au milieu de, a cote de;

Spanish: al lado de, en casa de;

Italian: accanto a;

Irish: in ait, de bharr, ar nos;

English: in place of, on account of, instead of, in view of;

Icelandic: a/i methal, i kringum (i kring um);

Faroese: [i]millum, [i]moti;

Norwegian (Bokmal): pa vegne av, for ... skyld;

Norwegian (Nynorsk): ved sida av, Istaden for;

Danish: pa grund af, Istedet for, ved siden af;

Swedish: I borjan av, med hj&lp av, i stallet for [15, p. 15].

Absence of unified terminology used to describe these units in linguistic traditions of different countries is also the evidence of ambiguity and controversy of such phenomena as prepositional equivalents of the word. In this article, the term “prepositional equivalent of the word” is used to mean lexical-grammatical unit consisting of two or more components and is correlate to lexical preposition in terms of their semantic and grammatical properties. But this is not a sole term for such language units. The prepositions are not easy to demark from prepositional equivalents of the word. This is also manifested in the fact that there are a significant number of terms for describing language signs close to traditional prepositions, but in the opinion of different authors they cannot be acknowledged `full-fledged' prepositions. Here are examples of terms used by Ukrainian and foreign scholars for designating these units where the scholars still refer to them as to prepositions: “repositions with phraseological meaning” («прийменники з фразеологічним значенням») by О. Galchenko, “complex prepositions” (German “komplexe Prapositionen”) by J. Meibauer and by Quirk/Mulholland, “polyle- xemic secondary prepositions” (German “polylex- ematische sekundare Prapositionen”) by D. Cou- fal; “periphrastic prepositions” by Ch. Lehmann, “compound prepositions” (Spanish “preposicion compusta”, German “zusammengesetzte Praposi- tionen” by Weinrich, Swedish “sammanstalld preposition” by E. Nylund-Brodda/B. Holm,), “group prepositions” (Spanish “preposicion en grupo”) by H. Sweet, “conglomerate prepositions” (Spanish “preposicion conglomerada”) by P. Roberts, “false prepositions” (French “prepositions fausses” by V. Brondal, “quasi-preposition” by R. Quirk/J. Mulholland, “half-prepositions” (German “Halbprapositionen”) by E. Benes, “noun prepositions” (German “Nominalpraposi- tionen”) by L. Gustafsson.

On the other hand, here are examples where the undetermined status of such items is also manifested in their names, i.e. they are not considered to be prepositions, the linguists rather describe them: “complex types of prepositional word phrases” (Russian «сложные типы предложных словосочетаний») by V. Vinogradov, “analytical structures” (Russian «аналитические образования») b Y. Klobukov, “set word phrases” (Ukrainian «стійкі словосполучення») by T. Gryaz- nukhina, “preposition-noun phrases” (Ukrainian «прийменниково-іменникові сполучення») by N. Vynogradova, “set phrases” (German “feste Verbindungen”) by E. Schendels, “prepositional phrases” (German “Prapositionswendungen, pra- positionale Wendungen”, Spanish “locuciones prepositivas”) by J. Schroder, R. Seco, M. Alonso and E. Nanes, “prepositional (or prepositive) phrases” (Spanish “frase prepositiva (o preposi- cional)”) by G. Yebra, “prepositional syntagmas” (Spanish “sintagmas preposicionales”) by A. C. Dubois et al., “prepositional phrases equivalent to prepositions” (German “prapositionswertige Prapositionalfugungen”) by E. Benes, “half-preposition, half-conjunction” (German “halb Praposi- tion, halb Konjunktion“) by L. Gustafsson, “prepositional conjunction” (German “prapositionale Kon- junktion”) by W. Admoni, “prepositional phrase with identification” (German “prapositionale Wen- dung mit Gleichsetzung“) by P. Schaublin, “prepositional phrases similar to prepositions” (German “prapositionsahnliche Prapositionalphrase” by J. Schroder, “flective adpositions” (German “flekti- erte Adposition”) by Th. Stolz.

H. Biadun-Grabarek also mentions these structures while considering the question how to differentiate between “genuine prepositional phrases that are equivalent to prepositions” (German echte prapositionsartige Prapositionalphrasen) and “prepositional phrases that are not equivalent to prepositions” (German nicht prapositionsartigen Prapositionalphrasen) [11, p. 321].

Hence, we can see that almost all the scholars that dealt with this issue have noted equivalecy of such structures to some extent to one-word prepositions, which is often manifested in the terms they were using. For instance, Spanish linguist R. Seco explains semantic equivalency between prepositions and prepositional equivalents of the word as follows: “Let us compare the sentences La encontre debajo de la mesa and La encontre bajo la mesa; Estaba junto a la fuente and Estaba cabe la fuente; Lo dejo sobre la mesa and Lo dejo encima de la mesa. Equality of meanings of each pair of sentences does not raise any doubts, where we can clearly observe the equivalence: bajo = debajo de, cabe = junto a, sobre = encima de. Hence, it can be concluded that the phrases debajo de, junto a, encima de function as prepositions equivalent to others present in the language. There is, as a maximum, a shade of difference between sobre and encima de; the second sentence presents more concrete manner than the previous one; however, the class of relations between two connected words is absolutely identical” [17, p. 124-125].

In the opinion of F. Hanssen and H. Kininston, the equivalency is even more of functional than of semantic nature: “Nouns with prepositions are often equivalent to prepositions: en torno a, a virtud de, encima de, a cabo de, a guisa de, en atencion a, frente a etc” [12, p. 316]; “There is ...a group of other words and expressions which perform the logical function of preposition” [14, p. 638].

As it can be seen from quoted examples many scholars use the term `complex prepositions', i.e. prepositions consisting of more than one word, that are often opposed to `simple' prepositions. However, R. Quirk et al. considered the boundary between simple and complex prepositions to be fuzzy [16, p. 668]. D. C. Bennett regards such combinations as two separate syntactic units, i.e. a sequence of an adverb followed by a preposition, not as a complex preposition [10, p. 73-74].

The figures for the number of items in the category of prepositions in different languages vary in different studies, according to how the category is defined and to the aspects focused on. For example, R. Huddleston and G. Pullum focus on the semantic-syntactic properties of the category of prepositions and define the category as follows: “A relatively closed grammatically distinct class of words whose most central members characteristically express spatial relations or serve to mark various syntactic functions and semantic roles” [13, p. 603]. Such a definition allows addition of new items into the category, which increases the number of words traditionally recognized as prepositions.

There are some criteria, for example as those proposed by R. Quirk et al., so-called “scale of cohesiveness”, to differentiate between complex prepositions and other phrases that for some reasons cannot be yet classified as complex prepositions as for example insertion of It should be noted that these criteria are not unified as well. But even if they were, there are still phrases which meet all but one criteria or just one criterion. The question how to qualify these items remains open. The description may be as follows: these are more or less set phrases consisting of two or more components and equivalent to prepositions that cannot be classified as complex prepositions as they do not have all the properties of complex prepositions, they are on their way to becoming such. In other words they are on different stages of grammaticalization; they undergo different processes of grammaticlaization. The theory of grammaticalization allows analyzing these prepositional structures that are in the process of change.

Thus, as we can see transitional language units, in particular prepositional equivalents of the word, arouse interest of linguists from different countries. While studying them, the scholars use different terminology. There arises a need for harmonization of this terminology. In our opinion, the term `prepositional equivalent of the word' is the most apt expression It allows to study these phenomena in the aspect of the grammaticalization theory that classifies single-word prepositions as the most grammati- calized elements and multi-word prepositions are considered to be the units with lower degree of grammaticalization.

linguistic prepositional equivalent

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