Single‑component verbal models of Russian paremias: a structural and grammatical description

Abstract

The subject of the study is the structural and grammatical features of Russian proverbs, namely the constructive and syntactic organization of proverbs, typical semantics of models, linguistic means of designing the predicative core and syntactic construction. The classification description is carried out based on the analysis of linguistic material that operates with the concepts of a model and the structural scheme of a sentence. The article identifies morphological and syntactic features and the typical grammatical meaning of the model, systematizes the ways of representing the predicate in single‑component verbal models, and establishes a correlation of the grammatical form with the typical semantics of paremia. The research methodology is determined by the nature of the typological description. The primary method is descriptive-analytical, and the classification is based on statistics. The statistical data were obtained through a quantitative and comparative analysis of linguistic material. The material for the study was the «Large Dictionary of Russian Proverbs» by V. M. Mokienko and T. G. Nikitina. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the original approach to the analysis of the paremiological fund; proverbs are considered as the implementation of typical grammatical models of language with a special correlation of form and content. For the first time, a typological description of single‑component verbal models of Russian paremias is presented. Structural-grammatical made it possible to identify a typical «grammar of a proverbial norm» in its correlation with linguistic semantics. The most productive single‑component verbal models include: Vind pr3pl with a normative-evaluative meaning, Vind f2s with the semantics of causal regularity of action, Vimp2s with a regulatory meaning. The predicative core of the models is represented by conjugated personal, impersonal forms and the infinitive, expressing the grammatical meaning of the “generalization” of an action with varying degrees of its abstraction from the producer.