Abstract
In 1985, Zwicky argued that ‘particle’ is a pretheoretical notion that should be eliminated from linguistic analysis. We propose a reclassification of Russian particles that implements Zwicky’s directive. Russian particles lack a coherent conceptual basis as a category and many are ambiguous with respect to part of speech. Our corpus analysis of Russian particles addresses theoretical questions about the cognitive status of parts of speech and practical concerns about how particles should be represented in computational models. We focus on nine high-frequency words commonly classed as particles: ešče, tak, ved’, slovno, daže, že, li, da, net. We show that the current tagging of particles in the manually disambiguated Morphological Standard of the Russian National Corpus is not entirely consistent, and that this can create challenges for training a part-of-speech tagger. We offer an alternative tagging scheme that eliminates the category of ‘particle’ altogether. We show that our enriched scheme makes it possible for a part-of-speech tagger to achieve more useful results. Our analysis of particles provides a detailed account of various sub-uses that correspond to different parts of speech, their relationships, and relative distribution. In this sense, our study also contributes to the study of words that exhibit part-of-speech ambiguities.
Аннотация
В работе 1985 года Цвикки утверждал, что ‘частица’—это до-теоретическое понятие, которое нужно исключить из лингвистического анализа. Следуя установке Цвикки, мы предлагаем пересмотреть традиционный подход к русским частицам и перераспределить соответствующие слова по другим частеречным классам. Ясные содержательные основания для выделения русских частиц как отдельной категории отсутствуют, частеречная принадлежность многих частиц неоднозначна. В нашем корпусном исследовании рассмотрены теоретические вопросы о когнитивном статусе частей речи, а также практические сложности, связанные с представлением частиц в компьютерных моделях обработки данных. В центре внимания девять высокочастотных слов, традиционно определяемых как частицы: еще, так, ведь, словно, даже, же, ли, да, нет. В статье показано, что существующая система частеречной разметки, принятая в Морфологическом стандарте Национального корпуса русского языка (тексты со снятой омонимией), недостаточно последовательна и что это может создать проблемы при обучении частеречного анализатора. В статье предложена альтернативная система разметки, в которой категория ‘частиц’ как отдельной части речи полностью устранена. Благодаря этой улучшенной системе разметки частеречный анализатор может функционировать более успешно. В статье представлен подробный анализ девяти ‘частиц’ с разбором основных подтипов их употреблений, которые соответствуют различным частям речи, также обсуждаются взаимосвязи выделенных подтипов и их распределение в использованной выборке примеров. В этом отношении, данное исследование вносит вклад в изучение слов с неоднозначной частеречной принадлежностью.
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Notes
Since the meanings of these particles are heavily dependent on context, in this article they are not translated when cited out of context.
Abbreviations used in this paper: A—adjective, A-NUM—numeral adjective, A-PRO—pronominal adjective, ADV—adverb, ADV-PRO—pronominal adverb, CNJ—conjunction, CNJADV—adverbial conjunction, CNJCOO—coordinating conjunction, CNJSUB—subordinating conjunction, EMPH—emphasizer, INTJ—interjection, NEST—negative predicative of existence, NUM—numeral, PARENTH—parenthetical, PART—particle, PR—preposition, PRAEDIC—predicative, PRAEDIC-PRO—predicative pronoun, QST—question word, S—substantive, S-PRO—pronoun, V—verb, VMOD—modal verb.
Even in the case of verbs and pronouns, one can find marginal examples of lexemes that are uninflected, such as the verbal interjective forms xvat’ (< xvatat’ ‘grab’), pryg (< prygat’ ‘jump’), spaten’ki (< spat’ ‘sleep’) (Klobukov 2001); adverbial pronouns tak ‘so’, tam ‘there’, tut ‘here’, gde ‘where’, kogda ‘when’.
Most of the examples we cite are taken from the database used for our experiments (The Tromsø Repository of Language and Linguistics, http://hdl.handle.net/10037.1/10291). Because our experiments were run on examples containing only one token of the nine lexemes in our study, example (48) was excluded from the database because it contained more than one token. In addition, examples (5) and (49) illustrate low frequent or obsolete uses of particles that were not represented in our database.
Note that in this example, Zaliznjak is citing Fomenko’s words.
Kasatkina (2004, pp. 73–74) shows that as opposed to Standard Russian, in Russian dialects že often bears stress and escapes vowel reduction, and this takes place in certain specific uses not found in Standard Russian: e.g. dialectal že can be semantically equivalent to the conjunction i ‘and’, as in this example from the Vologodskaja oblast’: V magazin prjaniki privezli, konfety že ‘Spice cookies have been brought to the store, and candy (too)’.
Note that an alternative interpretation for examples (40) and (41) is that že appears in Wackernagel position and emphasizes the entire clause.
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This research was supported in part by grant 222506 from the Norwegian Research Council. The authors would also like to thank their employer, UiT The Arctic University of Norway.
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Please note that all of the numbers given in the tables in the Appendix are cited in percentages.
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Endresen, A., Janda, L.A., Reynolds, R. et al. Who needs particles? A challenge to the classification of particles as a part of speech in Russian. Russ Linguist 40, 103–132 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-016-9160-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-016-9160-2