|
RUSSIAN VALENCY
STRUCTURES
This project aims at a semantic
representation
of linguistic objects in Russian—words, phrases, sentences—based on the
concept of valency. Valency is traditionally thought of as a property
of
words, primarily verbs and adjectives. I explore valency as a property
of all kinds of linguistic signs: words, morphemes, signs with
non-phonological
expression, and completely implicit signs. An important distinction is
made between semantic and syntactic signs, and amongst semantic signs
between
signs with and without valency (signs denoting "facts" versus signs
denoting
"things"). The basic unit is the "atom", i.e. a predicate together with
its actants. The structure of an atom is represented by means of eleven
"valency categories". These categories reflect cases and certain
related
properties. The combination of categories representing an atom
constitutes
a valency structure. For several years I have been gathering a large
amount
of material in order to make a complete (if possible) inventory of
these
structures. Up to now 1254 valency structures have been identified. The
list of predicates contains more than 8000 units.
Contributions to MTT
conferences |