=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2552/Paper18
|storemode=property
|title=Frame Semantics of Russian and Italian Verbs: Advantages and Limitations
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2552/Paper18.pdf
|volume=Vol-2552
|authors=Roberta Pittaluga,Mikchail Marusenko,Tatiana Noskova
}}
==Frame Semantics of Russian and Italian Verbs: Advantages and Limitations ==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2552/Paper18.pdf
Frame Semantics of Russian and Italian Verbs:
Advantages and Limitations∗
Roberta Pittaluga 1 Mikhail Marusenko 1
roberta.pittaluga@yandex.ru mamikhail@yandex.ru
Tatiana Noskova 2
noskovatn@gmail.com
1
Saint Petersburg State University,
2
Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia
Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
Abstract
This paper aims to analyse the process of creating a frame that reflects the semantics
of Russian and Italian verbs. During the creation of the frame, a number of questions
arose about the role and position of concepts in the cognitive representations of Russian
and Italian verbs. As a consequence, compromises have to be sought, thus showing the
advantages and limitations of frame analysis. As an example, two slots, Aspect and
Mood, are illustrated.
Keywords: frame semantics, translation studies, translation quality assessment,
verbs of motion, Italian, Russian
1 Introduction
As far as classic literature is concerned, there usually exists a significant number of translations
into Italian. Čechov and Russian classic literature in general are no exception. I was able to
retrieve five different translations into Italian of A. Čechov’s short story The Duel which were
published by different publishing houses over a 50-year span: from 1963 (Bietti publishing
house) to 2014 (Bur publishing house). The wide range of existing translations creates the
urge to find a tool for comparing the source text and the translations in addition to assessing
objectively the quality of the translations and the degree of equivalence between the source
text and their translations. The importance and the need for such a tool is predicated by the
following blatant problem: the translations were published by different publishing houses in
different periods of time and, clearly, they differ from each other. Let’s consider the following
excerpt from the short story: V gorode nevynosymaja žara, skuka, bezljude, a vyjdeš’ v pole,
∗
Copyright c 2019 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attri-
bution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
1
tam pod každym kustom i kamnem čudjatsja falangi, skorpiony i zmej, a za polem gory i
pustynja. In the town you have insufferable heat, boredom, and no society; if you go out into
the country, you fancy poisonous spiders, scorpions, or snakes lurking under every stone and
behind every bush, and beyond the fields — mountains and the desert. [Čechov, 2013] The
verb vyjdeš’ (the infinitive form is vyjti, to go out) was translated as follows:
• Translation n.1, m’inoltravo (inoltrarsi, to venture into, reflexive verb in the imperfect)
• Translation n.2, andartene (andarsene, to go away, pronominal verb in the infinitive)
• Translation n.3, te ne vai (andarsene, to go away, pronominal verb in the present)
• Translation n.4, andavi (andare, to go, in the imperfect)
• Translation n.5 the verb was omitted.
As E. Kovalčuk [2010] discussed the translation quality control, the key approaches towards
the assessment of translation quality ‘may be divided into two types: theoretical and prac-
tical (quantitative) models. Quantitative models have an advantage over theoretical ones in
evaluation practice, but they also leave many controversial issues associated mainly with the
selection of parameters of translation quality. What is needed is a new break-through approach
to the problem capable of eliminating these difficulties’.
2 Theoretical Grounds
One of the most prominent fields in contemporary linguistics, cognitive semantics, investigates
the meanings of linguistic units as the result of human beings’ cognitive activity and as an
instrument for knowledge representation [Plotnikova, 2006]. The distinctive trait of cognitive
semantics lies in its dynamic approach to meaning which is understood not only as a structure
of hierarchically organised semes – originally given – but also, and mostly, as an assemblance
– formed during human beings’ cognitive process – of objective reality [Ibid.]. The basis of my
proposal is the notion of frame. Frame semantics is used to describe the conceptual meaning
of terms structurally and informatively. In the most generalised view, frames are considered
cognitive structures of knowledge which are located in our memory. Arranged in an ordinate
hierarchy, they contain the most important chunks of information and are linked to various
concepts or concept systems [Ivanova, 2008]. According to Minsky, ‘a frame is a data-structure
for representing a stereotyped situation, like being in a certain kind of living room, or going
to a child’s birthday party. Attached to each frame are several kinds of information. Some of
this information is about how to use the frame. Some is about what one can expect to happen
next. Some is about what to do if these expectations are not confirmed’ [Minsky, 1974].
Nowadays, the theory of frame semantics is used in different scientific fields starting from
grammatical description and ending with the elaboration of technologies used to organise
knowledge. In addition to these, it is applied to the elaboration of the description of functional
hybrid nets, and the creation of semantic-syntactic models of natural language, e.g. issues that
are directly linked to the problem of creating systems of artificial language [Sineleva, 2014].
It does not come as a surprise, therefore, that since the first definition of frame by Minsky,
scholars have been defined the term ‘frame’ differently (for an excursus on the term, see
Sineleva, 2014 and Ivanova, 2008].
2
In this paper I seek to demonstrate how frames – thanks to their organised, flexible and
formulaic structure – can be effectively employed to create an artificial language which can for-
mally describe the proprieties of basically any concept, including grammatical concepts. Also,
I analyse the methods of creating a frame and developing its slots further; when comparing
two typologically different languages problems arise, for instance, sometimes the number and
the variety of slots can differ according to the language and a compromise must be found.
The main purpose of the knowledge representation process, which in the most general form
is defined as a set of rules for describing the real world, is building models of its parts and
components. The knowledge representation model displays the static and dynamic properties
of objects belonging to certain areas of knowledge, the relationships and links between them,
the hierarchy of concepts and the change of relationship between objects. A generally accepted
way to represent knowledge is to describe a process or an object by using the previously
defined terms of natural language and then create a suitable mathematical model. Then
a correspondence between the characteristics of knowledge concept elements and a suitable
mathematical model is established [Sineleva, 2014].
Before moving to the practical part, let’s comment on the terminological framework of this
study. By grammatical category I imply the union of two or more grammatical forms which
are opposed or linked according to their grammatical meaning. This grammatical meaning
is consolidated under this set of forms (paradigm) [Ivanova et al., 1981]. By grammatical
meaning I imply a general, rather abstract meaning, which connects big classes of words
and is expressed through the presence – or the absence – of formal parameters. A rather
important characteristic of grammatical meaning is that its meaning is not defined in the
word. Formal parameters are specific and unique for every language and they convey the
grammatical meaning only together with the fundamentals of the part of speech [Ibid.].
3 Creating a Prototype Frame
In my case, frame analysis gives the possibility of correlating (literally overlapping) each
Russian verb of motion1 in A. Čechov’s short story The Duel with the corresponding Italian
verb contained in five different Italian translations. After all, an objective and formalised slot
filling, followed by a comparison of frames, helps in estimating the level of equivalence between
the source text and the various translations.
All the verbs of motion in their conjugated forms and their literal meaning were extracted
from the short story; however, infinitives, participles and gerunds were left out. In Russian,
the infinitive, the gerund and the participle are hybrid parts of speech whose grammatical
status cannot always be precisely defined. The participle and the gerund are attributive verb
forms, while the infinitive is an indefinite form which originates from the verb paradigm. So,
180 units constitute the corpus of analysed forms.
Given the fact that the source text from which all the verb forms were extracted is
written in Russian, it was decided to start the slot selection phase with the Russian verb.
In the beginning, the most relevant categories which can be used to describe the meaning of
the given verb were highlighted. Then, that information was compared with the information
1
By verb of motion I imply the following pairs (and their derivative forms): 1) bežat’ – begat’, 2) bresti –
brodit’, 3) vezti – vozit’, 4) vesti – vodit’, 5) gnat’ – gonjat’, 6) gnat’sja – gonjat’sja, 7) echat’ – ezdit’, 8) idti
– chodit’, 9) katit’ – katat’, 10) katit’sja – katat’sja, 11) lezt’ – lazit’, 12) letet’ – letat’, 13) nesti – nosit’, 14)
nestis’ – nosit’sja, 15) plyt’ – plavat’, 16) polzti – polzat’, 17) taščit’ – taskat’, 18) taščit’sja – taskat’sja [AG
80].
3
possessed about the verb in the Italian language and in this way, it was possible to obtain
the necessary slots to illustrate the meanings of any verb in Russian and Italian. Of course,
in order to be able to compare the semantics of the verbs (to literally assign a value to the
differences and similarities between the verbs), it is preferable that 1) the two frames contained
roughly the same number of slots, and 2) that the slots were the same.
The slots used were as follows: Aspect, Voice, Transitivity, Reflexivity, Mood, Tense,
Form, Person, Number, Gender, Alteration of the form, Modality, Means of motion, Direction
of motion. Thus, a prototype frame was created both for the Russian and the Italian verb.
Graphically, the frame of this study is represented as a table (See Table 1 and Table 2).
4 Mood
Considering that slots can be filled differently according to the language, i.e. the same slots can
have different features, the present paper focuses primarily on the description of the process
of filling the most compelling slots (from a methodological point of view). In other words, I
4
am going to describe the following slots: Aspect and Mood, two categories where Russian and
Italian significantly differ.
5 Aspect
According to the definition proposed by AG 80, the first morphological category of a verb is
aspect (in Russian vid). The category of aspect is a system of opposing series of verb forms: on
the one hand, there is a series of verb forms indicating the completion of an action (perfective
verbs, in Russian soveršennyj vid), on the other, there is a series of verb forms which denote
an action without referring to its completion (imperfective verbs, in Russia nesoveršennyj
vid). Every verb form is affected by the category of aspect. Restricting an action to a limit
means restricting the action to an abstract, internal limit which represents the action as a
unified, compact act, in contrast to the representation of the action as a process represented
by its duration or repeatability [AG 80]. Although the majority of Russian verbs constitute an
aspect pair, it is important to notice that there exist three types of verbs which are grouped
differently:
1) non-correlative verbs having only a perfective form (such as očutit’sja, to find oneself );
2) non-correlative verbs having only the imperfective form (such as nachodit’sja to be
5
located);
3) bi-aspectual verbs that can be used both as perfective and imperfective (for example,
velet’, to command, to order ) [AG 80 and Forsyth, 1970].
In light of this, in the Russian frame, the slot Aspect splits into a dichotomy: perf. /
imperf.
Let’s consider the definitions of aspect in Italian. As with Russian language, in Italian,
the aspect (aspetto) characterises a verbal act in terms of duration, preciseness, repetition,
the beginning or end of a process, and the completeness or incompleteness of an action.
According to traditional linguistics, in languages such as Italian, e.g. tense-specific languages,
the usage of aspect coincides always and only with the usage of tense, which is a distinct
grammatical category, and is closely linked to types of situation (sposob dejstvija)2 . From a
terminological point of view, if the terms ‘tense’ (tempo) and ‘mood’ (modo) were already used
by Greek and Latin grammarians, then the terms ‘aspect’ and types of situation appeared in
linguistic terminology only at the beginning of the 19th century [Colombo and Graffi, 2017]. As
Colombo and Graffi point out [Ibid.], the word ‘aspect’ – and consequently the entire concept
of aspect – became a frequently used term in the grammars of Slavic languages, where aspect is
morphologically expressed. The expression type of situation is a translation from the German
aktionsart, with from which the Russian term vid had originally been taken. Despite the
fact that aspetto and azione are close concepts, Colombo and Graffi [Ibid.] maintain that
even nowadays Italian grammars, which support the traditional approach, do not give enough
attention to these concepts. For instance, Serianni [2016], though he quotes Bertinetto’s
interpretation of aspect, thinks that the concept of aspect occupies a secondary place in the
Italian language, whereas in many of the Slavic languages the different aspectual meanings find
a clear expression in their grammar. Moreover, although Serianni considers aspect in Italian
a category of lesser importance [Ibid.], he defines imperfetto as a typical aspectual tense.
The picture becomes even fuzzier if we turn to the definition of the adjective imperfective
(imperfettivo) by the Treccani Encyclopedia: ‘Nella lingua italiana si può parlare di verbi
i. soltanto sul piano lessicale (per es., cercare, guardare, in contrapp. a trovare, vedere,
perfettivi); ma in senso più ampio, all’interno delle frasi, sono imperfettivi tutti i verbi che
esprimono azione non compiuta (mi vesto, correva, stava dormendo)’3 .
If we compare the behaviour of verbs in Russian and Italian in the following sentences:
1a) Anna čitala knigu dva časa. Anna read the book for two hours.
1b) Anna ha letto il libro per due ore.
2a) Anna pročitala knigu za dva časa. Anna read the book in two hours.
2b) Anna ha letto il libro in due ore.
it is possible to notice that in Russian the verbs are different, imperfective in 1a) and
perfective in 2a). If we look at 1b) and 2b), we can see that the verb form is the same (ha letto),
and the difference in the meaning is conveyed only by the use of different prepositions (per
and in, respectively). Colombo and Graffi [2017] state that it is likely that the realisation of
different situation types through morphology, a frequent phenomenon in the Slavic languages,
but a rather uncommon one in Italian, leads linguists to think that aspect in the Italian
2
According to Bertinetto [1992], in the Slavic languages the division between imperfective and perfective
verbs concerns the category of situation type (azione) and not the category of aspect
3
In the Italian language we can talk about imperfective verbs only on a lexical level (for instance, to look
for, to watch vs to find, to see, which are perfective verbs). However, in a broader sense, within a proposition,
all the verbs are imperfective that express a non-completed action (I dress myself, he/she would run, he/she
was sleeping) http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/imperfettivo/
6
language plays a secondary role.
A not so different opinion is shared by Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian grammarian and re-
searcher of aspectology, who, in his article about the meanings of the tense imperfetto in the
Italian language [1999], states that at the present time the existence or the absence of the cat-
egory of aspect in non-Slavic languages is still a matter of deep discussion between linguists.
Some of them, on the basis of the existence/absence of aspect in different languages, may
talk about aspectual and non-aspectual languages. The formal criteria to identify the exis-
tence of aspect in a certain language is considered the morphological expression of an explicit
dichotomy of different verb forms (perfective and imperfective) which have the same lexical
meaning. As the Hungarian linguist posits [Ibid.], from the speaker’s point of view it is as if
an action was doubled and could be described in two ways: perfectively or imperfectively. In
the first case, the action is limited by time, that is the action remains within the perspective
the speaker adopted, the speaker is therefore located outside the action; in the second case,
on the contrary, the action crosses the limits of the speaker’s perspective and expands outside
the aspectual character and the speaker is located within the action.
The existence of the category of aspect is supported by Bertinetto’s words [1992] who
believes that if we were to stop at the morphological proprieties of conjugations, then there
would be no material which could be used to demonstrate the existence of aspect in Italian,
other than the basic difference between imperfetto and perfetto. However, as Bertinetto points
out [Ibid], the problem is of a semantic nature: the presence of morphological dichotomies is
an indicator of the existence of more profound and, in general, more universal differences. For
these reasons, I decided to include the slot Aspect in the Italian frame also.
The morphological category of the mood of a verb is a system of opposed series of forms
expressing the relation of the action towards reality and entails the following meanings: reality
(indicative, iz”javitel’noe), motivation, command (imperative, povelitel’noe) or presumption,
possibility, opinion (subjunctive, soslagatel’noe) [AG 80]. In the Russian frame, the slot
Mood comprises the following features, components: Indicative, Imperative and Subjunctive.
According to the AG 80, the conditional mood is included in the subjunctive and that explains
why it is not presented in the Russian frame.
As far as the Italian language is concerned, the linguistic tradition illustrates the category
of mood differently in comparison with what is considered the norm within the Russian lin-
guistic. As V. Gak [2000] posits, the mood represents the relation of the verb action towards
reality from the position of the speaker. The problem of the inventory of moods in the French
grammar presents two questions:
a) the correctness of combining personal and non-personal forms in a single category of
moods;
b) the composition of personal modal forms.
This statement is not related only to French, but it can be extended to Italian too. In
light of this, it should not come as a surprise that in Italian the non-finite verb forms belong
to the category of mood and not to that of Alteration of Form.
As the Treccani Encyclopedia reports, the system of mood of the Italian verb follows the
general structure of the Latin system and it adds to that the conditional mood. For this reason,
in Italian linguistics, it is customary to include personal mood forms (indicative, imperative,
subjunctive and conditional) on the one hand, and, on the other hand, non-personal mood
forms (infinitive, participle and participle)4 . That is why, in the Italian frame, the slot Mood
4
Textbooks and grammars of Italian as a foreign language, where personal forms (modi finiti) are juxtaposed
7
is made up of slightly different components: initially there is a dichotomy of Personal / Non-
personal Mood forms, and then, depending on the answer, both components branch out as it
is shown on Figure 1.
Figure 1: The Slot Mood in the Italian Frame
6 Conclusion
Of course, this is not the last word on the matter. In this paper I decided to focus on the
explanation of the decision-making process which dealt with the creation and the subsequent
filling of two slots only, therefore intentionally leaving out the problems I encountered and
overcame in formalising other categories, for example, Modality and the role of context. The
creation and filling of the slots Aspect and Mood have demonstrated the factors which are
important to take into account when two typologically different languages such as Russian
and Italian are formally compared. Not only can grammatical categories be different (as in
the case of the slot Aspect), but also sometimes it is possible to notice that the same category
(or concept) is illustrated differently (as in the case of the slot Mood). Besides, the picture
can become even more complicated by the fact that frame analysis is a method to formally
describe concepts. In other words, unlike the descriptive method, frame analysis helps to
create a precise and detailed artificial language which could help to categorise and systemise
the semantics of Russian and Italian verbs.
with the concept of non-personal forms (modi non finiti or indefiniti) also demonstrate the extent to which
the tradition is consolidated and universally accepted.
8
References
[Čechov] Čechov A. Duel’. Available at http://www.100bestbooks.ru/read_book.php?
item_id=8190.
[Čechov, 2013] Čechov A. The Duel and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov, Translated by
Constance Garnett. Available at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13505.
[Translation 1] Čechov A., 2014, Racconti, Bur, Milano.
[Translation 2] Čechov A., 2009, Racconti, Mondadori, Milano.
[Translation 3] Čechov A., 1993, Il Duello, Roma, Mancosu.
[Translation 4] Čechov A., 1975, Racconti, Garzanti, Milano.
[Translation 5] Čechov A., 1963, Il Duello, Bietti, Milano.
[Kovalčuk, 2010] Kovalčuk E. A. (2010) Translation Quality Control: A Search for Effective
Methods, Standards and Parameters. Učenye zapiski Komsomol’skogo-na-Amure gosu-
darstvennogo techničeskogo universiteta – N. 11-2 (2), 2010. Pp. 81-85. (In Rus.) = Ocenka
kačestva perevoda: problema poiska effektivnych metodov, standartov i parametrov.
[Plotnikova, 2006] Plotnikova A. M. (2006) Mnogoznačnost’ russkovo glagola: kognitivnoe
modelirovanie (na materiale glagolov social’nych dejstvij i otnošenij). Ekaterimburg, Izda-
tel’stvo ural’skogo universiteta. - 226 p.
[Ivanova, 2008] Ivanova, E. P. (2008) Semantizacija imeni sušestvitel’novo vo francuzkich
tolkovych i enciklopedičeskich slovarjach XVII-XXI vekov (evoljucija opredelenij naimen-
ovanij gidrometeorov). SPb, SPbU. - 249 p.
[Minsky, 1974] Minsky, M. (1974) A Framework for Representing Knowledge. MIT-AI Lab-
oratory Memo 306, June, 1974. Reprinted in The Psychology of Computer Vision, P.
Winston (Ed.), McGraw-Hill, 1975. Shorter versions in J. Haugeland, Ed., Mind Design,
MIT Press, 1981, and in Cognitive Science, Collins, Allan and Edward E. Smith (eds.)
Morgan-Kaufmann, 1992.
[Sineleva, 2014] Sineleva, A. V. (2014) Formal’no-logičeskoe predtsavlenie semantiki i sistem-
nosti terminov filosofii i logiki. Doctoral dissertation, Nižnyj Novgorod. - 579 p.
[Ivanova et al. 1981] Ivanova I. P. et al. (1981) Teoretičeskaja grammatika sovremennogo an-
glijskogo jazyka. Moskva, Vyšaja škola. - 232 p.
[AG 80] Academy Grammar. Grammatika russkogo jazyka. 1960. Available at
http://rusgram.narod.ru/.
[Forsyth, 1970] Forsyth J. (1970) A Grammar of Aspect. Usage and Meaning in the Russian
Verb. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. - 386 p.
[Bertinetto, 1992] Bertinetto P. M. (1992) Tempo, aspetto e azione nel verbo italiano. Il sis-
tema dell’indicativo. Firenze, Accademia della Crusca. - 552 p.
9
[Colombo, 2018] Colombo, A., and Graffi, G. (2018) Capire la grammatica. Il contributo della
linguistica. Roma, Carocci. - 210 p.
[Serianni, 2016] Serianni, L. (2016) Grammatica italiana. Italiano comune e lingua letteraria.
Torino, Utet. - 750 p.
[Treccani Encyclopedia] reccani: l’enciclopedia italiana. Online resource available at
http://www.treccani.it/.
[Toth, 1999] Toth L. (1999) Contributi ai valori dell’imperfetto italiano. Nuova Corvina: Riv-
ista di Italianistica dell’Istituto di Cultura per l’Ungheria, Budapeste, n. 5, 1999. Pp.
247-255.
[Gak, 2000] Gak V. G. 2000. Teoretičeskaja grammatika francuzkogo i russkogo jazykov.
Moskva, Dobrosvet. - 832 p.
10