Boris Iomdin
Russian Language Institute,
Russian Academy of Sciences
iomdin@ruslang.ru
Lecture 12. Plan
 Classifications of the lexicon
 Objects
 Predicates
 Fundamental classification
 Main classes
 Subclasses
 Semantic annotation of corpora
 A case study: memory in Russian
Classifying the lexicon
 Objects
 names of animals, birds, fish, fruits, vegetables,
stones, mountains, stars, planets, etc.
 differential explications
 a taxonomical classification
 Predicates
 lexical units that have at least one semantic
valency
 exhaustive explications
 a fundamental classification
Generic and specific features
Both parts of the inventory are further
subdivided into two subgroups:
 generic semantic features (genus
proximum).
Nouns: ‘animal’, ‘vegetable’, ‘state’, ‘action’, …
 specific semantic features (differentia
specifica). Adjectives: ‘domestic’, ‘wild’,
‘natural’, ‘physical’, ‘mental’, …
Fundamental classification
 Developed by Juri Apresjan and differs from
comparable systems of J. Maslov, Z. Vendler,
T. Bulygina, E. Paducheva, Ch. Fillmore and others
 A non-rigid multi-level hierarchy with multiple
"horizontal" and "vertical" intersections of classes
 Unlike that of object descriptors, the list of
predicate descriptors forms a closed set
 The classes of the fundamental classification can
be used in all sorts of rules: morphological,
derivational, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, …
Main classes
 Action
 Localization
 Activity
 State
 Occupation
 Property
 Behaviour
 Ability
 Impact
 Parameter
 Process
 Existence
 Manifestation
 Relation
 Event
 Interpretation
 Spatial position
Action
 An action is a verb whose explication, if reduced to
the lowest level, includes the semantic primitive ‘to do’,
and the situation takes place within one round of
observation
 Examples: attack, walk, go, chop
 The main and the most numerous class
 Most actants
 Richest co-occurrence
 Highest derivational potential
 Most polysemous
Activity
 An activity is a verb that denotes an aggregate of
different actions united by a single purpose, and the
situation takes place within several rounds of
observation
 Examples: educate, trade, fight (for power)
Behaviour
 A behaviour is a verb that denotes an aggregate of
physical actions viewed from the angle of how the
subject shows himself towards other people or towards
the current situation, with a (generally negative)
assessment
 Examples: frolic, mince, fool around, brawl
Occupation
 An occupation is a verb that denotes an action the
main purpose of which is the action itself
 Examples: read, play, rest, skate
 Action and occupation are close enough, the main
difference being the interpretation of the purpose
Occupation:
 xodit’ po gorodu ‘to be walking in the city’, plavat’ v
bassejne ‘to be swimming in the pool’
Action:
 xodit’ kupat’sja ‘to go for a swim’, plavat’ za
kuvshinkami ‘to swim for water lilies’
Impact
 An impact is a verb whose subject is not a human
being but an inanimate power that can change the
world (a space object, a natural phenomenon, a certain
circumstance, etc.)
 This power could be the cause of
 an action (A rustle in the bushes made him stop)
 a process (The sun heats the air)
 a situation (This declaration harms us)
 a state (Meeting with de Saussure worried him)
Process
 A process is a verb whose subject is an object or a
phenomenon which could change all by itself, without
anyone wishing it
 Examples: grow, decrease, boil, recover
 Actions and processes are close enough, the main
difference being the existence / absence of a purpose
Spatial position
 A spatial position is a verb whose main idea is a
constant contact of an object X (or its part Z) and a
place Y
 Examples: be sitting, be lying, be standing
Manifestation
 A manifestation is a property, a state or a process that
is being perceived by an observer
 Examples: shine, ring, stink, sting
Subclasses
 Inceptives
 arise: ‘beginning’ + ‘existence’
 learn: ‘beginning’ + ‘state’
 Finitives
 die out: ‘ceasing’ + ‘existence’
 forget: ‘ceasing’ + ‘state’
 Causatives
 feed: ‘causation’ + ‘action’
 cultivate: ‘causation’ + ‘process’
 Liquidatives
 awaken: ‘elimination’ + ‘process’
Subclasses of actions
 Physical: break
 Physiological: urinate
 Mental: think
 Volitional: decide
 Emotional: anger
 Speech: request
 Social: marry
…
Subclasses of impacts
 Physical: heat
 Mental: convince
 Volitional: force
 Emotional: surprise
…
Subclasses of states
 Physical: see
 Physiological: be ill
 Mental: know
 Volitional: wish
 Emotional: fear
 Material: need
 Social: be married
…
(no speech states!)
Subclasses of parameters
 Numerical: height, length, distance, width, depth, area,
capacity, volume, age, time, weight, …
 Qualitative: appearance, form, colour, sound, smell, …
 Social, non-hierarchical: nationality, religion,
occupation, income, …
 Social, hierarchical: rank, title, status, course, …
Polysemy: different lexemes
may go into different classes
 vxodit’ v komnatu ‘to enter a room’: action
 vxodit’ v trans ‘to fall into a trance’: process
 vxodit’ v komissiju ‘to be part of a committee’: state
 vxodit’ v vedro ‘to go in a bucket’: parameter (capacity)
 sobaka viljaet xvostom ‘the dog wiggles its tail’: action
 pricep viljaet ‘the trailer side-tracks’: process
 doroga viljaet ‘the road twists’: property
Order of meanings
 Direct meanings
 Metaphorical/metonymical meanings
 Lexically or syntactically bound meanings
 Grammatical meanings
Gradual semantic erosion of verbal lexemes
Semantic tagging of corpora
 Semantic tagging is based on the inventory of semantic
features (descriptors) and a dictionary, with a set of tags
assigned to each lexeme and its argument slots
 The set of descriptors assigned to words is designed in such
a way as to construct a linguistically relevant classification
for the whole vocabulary
 This classification serves for discovering laws according to
which the elements of various lexical and semantic classes
interact in the texts
 A part of the Russian National Corpus has been
syntactically and semantically tagged by Apresjan et al. Cf.
Proposition Bank from the Penn English Tree Bank etc.
Russian memory lexicon
• Mental state: pomnit’ ‘remember’, …
• Inceptives:
▫ Controlled: vspomnit’, pripomnit’ ‘recall’, …
▫ Uncontrolled: vspomnit’sja ‘come to memory’, …
• Liquidatives:
▫ Controlled: vybrosit’ iz golovy ‘think away’, …
▫ Uncontrolled: zabyt’ ‘forget’, upustit’ ‘miss’, …
• Causation:
▫ Internal: zapomnit’ ‘memorize’, vyuchit’ ‘learn’, …
▫ External: napomnit’ ‘remind’, suvenir ‘souvenir’, …
•
•
•
•
Abilities: pamjatlivyj ‘having a good memory’, …
Result: vospominanie ‘reminiscence’, …
Properties of objects: pamjatnyj ‘memorable’, …
Responsible organ(s): pamjat’ ‘memory’, soznanie ‘mind’
Memory and other mental
domains: main differences
 What types of information can be received
 How it is received
 How it is processed
 How it is stored
 How it is retrieved
Receiving information
 uznat’ ‘to learn’
 ponjat’ ‘to understand’
 Rational understanding: osoznat’ ‘to realize’,
soobrazit’ ‘figure out’, etc.
 Irrational understanding: ugadat’ ‘to guess’,
osenit’ ‘to dawn upon’, etc.
Types of information
 znat’ adres <imja, nomer telefona>
‘to know the address <name, phone number’
 pomnit’ adres <imja, nomer telefona>
‘to remember the address <name, phone number’
 *ponimat’ adres <imja, nomer telefona>
‘to understand the address <name, phone
number’
Types of information
 pomnit’ vcherashnij vecher
 ‘to remember yesterday’s evening’
 *znat’ vcherashnij vecher
‘to know yesterday’s evening’
 ?ponimat’ vcherashnij vecher
‘to understand yesterday’s evening’
experiential vs. informational memory
Storing information
 Controlled: vyuchit’ ‘learn’, zauchit’ ‘learn by heart’,
vyzubrit’ ‘swot up’, zatverdit’ ‘drill’, …
 Uncontrolled: zapomnit’sja ‘stay /stick into one’s
memory’, zapast’ v pamjat’ ‘be imprinted in one’s
memory’
 Ja dolgo zapominal ix adres ‘I spent some time
memorizing their address’ VS.
 Ja nazval otel’, adres kotorogo sluchajno zapomnil
‘I mentioned an hotel whose address I chanced to
remember’
Information storages
 golova ‘head’
 um ‘mind, intellect’
 soznanie ‘mind, conscience’
 pamjat’ ‘memory’
Um
processes current information:
 reshat’ v ume zadachi ‘mentally solve
problems ’
 igrat’ v ume v shaxmaty’ ‘play blindfold
chess’
 ??xranit’ v ume ‘store in one’s mind/intellect’
Soznanie
 holds freshly perceived information, is
responsible for the perception of the current
situation and for instant processing (the
human RAM)
 is rather small: aeto ne umeshchaetsja v
soznanii ‘the mind cannot accommodate it’
 soznanie zapolneno odnoj mysl’ju <odnim
voprosom> ‘the mind is full with the only
thought <the only topic>’
English equivalents of soznanie
 conscience
 consciousness
 sense
 mind
Three fundamental “faculties” of mind are
memory, imagination, and reason (Francis
Bacon, Novum Organum) –
Tri sfery soznanija: pamjat’, voobrazhenie i
razum
Pamjat’
 ‘the ability of a person A1 to store and recall
in his/her mind (v soznanii) images of
earlier perceived objects, experienced
feelings, and other earlier received
information of type A2, or an invisible organ
inside A1’s head which implements this
ability’
Pamjat’ as an ability
 xoroshaja pamjat’ na lica <na daty>
‘good memory for faces <dates>’
 zritel’naja <dvigatel’naja> pamjat’
‘visual <motor> memory’
 uxudshenie <poterja> pamjati
‘memory impairment <loss of memory>’
Pamjat’ as an organ
 otlozhit’sja v pamjati (lit. ‘be deposited in one’s
memory’) ‘stay in one’s memory’
 vyzyvat’ v pamjati (lit. ‘call force in one’s
memory’) ‘recall, remind’
 osvezhit’ v pamjati (‘refresh in one’s memory’)
 derzhat’ <xranit’> v pamjati (‘store in one’s
memory’)
 vyvetrit’sja iz pamjati (lit. ‘be weathered out of
one’s memory’) ‘be effaced from one’s memory’
Syncretic usage
Most of the cases:
 xoroshaja <blestjashchaja, cepkaja> pamjat’
‘good <brilliant, tenacious> memory’
 ploxaja <dyrjavaja, korotkaja> pamjat’ ‘bad
<sieve-like, short> memory’ (= kurinaja pamjat’
lit. ‘chicken’s memory’, devich’ja pamjat’
lit. ‘girl’s memory’)
 razvivat’ <uprazhnjat’> pamjat’ ‘to develop
to exercise> one’s memory’
Ability/organ disjunction
Quite regular in Russian:
 um ‘mind/intellect’
 sovest’ ‘conscience/Gewissen’
 voobrazhenie ‘imagination’
 dusha ‘soul’
 serdce ‘heart’
…
Polysemy of pamjat’
 1.1 ‘ability or organ’: good memory
 1.2 ‘memory of a device’: computer memory
 1.3 ‘memory of a substance’: memory effect
 2.1 ‘reminiscence’: memory of a tragedy
 2.2 ‘image of a late person’: dedicate to memory
 3 ‘a reminding object’: serviz kak pamjat’ o dede ‘dinner
set as a memory of the grandfather’
 4 obsolete ‘conscience’: lezhat’ bez pamjati ‘lay
unconscious’
Polysemy of zabyt’
 1 ‘cease to remember’: Ja zabyl tvoj telefon
‘I forgot your phone number’
 2 ‘leave elsewhere’: Ja zabyl zontik doma
‘I forgot my umbrella at home’
 3.1 ‘lose contacts’: Ne zabyvaj staryx druzej
‘Do not forget you old friends’
 3.2 ‘abandon’: On sovsem zabyl skripku
‘He entirely gave up playing violin’
Semantic invariant for zabyt’
 ‘shift from the center towards periphery’
 1: information present in the subject’s memory was not
there in his mind when needed, or it shifted to some
inaccessible domain
 2: information about the need to take or transfer an
object was not there in the subject’s mind when
needed
 3: a person (4: an occupation) shifted from the
subject’s center of interest
A model of forgetting
 Pamjat’ stores things that can be recalled
(vspomnit’) in the mind when needed, and the
forgotten information goes elsewhere in our head
 *Ja xranju ego imja v pamjati, no ne mogu
vspomnit’ ‘I keep his name in my memory but I
cannot remember it’
 vertet’sja v golove ‘run through one’s head’
 Ja vse zabyla… u menja pereputalos’ v golove
‘I forgot everything… it got mixed up in my head’
A model of memory
 pamjat’ ‘memory’: the ability to store and recall
information and the invisible organ in the head,
close to soznanie ‘conscience’ and um ‘mind’
 zapomnit’: intentionally or occasionally perceving
information, put it into pamjat’, where it can be
retrieved and put into soznanie
 pomnit’: zapomnit’ and be able to recall
 zabyt’: zapomnit’ , but later be unable to recall
 vspomnit’: retrieve from pamjat’ and recall
Next lecture
 Case studies. Lexicographic treatment of
artifacts. Everyday life vocabulary.