Semantics and Ways of Expressing the Plural of Nouns in Russian and Japanese Languages

要旨

Purpose. The study compares the ways to express the plural, as well as categories connected with these ways, and the semantics of plurality in Russian and Japanese languages which are genetically and typologically unrelated: Russian is an inflectional language and Japanese is an agglutinative one. Results. There is a grammatical category of singular and plural in Russian. This category is missing in Japanese, but there is a lexical-semantic category. The concept of singularity and plurality is not represented in Japanese. Number may be actualized by the speaker if the object (animate or inanimate) enters the speaker’s personal zone or a personification takes place. There is only one way to express plurality in Russian – by using flexions of plurality. There are four ways to do that in Japanese which are markers of plurality, classifiers, reduplication and combined dvandva (a word with coordinative connection between components of the whole word). The usage of inflections to express plurality is mandatory in Russian, but the usage of plurality markers in Japanese is probabilistic. Conclusion. A common category for Russian and Japanese languages which is important for expressing plurality is the category of animation. The similar meanings of plurality both in Russian and in Japanese is collective, representative and indefinite discrete plurality expressed in different ways.

主題