Russian uncertain/definite category: linguistic means and their speech functions

Author: Li Qin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-02-01
Features: For a long time, the category of uncertain/determined has been a challenge in Russian language research. Due to the lack of a complete morphological system for this category in Russian, traditional grammar, which primarily focuses on formal description, has never given it the attention and thorough research it deserves. However, with the recent decades of linguistic development toward functional, semantic, pragmatic, and textual approaches, the study of the uncertain/determined category has become increasingly important and urgent. This research, based on a comprehensive review of previous findings and grounded in the fundamental theories of functional grammar, takes semantic- pragmatic analysis as its main thread and expands the research scope from isolated sentences to discourse and text. It conducts a profound theoretical exploration of the grammatical attributes and structure of the uncertain/determined category in Russian, a language without articles, offering novel interpretations of its semantic composition and characteristics. It also provides a comprehensive scan and systematic classification and summary of the linguistic means used to express this category. Particularly noteworthy are the substantive advancements in the study of the use of these means, semantic shifts, the mechanisms by which the uncertain/determined meaning is realized in communication, and the functions of these means in discourse and text.