SELECTIVE ASPECTS IN POSSESSIVE STRUCTURES (BASED ON THE BELARUSIAN, RUSSIAN, ENGLISH AND ITALIAN LANGUAGES)

UDC 81'367.7

Apostol Olga Dumitruvna – Senior Lecturer, the Department of English for Natural Sciences, PhD student, the Department of Belarusian Linguistics. Belarusian State University (5 Akademika kurchatova str., 220045, Minsk, Republic of Belarus). E-mail: apostolvd@bsu.by

DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.52065/2520-6729-2025-291-12.

Key words: category of possessiveness, selective aspects, Belarusian language, Russian language, English language, Italian language.

For citation: Apostol O. D. Selective aspects in possessive structures (based on the belarusian, russian, english and italian languages). Proceedings of BSTU, issue 4, Print- and Mediatechnologies, 2025, no. 1 (291), pp. 85–92 (In Russian). DOI: 10.52065/2520-6729-2025-291-12.

Abstract

Possessiveness is one of the universal conceptual categories of language, the main meaning of which is the definition of the name of an object through its relation to a certain person or object (relative nomination). In both substantive and formal aspects, possessivity is associated with such categories as determination, predicativity, attribution, locativity, and semantic relativity (the presence of a relational seme in the semantic structure of a word). Possessivity is regularly expressed by lexical, syntactic, and morphological means, the set of which is different for each language. The article examines various selective aspects of possessive constructions, such as predicativity / attribution, identity / non-identity, abstractness / concreteness, alienation / inalienable, actualization / non-actualization in languages belonging to Slavic (Belarusian and Russian), Germanic (English) and Romance (Italian) groups. The article reveals the scientific foundations of the processes of conceptualization and categorization, which, being specific types of mental activity, contribute to the consolidation of a conceptual understanding of reality in consciousness, thereby influencing the development of speech activity. It is noted that consciousness, conceptualization, categorization, and speech-thinking activity act in dialectical unity and interrelation in the process of thinking and learning speech. Examples of contexts from classical literature and the language corpus are given. The study contains an extensive analysis of possessive structures, provides comparative data and classification of structures depending on selective categories. The importance of understanding how a person conceptualizes the surrounding reality through language is emphasized, especially in the context of possessiveness relationships. One of the reasons for these problems is that the concept of “selectivity” is not always clearly defined in the works of linguists, as well as the difference in the meanings of this concept in a number of sociohumanistic disciplines related to linguistics. The analysis of various types of possessiveness and their meanings allows us to get deeper into the relationship between language and reality. The field of application of the results is various kinds of scientific research on the specifics and problems of the processes of conceptualization and categorization in the construction and analysis of various linguistic worldviews. The results of the study are important for the theory and practice of language teaching, as they contribute to understanding the mechanisms of expression of possessiveness in different languages and understanding the complexity and diversity of possessive constructions.

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08.10.2024