Marek Łaziński
The Polish-Russian Parallel Corpus.
Infinitive sentences in Russian and
Polish
Mainz Workshop on Slavic Paralell Corpora
September the 10th, 2012
Presentation Plan
• Polish-Russian Parallel Corpus.
• Project description
• Structure
• Tagging and disambiguation
• Russian and Polish Infinitives in the presented
p
corpus and in other corpora…
• ….against the background of Anna Wierzbickas
theory of the passive orientation to life coded in
the Russian use of the infnitive.
Polish-Russian Parallel Corpus
•A project of the University of Warsaw
• In cooperation with the Russian National Corpus,
the National Corpus of Polish and (at the initial
stage) - with the Bashkir State Pedagogical
University in Ufa.
•The project aims to collect 50 million words,
words 50%
of Polish originals translated into Russian and 50%
vice versa.
• Third language texts were also included
recently.
Access
•The University of Warsaw provides the
corpus with its own search program and
with a WWW interface.
• www.pol-ros.polon.uw.edu.pl
•The Russian National Corpus gives access
t Polish
to
P li h texts
t t within
ithi the
th parallel
ll l
multilingual sub-corpus.
Structure of the corpus
•At present about 8 million tokens (4 million in each
language), accessible for search by word form, lemma
and grammatical tags.
• The next 3 million words in aligned texts are waiting for the
import into the database now.
•Text sources (today)
•
•
•
•
almost 100 fiction books from over 100 years
over 40 contemporary press articles
some religious texts including the New Testament
law codes and acts.
•The literature-centrism is justified by Polish and Russian
lexicographic tradition.
The scheme of the data base
Search program
• A user-friendly box interface offers a search for
• orthographic word
• lemmas
• Part of speech and grammatical categories
according to the tagset of the National Corpus of
Polish.
Polish
• The search for a grammatical category in Russian
non- disambiguated texts results in a threatening
excess of possibilities.
Infinitives in Wierzbickas theory
•Two different ways of viewing one’s life:
• agentive orientation in terms of ‘what I do’
• patientive orientation in terms of ‘what happens to me’
•In English (German and Polish) even necessity is
expressed in the personal, nominative-like mode
• I have to go tomorrow.
• Muszę jutro jechać.
jechać
•In Russian dative constructions are more common
than nominative ones.
• Mne zavtra (nado/neobxodimo) exat’. (Ja dožhen eat’)
• West Slavic languages have borrowed the personal verb
musieć from German, East Slavic languages have
impersonal verbs nado/trjabva with dative subject.
Dativus cum Infinitivo
• The patientive orientation is said to be expressed
most distinctly by the dative-infinitive sentences
without lexical modals (hence DcI).
• Ne byvat’ Egorju na Rusi svjatoj.
• ‘Egor wasn’t fated to come to Holy Russia.’
• ...vidja,
vidja čto on brošen i odinok,
odinok čto nekomu
nekomu-1
1 emu
emu-2
2
pomoč‘.
• (The dative 1 nekomu is a subject of the infinitive, the
dative 2 – emu is its indirect object)
• …widząc, że jest samotny i porzucony przez wszystkich
, że nikt mu nie chce pomóc.
• …seeing that he was abandoned and alone, and there
was no one to help him.
Pragmatic types of infinitive sentences
(according to Wierzbicka)
1. I want
• What one wants (or might want) one cannot do (agentivesVerb,
dative subject)
• Ne projti, ne proexat‘.
• Bes vsenarodnogo golosovanija ětogo ne rešit‘.
• What I want may not happen (non-agentive Verb, no dative
subject)
• Byt‘ pervym vol‘no odinokim, i videt čto blizka meta...
2. It would be good/bad
• Personal wish (agentive verb, usually with particle by)
• Sejčas by zakurit‘
• A wish directed to somebody else
• Elena tebe by v ministrax byt‘
• Apprehension (that sth. wrong can happen)
• Bezobrazno drožali ruki... Stakan by ne vyronit‘
Pragmatic types of infinitive sentences
(according to Wierzbicka)
3. I should
• Current obligation (a need combined with a personal wish)
• Pora idti nam s toboj
• One doesn‘t know what one should do or how (unability to act)
• No čto že delat‘?
4. I have to
• Present necessity (less control than by the current obligation)
• Ty ne pej mnogo. […] Tebe mašinu vesti.
• Similar classifications by Veyranc (1979), Maurice
(1996) or Bricyn (1993).
• Polish modal infinitives classified by Bartnicka.
Infinitive sentences and the dative
subject
•The most common pragmatic functions of the infinitive
attested for Russian can also be found in today’s Polish
(some of them are archaic or stylistically marked).
•The main difference between the Polish and Russian use
of infinitives comes down to the accessibility of the dative
subject in Russian and the lack of it in Polish.
•The subjest of the action expressed by the Polish infinitive
(mostly covered in the surface structure) must be animate
or at least concrete. The Russian allows for abstract
subjects too.
DCI in Polish - stylistically marked or
archaic
• Póki Ponarom stać, Niemnowi płynąć / Póty w Litwie
Sopliców imieniowi słynąć.
• ‘As long as the Ponar Forest will grow, as long as the
Niemen will flow, the name Soplica will be famous.’
(Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz)
• Wam
W kkury szczaćć prowadzić,
d ić a nie
i politykę
lit k robić.
bić
• ‚You should walk the hen to piss instead of going into
politics.‘ (Józef Piłsudski to his co-workers in 1918)
Does a dative subject exist in Polish?
•Słodowicz (2008, 51-52) claims the dative pronoun
traditionally labeled as subjects of infinitives to be
subjests of non-verbal predicates:
• Łatwo było nam odwieść go od tego bohaterskiego czynu.
• ‘It was easy for us to dissuade him from this heroic deed’
•But Słodowicz does take into consideration infinitive
sentences without a non-verbal predicate, where the
dative agentive argument must be the subject of it.
Infinitives in the Intercorp
•The Russian translation of Kundera’s Unbearable
Lightness of Being contains 2831 infinitives.
• 644 sentences with no infinitives in their Czech
translation.
• 608 sentences with no infinitives in their Polish
translation.
• 400 sentences with no infinitives in their Polish and
Czech translation.
The difference in the dependent infinitves
•Czech does not know the infinitive complement with żeby/čtoby
(similar to the German um zu) and uses the subjective instead:
• Odnaždy pozvonil kajoj-to ženščine, čtoby dogovoritsja s nej o vstreče.
• Któregoś dnia dzwonił do pewnej kobiety, żeby umówić się z nią na
schadzkę.
• Jednou jí telefonoval nějaké ženě, aby si s ní smluvil schůzku.
•Polish and to lesser extent Czech uses often gerund complement
where Russian requires
q
an infinitive:
• Słuchaj, już od dawna mnie nie bawi noszenie codziennie w pysku rogalika .
• Poslušaj, mne uže nadoelo každyj den´ nosit´
´ vo rtu rogalik.
•The infinitive attribute (complement of a noun) is often in Russian,
but scarce in Polish and Czech.
• Imějęti ouši slūšati da slūšit. Kto imeet uši slyšat’, da slyšit! (Mt. 11.15)
• He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. (Webster)
• Kdo má uši, slyš.
• Kto ma uszy ku słuchaniu/do słuchania, niechaj słucha.
•See Řeháček 1961, Łaziński 2011, Petkevič 2012
The difference in the infinitve sentences
• Polish avoids infinitive directives and use the nondistinct imperative where Russian use the infinitive:
• Molčat‘ – vskriknul Pilat i bešenym vzorom lastočku...
• Zamilcz! - krzyknął Piłat i powiódł wściekłym spojrzeniem za
jaskółką...
• The rule does not need to be illustrated in a corpus.
p MS
Words commands are sufficient here:
• Zapisz / Soxranit Speichern Save
• Wytnij / Vyrezat‘ Entfernen Cut
• Wklej / Vstavit‘ Einfügen Past
The difference in the infinitive sentences –
Dativus cum Infinitivo
•There are 366 Russian sentences with the noun in dative
followed by an infinitive in 6 novels accessible in Polish,
German, Russian and Czech in Parasol.
•155 out of these sentences contain a personal pronoun in
dative followed by an infinitive and not following a
personal verb.
•
•
•
•
•
Čto nam delat‘? but not: On sovetoval nam delat…
Lučše by tebe ubrat´
´sja otsjuda.
I vse že ne mne brosit´
´ ten´ podozrenija na dostojnejšix osob.
Tak s kakogo že okna mne načinat’?
…dovelos’ takomu proizvesti ešče v vosemnadcatom veke.
The difference in the infinitve sentences –
Dativus cum Infinitivo
•55 Polish sentences contain no dative pronoun, but they
contain infinitives as complements of personal verbs.
•Tak s kakogo že okna mne načinat’?
•To od którego okna mam zacząć?
•Well, which window do you want me to start with ? ‘
•I vse že ne mne brosit´
´ ten´ podozrenija na dostojnejšix osob.
•Lecz nie ja rzucę cień podejrzenia na ludzi tak zasłużonych.
•And far be it from me to cast Any shadow of suspicion on such Worth
men.
•…dovelos’ takomu proizvesti ešče v vosemnadcatom veke.
•…że też coś podobnego mogło się jeszcze zdarzyć w osiemnastym
wieku !
•Oh , that such a thing had happened, here in the eighteenth century.
•(In the last sentence the dative subject refers to an event. Such
structure is impossible in Polish.)
The difference in the infinitve sentences –
Dativus cum Infinitivo
•Only 15 Polish sentences do not contain infinitive at all.
•
•
•
•
Lepiej zmywaj się stąd.
Lučše by tebe ubrat´sja otsjuda.
You’d better Get lost.
(Most of them are examples of a common phrase Co
począć?/ Co robić?
Conclusion
• The difference between the number of Polish and
Russian infinitives concerns mostly infinitives as
complements of personal verbs.
• Some of Russian DCI sentences are translated into
Polish by a nominative subject and personal verb
governing
i iinfinitive,
fi i i some off them
h
contain
i only
l a
simple personal predicate.
• The difference in the use of infinitive sentences
comes down to the different role of dative
argument.
Open question
• The small scale corpus search seems to confirm
Maurice’s explanation.
• But the difference in the use of dative subject seems
to be more important than the difference in the use
of infinitives.
• Whether
Wh h the
h difference
diff
in
i the
h use off the
h DCI
between Russian and Polish reveals any difference
in a collective orientation to life remains an open
question.
References
Bartnicka B. 1982: Funkcje semantyczno-składniowe bezokolicznika we
współczesnej polszczyźnie, Ossolineum, Wrocław – Warszawa – Kaków –
Gdańsk.
Bricyn V.M. 1990: Sintaksis i semantika russkogo infinitiva, Naukova dumka,
Kiev.
Łaziński M., 2011, Kto imeet uši slyšat’, da slyšit! Funkcje semantyczne
bezokolicznika jako nadrzędnego predykatu w zdaniu polskim i rosyjskim,
in: Różne formy, różne treści. Tom ofiarowany Profesorowi Markowi
Świdzińskiemu, red. M. Bańko, D. Kopcińska, Warszawa, s. 139
139-150.
150.
Maurice F. 1995: Der Modale Infinitiv in der modernen russischen
Standardsprache, Zürich.
Petkevič V., 2011, Syntactic functions of infinitive in contemporary Czech, in
print.
Řeháček L., 1961, Syntaktická funkce polského infinitivu ve srovnání s češtinou,
in: Sborník slavistických prací věnovaných k IV. mezinárodnímu. sjezdu
slavistů v Moskvě, Praga 1958, S. 52-64.
Słodowicz S 2009, Control in Polish Complement Clauses, München.
Veyrenc, J. 1979, Les propositions infinitives en russe, Paris.
Wierzbicka A. 1992, Semantics, Culture and Cognition, New York