Animacy in the East Slavic Languages

Student: Sandler Valeriia

Educational Programme: Philology (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 9

Year of Graduation: 2020

The object of this work is to determine what differences exist between Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages in the distribution of animate marking. The paper presents an analysis of various aspects of the category of animacy in the East Slavic languages. In particular, the paper investigates the “degree of animacy” in constructions with numerals “two”, “three”, “four”, “several”. The paper also presents a study of the distribution of animate marking in phraseological units that are headed by animate nouns and denote inanimate objects. Expressions like these are considered: лежачий полицейский, солнечный зайчик, воздушный змей, однорукий бандит. All examples and quantitative data used in this work are taken from the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian corpora of the Sketch Engine system.

Full text (added May 27, 2020)

Student Theses at HSE must be completed in accordance with the University Rules and regulations specified by each educational programme.

Summaries of all theses must be published and made freely available on the HSE website.

The full text of a thesis can be published in open access on the HSE website only if the authoring student (copyright holder) agrees, or, if the thesis was written by a team of students, if all the co-authors (copyright holders) agree. After a thesis is published on the HSE website, it obtains the status of an online publication.

Student theses are objects of copyright and their use is subject to limitations in accordance with the Russian Federation’s law on intellectual property.

In the event that a thesis is quoted or otherwise used, reference to the author’s name and the source of quotation is required.

Search all student theses