The semantics of SJA in Russian: Focus on the action

This study focuses on the semantics of the reflexes of Late Common Slavic se in Russian in comparison with Czech, Polish, and Macedonian. The reflexes in Slavic languages show similar forms and uses, but in some instances there are slight semantic differences among the languages. Russian has two different variations for the reflex: sja and s'. Verbs with these reflexes are known to express passive and middle meanings in addition to the reflexive meaning. The reflexive meaning functions as a prototype alongside the passive meaning. Other meanings are motivated by these two prototypes, but the motivation for each use varies depending on the factors such as the lexical meaning of the verb, pragmatic information of the sentence, etc.; Semantic structure is comprised of an action or situation and its participant(s). The prototypical meanings---the reflexive and passive meanings express the focus on the action meant by the verb. The reflexive meaning shows change in the semantic structure, especially related to the role of the participant(s). The passive construction signals different emphasis on the action by a speaker without the change shown in the reflexive construction. The other types of SJA sentence show their own semantic features which can be explained in a semantic network with two prototypical meanings.; Data from digitized corpora provide the contextual information as well as the semantic information for the sentences. The analyzed contextual information imparted by a SJA verb can be verified through the comparison with corresponding non-SJA sentences or with sentences of similar meaning.; The reflexes in Czech, Macedonian, and Polish show analogous meanings to Russian SJA, but there are different uses of the reflexes. These differences can also be explained through the relationship between the prototypical and peripheral meanings of the reflexes.; The prototypes and peripheral meanings are connected to each other by means of conceptual metaphor and metonymy based on the language-specific factors. These reflexes show a linguistic phenomenon specific to Slavic languages and the semantics of these reflexes can be explained through the Slavic perspective on the world.