Ways of expressing the category of instrumentality in retranslated texts

Abstract

The category of instrumentality remains a research niche due to the interrelation of many cognitive and linguistic factors during its implementation in language. This study can contribute to the improvement of methodology and tools for automated propositional analysis of natural language texts. The article aims to identify the types and frequency of instrumentality manifestations in oral immediate recalls. The dataset comprises two reading texts on Social Studies and 34 immediate text-based oral recalls (2779 words in total). The study involved 34 native Russian 5th graders aged 11-12. For the types and range of modifications in expressing the semantic roles of instrumentality, the recalls were analyzed individually and later contrasted with the original texts. The findings showed that the most typical modifications of Instruments in Russian recalls are diathesis shift, excorporation or dismantling of verbs integrated into constructions, and redistribution of semantic roles including replacement of Instrument with Causator, Theme and the Circumstants of Place. Based on the variety of modifications, all the means of manifesting the semantic role of instrumentality registered in our dataset fall into two groups. The first group comprises all the above types of modification, as well as Human Psychological State and Perception. The second group consists of Incorporated verbs and Instrumental actions that were reproduced by respondents using the “extraction” strategy with virtually no lexical loss. The findings expand our understanding of the varieties of expressing the category of instrumentality in oral speech, as well as the specifics of generating secondary texts. They can find application in the studies of receptive and productive speech activity as well as in automating propositional analysis of Russian texts.