Irina V. Timoshenko

PhD in Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of English Philology

Orel State University

(Orel, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2025-1-192-208

Abstract. This article presents the experience of studying the ways of expressing the category of noun reference in languages with articles and articleless ones using the method of interlingual contrastive analysis of parallel texts. The author considers various linguistic means for indicating the type of reference of nouns and nominative groups, in particular, articles and other determinatives. General and national-specific components of semantics for determinatives are revealed. The author's descriptive model of the functioning of linguistic units which are used to mark the referential meaning of nominal expressions is proposed. The author has identified three possible types of reference: "selection from the set", "attribution to the set" and "naming the set", for each of which typical linguistic means of expression are identified. The article analyses qualitatively and quantitatively the recorded cases of indicating the type of reference of nouns and noun groups. The author considers lexically differentiating ways of indicating one type of reference of a name as carriers of a common semantic meaning. The article also examines specific components of the referential index system that are characteristic of individual languages, such as the partial article in French. The author has chosen F. M. Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment and its translations into English, French and Portuguese (two translations in each of the languages under study) by native speakers of the target language for the study. This article is a logical continuation of a series of works devoted to the study of the functioning of articles in nonclosely related languages to indicate the referential meaning of nominal expressions and the relationship between the universal and national components in the semantics of the article.
Keywords: reference of nominal expressions, determinatives, semantics of the article, semantic invariant, category of reference.

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation: Timoshenko, IV 2025, ‘Studying the Reference of Noun Phrases in English, French, Portuguese and Russian Using Post-Translation Analysis’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 1 (21), pp. 192–208, https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2025-1-192-208 (in Russ.)

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