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ON THE VARIATION OF THE WAYS OF EXPRESSING CONCESSIVE RELATIONSHIPS (ON THE MATERIAL OF SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES) // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2022. Issue 6 (224). P. 34-44

Introduction. The research is carried out within the framework of the theory of functional grammar and is aimed at studying semantic features of concessive relations and specialized means of their expression in Russian. The formal and substantial variability of concessionary constructions is noted, and an assumption of stylistic heterogeneity of language units expressing the semantics of concession is suggested. Material and methods. In spite of the research of concessionality, including its representation as a constituent part of the conditionality field, the semantics of concession and its expressive means have not been previously examined from the aspect of functional and stylistic usage. The formal, semantic and stylistic variation of concessionary units, conditioned by communicative settings and linguistic features of scientific style, are studied. The texts of the nuclear genre of scientific discourse – 3708 scientific articles of different thematic orientation, published in ranked Russian journals – were used as the material. Results and discussion. Scientific works devoted to the linguistic expression of concessive relations in Russian demonstrate the complexity and heterogeneity of this type of semantics and different ways of its expression. The analysis of concessive constructions in scientific articles on philology, history, biology, engineering and information science and economics shows that complex sentences with the conjunctions despite/disregarding that, but, however, although, as well as simple sentences with the prepositions despite/disregarding, despite, regardless of, etc., can be considered as special means of expressing these meanings in scientific language. On the basis of the quantitative data obtained, the article presents the percentage ratio of concessionary units in scientific articles on different topics and reveals the productive means of expressing the concession for each topic. From the point of view of the concession field, the most typical particular meanings of the concession (concessive-predicative, concessive-restrictive and real-concessive) and the absence of other meanings realized in other styles of the Russian language (concessive-predicative, concessive-retributive and reinforced-concessive meanings) were revealed. Conclusion. As a result of the study the average indicator of concessionary relations in the articles on different topics of scientific style was established, the substantive, formal and stylistic variation of concessionary units was noted, the correlation between the thematic focus of the articles under consideration and certain means of expressing concession was revealed, which requires further study.

Keywords: functional grammar, concessive relations, variation of linguistic means, scientific style, scientific article

Conditional relations and means of their expression through the prism of functional approach (on the material of scientific articles) // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2024. Issue 3 (233). P. 16-27

In modern studies of language, the focus of attention is on the functional features of linguistic phenomena. Functional grammar is no exception, describing the structure, content and functioning of semantic categories around which functional-semantic fields are organised, covering the whole language space and its different levels (aspectuality, modality, quantity, quality, etc.). This study considers condition as a subfield of the conditionality field, which also includes the subfields of cause, purpose, consequence and concession, which are closely related to each other both by internal logical relations and by means of their expression. Despite a number of studies devoted to the structure of the conditionality subfield and its separate manifestations, including conditional constructions, conjunctions and prepositions, the issues of discourse variability of the components of this subfield have not been specifically considered. Conditional relations seem to be most significant for scientific discourse, on the material of which this study is based. The scientific literature describes the conditional meanings characteristic of the corresponding constructions and constituting the content plan of the condition subfield. These are real-conditional, potential-conditional, unreal-conditional, as well as non-conditional meanings – conditional-temporal meaning, conditional-causal, conditional-consequential, conditional-purpose, conditional-concessive, conditional-explanatory. Thus, the conditional semantics is in the intersection with related meanings (including conditionality), is extremely diverse, as well as diverse means of its expression - at the level of simple (to be a condition, to condition, at, under condition, in the case of, etc.) and complex (with conjunctions if, if, if only, when, etc.) sentences. This study is based on the assumption that the means of expressing conditional semantics vary in different thematic types of scientific discourse. Turning to the core genre of scientific discourse – the scientific article – confirms this assumption. The material of the study was 3 708 articles from the peer-reviewed journals “The World of Russian Word” and “Bulletin of Tomsk State University”. In the course of the analysis, more than 60 000 contexts with conditional meanings, collected by the method of continuous sampling, from articles on philology, history, biology, computer science and informatics, and economics were considered. The analysis showed that not all private meanings of conditionality presented in the language are manifested in scientific discourse. When expressing conditional relations in the articles of the five mentioned subjects, the central position is occupied by simple sentences with the preposition at, at the level of a complex sentence the marker of conditional semantics is the conjunction if. The qualitative and quantitative indicators with regard to conditional constructions for articles of different themes differ significantly. Thus, the study shows the variability of the expression plan and content plan of the conditional subfield, the differences in the use of conditional units in different types of scientific discourse.

Keywords: functional grammar, conditional field, conditional subfield, conditional relations, scientific discourse