Causative Verbs with Permissive Meanings: a Case Study of the Buryat and Russian Languages

The article provides a comparative study of causative verbs in structurally different languages. The article aims to identify some semantic and functional features of causative verbs with permissive meanings in the Buryat and Russian languages. The main methods applied hereto include the comparative method, method of component and distributive analysis, and survey of informants. The actual materials for the study have been data contained in Buryat-Russian interlingual dictionaries, examples selected through continuous sampling from Buryat-language literary works, messages of informants. The paper presents a theoretical research base dealing with semantics of the permissive, describes its main expressive ways (means) in the Buryat and Russian languages, it also suggests contextual conditions for updating the permissive in the Buryat discourse, combinability and some grammatical signs. The permissive serves to express a situation when the causer permits an action but does not compel anyone to perform it. Permissive patterns revealed for the majority of Russian full verbs are rare enough, Buryat-language full verbs being able to express a permissive meaning within one lexeme only. The Russian and Buryat languages also provide a possibility to express permissive meanings of causation analytically, i.e., with the aid of poly-predicative constructions involving the verbs of volitional influence, such as зүбшөөхэ ‘permit’, хорихо ‘forbid’, үгэхэ ‘give’. And this method is actually central to the Russian language. Furthermore, the article proposes to consider the contextual conditions of actualization of permissive meanings in the Buryat language. Thus, such conditions included the imperative situation with a speaker without denial, the meaning of negligence, meaning of ‘unpleasant’ action, meaning of assumption. For the Buryat language, contextual interpretations of verbs of factitive and permissive causation with the aid of the sign ‘pleasantness / troublesomeness’ of action for the subject are important. The permissive is most often associated with the value of ‘pleasantness’ of action. In the Buryat language there are causative verbs containing — in their lexical meanings — semes of both the permissive and factuality. The compatibility (co-occurrence) of permissive verbs is rather wide, and the latter have limited compatibility with verbs of emotional state only since this sphere is difficult to manage, and to influence an individual through allowing to express certain emotions. At the morphological level, Buryat affixes are not divided into ones to express factitive causation and ones with permissive meaning. The same causative morpheme can serve to denote both the meanings. The article shows that double causation can be a means to express the permissive in the Buryat language.

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