Home → Releases → 2 (58) →

AGENTIVITY AS A SEMANTIC CATEGORY: THE ONTOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF LANGUAGE STRUCTURE

Linguistic Theory. Cross-cultural Communication Theory , UDC: 81’37 DOI: 10.24412/2076-913X-2025-258-139-159

Authors

  • Strizhak Uliana P. PhD (Pedagogy), Associate Professor

Annotation

The nature of human behavior as a subject of social processes. The subject of this work is the agentive features of participants studied by their correlation with a set of characteristics that reflect the activity potential of a human personality. The research background of the agentivity theory demonstrates that the main controversial points discussed in grammatical descriptions of agentive structures largely reflect issues of everyday human existence. Objectification of these existential relations within linguistic agentive structures leads to construct an utterance in a certain way which is based on the corresponding ontological assumptions about what and how is arranged in the real world. It also makes it possible to measure the activity features with linguistic tools. Based on the methodological statement of the isomorphism of the real world structure and language structures, the ontological essence of the semantic category of agentivity is considered and the agent prototype in various spheres of scientific and public life is analyzed: in political science, psychology, law, religion, education and other discourses. It is substantiated that the ontological basis of agentive properties is the personal and activity potential of the agent as a referent of a linguistic sign. The purpose of this paper is to identify, to systematize and to hierarchize the agentive features of causality, autonomy, volition and individualization. Based on the examples from Japanese texts the ambiguity of the effect semantics in the structure of agentive predicates, as well as the heterogeneity of agentive features of their participants will be illustrated.
Tags:
agency , agentivity , animacy , causality , ontological essence , volition

How to link insert

Strizhak, U. P. (2025). AGENTIVITY AS A SEMANTIC CATEGORY: THE ONTOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF LANGUAGE STRUCTURE Bulletin of the Moscow City Pedagogical University. Series "Pedagogy and Psychology", 2 (58), 139. https://doi.org/10.24412/2076-913X-2025-258-139-159
References
1. 1. Cruse, D. A. (1973). Some thoughts on agentivity. Journal of Linguistics, 9(1), 11–23.
2. 2. Fillmore, Ch. (1968). The case for case. In: E. Bach and R. T. Harms (Eds.). Universals in linguistic theory (p. 1–25).
3. 3. Fillmore, Ch. (1983). Basic problems of lexical semantics. New in Foreign Linguistics, XII, 74–122. (In Russ.).
4. 4. Comrie, В. (1978). Ergativity. Syntactic typology. Austin L. https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/books/typology/7-ergativity
5. 5. Hopper, P. J., & Thompson, S. A. (1980). Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language, 56(2), 251–299.
6. 6. Lakoff, G. (1981). Linguistic Gestalts. New in Foreign Linguistics, X, 350–372. (In Russ.).
7. 7. DeLancey, S. (1984). Notes on agentivity and causation. Studies in language, 8, 181–213.
8. 8. DeLancey, S. (1990). Crosslinguistic evidence for the structure of the agent prototype. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 29 (р. 141–147). Stanford University.
9. 9. Rakhilina, E. V., & Testelets, Ya. G. (2016). Charles Fillmore’s legacy and modern theoretical linguistics. Voprosy yazykoznaniya, 2, 7–21. (In Russ.).
10. 10. Fomina, M. A. (2022). Subject in Russian models that convey information about elemental forces of nature and their semantic component being active (+ / –). MCU Journal of Philology. Theory of Linguistics. Linguistic Education, 4(48), 126–136. https://www.doi.org/10.25688/2076-913X.2022.48.4.10 (In Russ.).
11. 11. Pozdnyakova, E. M. (2017). Event as a cognitive structure. In V. I. Zabotkina (Eds.). Representation of events: an integrated approach from the standpoint of cognitive sciences (p. 93–111). Languages of Slavic culture. (In Russ.).
12. 12. Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary. (1990). V. N. Yartseva (Ed.). Soviet Encyclopedia. https://tapemark.narod.ru/les/017b.html (In Russ.).
13. 13. Bondarko, A. V. (1992). On the problem of the relationship between universal and idioethnic aspects of semantics: the interpretative component of grammatical meanings. Voprosy Jazykoznanija, 5, 5–20. (In Russ.).
14. 14. Shabanova, T. D. (1998). Semantic model of English sight verbs: a theoretical and experimental study [Dissertation … Doctor of Philological Sciehces: 10.02.04. Ufa]. (In Russ.).
15. 15. Suleimanova, O. A. (2000). Relevant types of impersonal syntactic structures and their semantic correlates [Dissertation … Doctor of Philological Sciehces: 10.02.19,10.02.01. Moscow]. (In Russ.).
16. 16. Boldyrev, N. N. (2003). Invariants and prototypes in systemic and functional categorization of the English verb. In Problems of functional grammar: semantic invariance/variability (p. 54–74). Nauka. (In Russ.).
17. 17. Seliverstova, O. N. (1990). Contrastive syntactic semantics: (an attempt at description). Nauka. (In Russ.).
18. 18. Plungyan, V. A. (2011). Introducing grammatical semantics: grammatical values and grammatical systems in the world’s languages. RSUH. (In Russ.).
19. 19. Testelets, Ya. G. (2003). Grammatical hierarchy and the typology of a sentence [Dissertation … Doctor of Philological Sciehces: 10.02.20. Moscow]. (In Russ.).
20. 20. Arutyunova, N. D. (1976). The sentence and its meaning: logical and semantic problems. Science. (In Russ.).
21. 21. Paducheva, E. V. (2003). Taxonomic category as a parameter of verb lexical meaning. Russian Language in Scientific Illumination, 2(6), 192–216. (In Russ.).
22. 22. Ustinova, E. V. (2007). The functional and semantic field of agency/non-agency in the modern Russian literary language of the 20th-early 21st centuries [Abstract of the dissertation for the PhD (Philology): 10.02.01. Rostov-on-Don]. (In Russ.).
23. 23. Knyazev, Yu. P. (2016). Agency as a gradation scale. Psixolingvisticheskie aspekty` izucheniya rechevoj deyatel`nosti, 14, 146–155. (In Russ.).
24. 24. Wittgenstein, L. (2020). Tractatus logico-philosophicus. AST. (In Russ.).
25. 25. Sørensen, J. (2007). Acts that work: a cognitive approach to ritual agency. Method and theory in the study of religion, 19, 281–300.
26. 26. Mansell, S., Ferguson, J., Gindis, D., & Pasternak, A. (2018). Rethinking corporate agency in business, philosophy and law. Journal of Business Ethics, 154(3), 1–17.
27. 27. Yano, S., Hayashi, Yo., Murata, Yu., Imamizu, H., Maeda, T., & Kondo, T. (2020). Statistical learning model of the sense of agency. Frontiers in Psycology, 11, 1–13.
28. 28. Jorgensen, M. W., & Phillips, L. J. (2008). Discourse Analysis. Theory and Method. Humanitarian Center. (In Russ.).
29. 29. Sorokin, P. S. (2021). «Transforming Agency» as a Subject of Sociological Analysis: Contemporary Debates and the Role of Education. RUDN Journal of Sociology, 21(1), 124–138. (In Russ.).
30. 30. Duranti, A. (2004). Agency in Language. A Companion to linguistic anthropology (p. 451–473). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
31. 31. Arutyunova, N. D. (2003). Will and Freedom. In N. D. Arutyunova (Eds.). Logical analysis of language. Cosmos and chaos. Conceptual fields of order and disorder (p. 73–99). Indrik. (In Russ.).
32. 32. Schlesinger, I. M. (1989). Instruments as agents: on the nature of semantic relations. Journal of Linguistics, 25(1), 189–210.
33. 33. Dowty, D. (1991). Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language, 67(3), 547–619.
34. 34. Grimm, S. (2011). Semantics of case. Morphology, 21(3–4), 515–544.
35. 35. Strizhak, U. P. (2024). Japanese agentivity: linguistic behavior of somatic actants (based on corpus data). Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta. Vostokovedenie i afrikanistika, 2024, 16(1), 113–133. (In Russ.).
Download file .pdf 448.69 kb