ON THE SPECIFICS OF THE PRESENCE OF THE LEXEMES "SOBSTVENNOST" / "PROPERTY" IN THE TEXT CORPORA OF ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN LANGUAGES

Introduction

"The ability to verbalize thoughts is not only a distinctive feature of a person as a single individual but is also an unconditional essential characteristic of human community" [13, P. 94]. Among the most striking manifestations of the designated dichotomous – personal-social –nature of verbalization is an example of the verbalization of property relations: relations between individuals "about things that consist in the appropriation or ownership of material goods to one person and the corresponding alienation of these goods from all other persons" [9, P. 193].

Data and Methods

The concept "sobstvennost", as an integral component of national culture, can have its own distinctive features that characterize it as belonging to a certain national culture. It should be pointed out that the very concept "sobstvennost" and the phenomena associated with it are considered not only in the legal sciences but also in such branches of scientific knowledge as history, economics, sociology, psychology, political science, and in interdisciplinary sciences, such as, for example, cultural studies, socioculturology, theory intercultural communication. Interest in this concept and related phenomena is also awakened in linguistic sciences, such as, for example, terminology, comparative linguistics, linguopolitology, anthropolinguistics, linguoculturology, sociolinguistics, language theory for special purposes. The analysis of relations to the concept of "sobstvennost" also presents significant interest from the point of view of many historical disciplines (history of state, history of economics, history of philosophy, etc.).

With the development of information technologies, materials reflecting the state of modern languages are rapidly being transferred to the digital environment. As "a branch of applied linguistics related to the development of general principles for the construction and use of linguistic corpora (text corpora) using computer technologies" [5, p. 25], corpus linguistics declares its main task to be "the advancement of theoretical foundations and practical mechanisms for the creation and use of representative arrays of linguistic data intended for linguistic research in the interests of a wide range of users" [5, P. 29]. "The corpus of texts becomes an important tool of linguistic research, a source of data about the language under study – along with such traditional sources as linguistic introspection of the researcher, grammars, and dictionaries" [12, P. 1].

The available electronic text corpora accessible to the user via the Internet provide the researcher with the opportunity to conduct various types of analysis of language material.

The purpose of the study is a comparative examination of the functioning of the Russian lexeme "sobstvennost" and its English equivalent in speech situations of the Russian and English languages.

Appeal to S.I. Ozhegov's most famous dictionary of the Russian language provides the right to assert that "property (sobstvennost) is material values, property belonging to someone or being at the complete disposal of someone or something" [11, P. 738]. Consequently, the generic concept of "sobstvennost" (property) includes the concepts of "imushchestvo" (property) and "materialnye tsennosti" (material values) as composite structural components, which are specific. Lexemes designed to nominate these concepts can act as synonyms in certain speech situations, in other words, the specific terms "imushchestvo" and "materialnye tsennosti" can replace the generic term "sobstvennost".

Based on lexicographic data provided by the Oxford Dictionary of Law, Barron's Law Dictionary, S.I. Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary , A.B. Borisov's legal dictionary, it is established that the English equivalents of the Russian term "sobstvennost" are "property", "estate", "possession".

Results and Discussion

The main body of the Russian language, presented on the website www.ruscorpora.ru , as well as the British National Corps (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc /) offer a wide range of sources on various topics. While studying the list of documents with the lexemes under study, the authors put emphasis on the legal profile of the texts.

The analysis of text corpora showed the following results.

The national corpus of the Russian language contains 2,224 documents (100%) with the mention of the lexeme "sobstvennost". Of these, the largest part of the sources (works of art, magazines and newspapers on wide variety of topics) use the lexeme "sobstvennost" in its commonly used meaning, whereas only in about 130 documents the lexeme in question acts as a legal term, which is about 6%. For example: "Article 1.2. Ownership of the subsoil. The subsoil within the borders of the territory of the Russian Federation, including the underground space and minerals, energy and other resources contained in the subsoil, are state property" [6].

"The right of state ownership of objects of the animal world. The animal world within the territory of the Russian Federation is state property" [7].

"Article 34. Forms of ownership of water bodies. the Russian Federation establishes state ownership of water bodies. Municipal and private ownership is allowed only for isolated water bodies" [2].

Regarding the lexeme "imushchestvo", which is synonymous with the lexeme "sobstvennost", the Russian national corpus offers 2,311 documents (100%), of which only 8% (about 190 sources) recognise this lexeme as a legal term:

"On January 1, 2004, a tax on the property of organizations was introduced on the territory of the city of Moscow. Based on paragraph 1 of Article 374, the list of tax benefits for corporate property tax is provided in Article 381 of the Code and Article 5 of the Law" [3, P. 44-48].

As for the lexeme "materialnye tsennosti" as another synonym for the lexeme "sobstvennost", the Russian corpus offers 85 sources, of which only one finds the lexeme in question as a legal term, i.e. 1% out of 100%: "Article 660. Use of the property of the leased enterprise. Unless otherwise provided by the lease agreement of the enterprise, the lessee has the right, without the consent of the lessor, to sell, exchange, provide for temporary use or loan the material values that are part of the property of the leased enterprise, sublet them and transfer their rights and obligations under the lease agreement in respect of such values to another" [4].

Let's turn to the English equivalents of the Russian lexeme "sobstvennost", namely to its main equivalent, which is "property". The Oxford English Dictionary defines the lexeme "property" as: "that which one owns; a thing or things belonging to or owned by some person or persons; a possession (usually material), or possessions collectively; (one's) wealth or goods" [18].

In addition, the Oxford English Dictionary offers another meaning of the lexeme in question: "a piece of land owned; a landed estate" [18].

Based on the definitions given in the Oxford English Dictionary, we will attempt to analyze the synonyms of the lexeme “property”, which include the lexemes “estate” and “possession”.

One of the meanings of the English lexeme "estate" describes it as "property, possessions, fortune, capital" [18].

The English lexeme "possession" is described in the Oxford English Dictionary as follows: "that which is possessed or held as property; a thing possessed, a piece of property, something that belongs to one; possessions, property, wealth" [18].

Let's turn to the analysis of the frequency of use of these English lexemes in the British national corpus.

The British National Corpus records the lexeme “property” in 12369 documents (100%), the main body of which consists of fiction, poetry, personal letters, tabloid, and mass media articles, as well as user's manuals. The number of sources mentioning the legal term “property” totals 3250, 26% of the total number of documents. For example: “In the case of contracts creating continuing or recurrent liabilities incident to the disposition or holding of property, such as a settlement or a leasehold tenancy, the infant, on gaining full age, becomes bound unless within a reasonable time he takes steps to repay liability" [15].

As for the English lexeme “estate”, it is reflected in the British national corpus in 5273 documents, 596 of them use this lexeme as a legal term, thus making up 11% of 100%. Example: "Great simplifications have been made in the law as to estates and interests in land, with the result that the law of property has been made very much more uniform" [15].

The lexeme “possession“ is found in the British national corpus in 3097 sources (100%), 953 of them contain this lexeme as a legal term, i.e. 31% of the total: "the owner of land may be out of possession, and another without right may be in possession. In this case, the forcible retaking of possession is prohibited under penalties by statute; but the retaking, though punishable, is none the less effective to restore the possession" [15].

Conclusions

Based on the results obtained, the following conclusions can be drawn.

From the analysis of text corpora it is clear that in order to build the correct correlation of information fields reflecting the problems of property in Russian and English, one should proceed from an expansive interpretation of the lexeme "sobstvennost", enriching it with additional lexemes, such as "materialnye tsennosti", "imushchestvo". Only in this case, the amount of information displayed by such a complex of tokens will be acceptable for comparison with the corresponding information field in the English language, in which, in turn, the main lexeme “property” is supplemented by the lexemes “estate” and “possession”, the use of which is characterized by the features of the English linguistic worldview. In addition, like any semantic unit used in various spheres of life, the lexeme "sobstvennost" is used not only as a commonly used expression but also as a term.

The analysis of the Russian and the British corpora shows that the English language is more adapted to the display of the nuances of the phenomena of material life, whereas in Russian it is sufficient to use a more general concept to describe the same phenomenon in different contexts. The designated feature of the Russian language can be explained by its synthetic (antonomical logical) nature, due to which preference is more often given to the characteristics of the phenomena of material life, taking into account their original essence.

A feature of the behavior of the lexeme in question in English is a large (compared to the Russian language) multiplicity of shades of meanings, resulting from the nuances of subject-object relations in society in the context of the property problem, as well as presumably from local specific of language use.