Asymmetry in English, Russian and Uzbek pronouns

Abstract

Gak explained this aspect of asymmetry as: ‘Human perception of reality and its designation always occurs in a certain probability: the speaker always has information about the situation ,denoted subjects, their features, correlatives, actions. This primary information is called presupposition. Presupposition predetermines the possibility of the usage of language element in the speech. Without prejudice for information some elements of reality and their distinctive

lexical features can be omitted. If they were known in advance by the speakers, as presupposition.

It may be noted two kinds of preliminary information on which speakers may rely:

a) the knowledge common to all people, or for people who belong to this social community;

b) knowledge relating to a particular situation.

For the correct usage of the language, it is especially important to take into consideration of the first mentioned kind of knowledge, and its “reflection” in the language.’(Gak,1977: 20).

As, it was mentioned above there is a particular asymmetry in translation interrogative sentences from one language to another. The asymmetry in translation of some questions has influence on the choice of interrogative pronouns. Here is a table for some of these examples: Table of asymmetry in usage of interrogative pronouns in the same questions in English, Russian and Uzbek languages

According to the Gak’s theory this change in the semantic meaning of the interrogative pronouns can be considered as the process of shift in the meaning.

The shift in the meaning occurs in the transition from one name of particular concept (A) to another (B) within the common general concept. For example:

The French word “journal” is translated into English as : ‘newspaper’ (newspaper — daily informational edition) — in Russian , English and Uzbek languages this word denotesanother type of informational , periodical edition (magazine).

In contrast to the expansion, the shift in the meaning observed inspeech only in stable combinations ( for example replacement of one interrogative pronoun by another in the process of translation the same question to another language) ( Gak, 1977:31).

Conclusion.

In the research the symmetry and asymmetry in translation from one language to another (here: English, Russian and Uzbek) were observed and analyzed at the examples of interrogative pronouns. For the analysis and comparison in this research was used the framework of Russian linguist V.G. Gak. Because in his works he paid attention to detailed analysis of semantic aspects of the words in correlation with their syntactic features, using the method of comparison of lexicology of different languages on the basis of semantic meaning, syntactic features and functional categories of the words in particular language. In his books he explained differences in semantic aspects of the words, causing their asymmetry in translation to other languages. So, his framework was used in this research not only for comparative analysis, but also in order to explain the reason of differences in semantic aspects and syntactic correlation.

Reference:

1. Annual review of applied linguistics 24 (pp. 109–125). Cambridge, England:Cambridge University Press

2. Gak.V.G (1977) “COMPARATIVE LEXICOLOGY (On a material French and Russian languages) “International Relations” Moscow.

3. GakV.G (1998 ) “Semantic structure of the word as a component of the semantic structure ofthe utterance”. // Language conversion. M .: Languages of Russian culture.

4. Kasymova N.F (2011) "Asymmetry in translation of interrogative sentences with question word ’WHAT’ (based on the English, Russian and Uzbek languages). Bulletin of the Chelyabinsk State University.№ 11 (226)