Approaches to the general theory of approximation and partial status of lexical approximators in the Russian language

About the authors:

Dmitrii G. Demidov, Dr. Sci. (Philol.), Professor, Department of the Russian Language, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia
demidoffs@rambler.ru, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6202-1411
Zhang Wenzhe, Postgraduate Student, Department of the Russian Language, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia; zhangwenzhe@yandex.ru

Abstract:

The theoretical justification of the semantic category of approximation, expressing the approximate naming of an object or attribute, is considered from the perspective of philosophical realism. It is achieved through a substitute for the proper name of a thing, indicated by the approximator. The ontological nature of the word lies at its core, with its internal idea connected to the thing beyond itself. In every culture, a word undergoes its own movement from idea to thing. The incompleteness of this movement is expressed through approximation. A trend is strengthening toward shifting the theoretical basis of approximation from quantitative to qualitative grounds, where approximation is understood as improper naming of a thing. Differences between English and Russian approximation are observed: in English, the background of the profiled figure appears more distinct, while in Russian, the goal of approximation is the figure (the thing) itself, with the approximateness of its naming obscuring the background. Multilevel linguistic means of expressing this metalinguistic category are demonstrated: morphological, word-formational, lexical, and syntactic (of three varieties) — alteration of word order (года три — three years or so), combinations integrated into sentence structure (от 4 до 16 — from 4 to 16, как бы — as if), and parenthetical expressions (так сказать — so to speak). The transition of adverbs (примерно — approximately) and prepositions (типа — like) into a secondary part of speech — the approximator, which exists outside the opposition between content words and function words — is analyzed. Additionally, the merging of particles как бы from purposive and conditional-comparative conjunctional phrases into a syntactic approximator is examined. Through the same example, the problem of the intersection of this category with the category of state and the category of modality is addressed.

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