Синонимия лингвистических категорий: Анализ когнитивной прототипикальности в безличной и возвратной конструкциях

Synonymy of Linguistic Categories: Analysis of Cognitive Prototypicality in Impersonal and Reflexive Constructions

The purpose of the current paper is to compare the synonymy of two semantic-grammatical categories. Categories of impersonality and reflexivity share semantic characteristics, especially cognitive prototypical meanings. Both categories express speaker’s focus on event, but individual lexical entries vary in detail. Impersonal constructions indicate phenomena happening with or without participants, and reflexive sentences show a similar meaning. An entity does something or undergoes an event and the speaker highlights the event rather than the participant. These meanings are the prototypical semantic characteristics in both categories. The similarity in the semantics functions as an intersection of the two groups and explains why a number of reflexive verbs are used as impersonal constructions. Highlighted event constructions bridge two linguistic categories and this idea will tell a lot of useful ideas about linguistic categories.