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Eduweb, 2024, abril-junio, v.18, n.2. ISSN: 1856-7576

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Shcherbii, N., Vorobets, O., Mytsan, D., Korpalo, O., & Kuravska, N. (2024). The debate on the nature of verbal nouns in Slavic languages: nominal or verbal?

Revista Eduweb, 18(2), 238-250. https://doi.org/10.46502/issn.1856-7576/2024.18.02.17

Oleksii Vorobets

Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.

Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.

Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.

Nataliia Kuravska

Abstract

The article defines the status of verbal nouns in Slavic linguistics, focusing in particular on the diverse

terminological apparatus in each of the Slavic languages and determining its verbal or nominal nature. The

verbal nature of such constructions is analyzed based on the following features: regular and systemic

nature of formation; retained aspectual correlation; constructions with the agent in the instrumental case,

which are characteristic of the passive voice; retained reflexive formants; expressed uncountable actions,

which makes it impossible to use a plural form; expressed categories of transitivity/intransitivity and

nullified categories of tense, mood, and person. It is emphasized that the productivity of the usage of these

Resumen

conservados; acciones incontables expresadas, lo que imposibilita el uso de una forma plural; categorías

expresadas de transitividad/intransitividad y categorías anuladas de tiempo, modo y persona. Se subraya

que la productividad del uso de estas formas en las lenguas eslavas depende de la naturaleza nominal

(ruso, polaco) o verbal (ucraniano, eslovaco) de la lengua. El artículo también analiza el uso de sustantivos

verbales reflexivos en textos modernos.

Palabras clave: Categoría de aspecto, naturaleza nominal, formante reflexivo, lenguas eslavas,

naturaleza verbal, sustantivos verbales.

Introduction

Under the term “hybrid verb forms” we partially qualify adjectives, adverbs, verbal nouns, forms with -no,

-to and infinitives. This principle of analysis has not been tested to date, since the first time these forms

were described in a single work on their joint interpretation, using material from various Slavic languages.

Genetically, hybrid forms of the verb tend to be nouns. These forms have gone through a long way of

verbalization – acquiring verbal properties, consolidating the semantics of action. In Slavic linguistics, these

forms are to some extent related to each other by origin, common procedural meaning, and grammatical

features.

From the point of view of grammatical meaning, the infinitive is close to verbal nouns, only the latter is

subject to declension, while the former remains unchanged, thus being the so-called “fossilized case form

covers such conceptual features of other categories (subject, property) that are derived from the names

of certain processes. Hybrid verb forms retain the suffixes and prefixes of the stem of the formative verb,

which serve as formal indicators of the belonging of the formative verb to a certain grammatical type, and

thus preserve the verb category, which, through the meanings of imperfection and completion, conveys

the nature of the process, i.e. its integrity/integrity, limit/unlimited, effectiveness/ineffectiveness,

completeness/incompleteness, continuity/immediacy, repeatability/uniformity.

The consideration of the verbal noun as a hybrid form of the verb with the semantic and grammatical

approach will allow to prove its intercategory partitive status in Slavic languages.

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Eduweb, 2024, abril-junio, v.18, n.2. ISSN: 1856-7576

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nature of time, mood, and person. After that, the analysis of the use of deverbal reflexive nouns in modern

texts is given. The article proves that the productivity of the use of the studied forms in Slavic language

formations is determined by the nominal or verbal nature of the language, with the first case being typical

for Russian and Polish, and the second - for Ukrainian and Slovak.

Theoretical background

In the West Slavic linguistics, verbal nouns have been the subject matter in the works of the following

linguists: M. Jelínek, H. Křížková, P. Karlík, J. Furdík, K. Buzássyová, F. Trávníček, J. Gebauer, B. Havránek,

J. Puzynina, H. Safarewiczowa, A. Skopliev, in Eastern Slavic –N. Kostusiak, O. Kurylo, H. Kutnia, O. Petryk,

The theoretical basis of the terminological theory of representation of process concepts is O. Peshkovsky's

concept of mixed parts of speech, which consists in the formation of morphological structures that combine

categories characteristic of different classes of words, such as mood, tense, reflexivity, case, number, and

gender.

Mixed parts of speech are united, on the one hand, not only by their common origin and procedural

meaning, but, on the other hand, by the category of the Slavic type, which primarily belongs to the verb,

which creates preconditions for the inclusion of hybrid forms in the system of verbal functioning

(Peshkovsky, 1938; Kostusiak, 2018). At the same time, mixed parts of speech are not characterized by

the categories of person and mode of action, which opposes them to the personal forms, respectively, they

semantic and syntactic features of verbal nouns in the system of Slavic languages, the typological method

hybrid verb forms.

The illustrative material was taken from literary texts using the method of continuous sampling from the

national corpora of the Ukrainian (KUM) and Polish (NKJP) languages, as well as from the Internet to

analyze modern colloquial variants.

Results and Discussion

This section presents the information obtained in a clear way, specifying the main findings from the

interpretation of the data in light of the theoretical references or the literature review. This section seeks

Analysis and discussion

Verbal nouns are notable for their complex nature, as they are considered a mixed, hybrid phenomenon

due to the debatable part-of-speech status and intercategorical nature.

In Slavic linguistics, there is no clear terminology for verbal nouns. Ukrainian linguists traditionally call

these forms

(Vykhovanets & Horodenska, 2004; Vakulenko, 2010; Kutnia, 2018;

Kostusiak, 2018; Petryk, 2008; Piletskyi, 2002). О. Kurylo used the term

(Kurylo, 2008, p. 77).

Up to the end of the 20th century, the classical Czech linguistics predominantly included the action nouns

ending with

Trávníček, 1951; Havránek & Jedlička, 1981) as an impersonal form of the verb alongside infinitives,

participles, and adjectives. Since the mid-twentieth century, this concept has been criticized (Dokulil, 1982;

Jelínek, 1968; Křížková, 1959; Kopečn, 1958), because verbal nouns represent a word-formation category

close to inflection due to their virtually unlimited productivity, which makes a verbal noun a full-fledged

noun (Dokulil, 1982, p. 16), which has become a conventional leading concept in Czech linguistics in the

twenty-first century. Among verb forms, they occupy the most peripheral position.

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Eduweb, 2024, abril-junio, v.18, n.2. ISSN: 1856-7576

Eduweb, 2024, abril-junio, v.18, n.2. ISSN: 1856-7576

and case, but is also regularly derived from verb stems, inheriting the categories of aspect and reflexivity

J. Puzynina, the author of a comprehensive monograph on verbal nouns, follows other West Slavic linguists

(Buzássyová, 1982; Furdík, 1967; Křížková, 1959; Karlík, 2004) and distinguishes two types of verbal

nouns: 1) categorical substantivum verbale (

), which are close to the verb in terms

of formal and semantic characteristics; 2) non-categorical substantivum deverbale, which are formed using

various suffixes and are close to the noun (Puzynina, 1969, pp. 28-33).

In South Slavic languages, two types are also distinguished, particularly in Serbian, glagolske imenice and

considered as verbal nouns, which is the result of a word-formation approach to the consideration of this

linguistic phenomenon, although the scope of verbal semantics in the lexemes varies (Pchelintseva, 2016).

I. Vykhovanets and K. Horodenska consider the word-forming noun category of grammatical denotation of

a thing within the noun, which is based on the transformation of nominalization. In this category, the

researchers include predicative nouns (mostly verbal and adjectival), which nullify the original verbal

categories and acquire grammatical categories of a noun (Vykhovanets & Horodenska, 2004, pp. 101-102).

For instance, following Z. Saloni and J. Puzynina, A. Skopliev separately distinguishes Czech categorical

verbal formations ending with

, which are formally and semantically similar to the verb, and calls

them verbal nouns (Skopliev, 2018).

verbs, but different part-of-speech grammatical categories and formal-syntactic and semantic-syntactic

distribution that is determined by the structural characteristics of the original.

According to O. Pchelintseva’s calculations, the Polish verbal noun can be formed from (almost) every verb

and retains the categories of case and reflexivity; the Ukrainian noun can be formed from every fourth

verb and retains most of the case indicators; the Russian noun is formed only from every sixth verb and

loses case forms and reflexivity, cf: rus.:

process-denoting meaning and the ability to retain suffixes and prefixes of the original verb, which act as

formal indicators of belonging to a certain aspect. Their productivity does not stop, as evidenced by the

formation of completely new verbal nouns from borrowings to denote modern information processes, such

as:

. In Polish, due to the development of computer technology, the number of

corresponding terms and derivatives with this meaning has increased in recent years, e.g.:

(Dziennik Internautów).

About 200 verbs are exceptions to the formation of verbal nouns with

in Polish (Pchelintseva,

According to linguists, a significant number of verbal nouns came to Eastern Slavic languages from Old

Bulgarian, where the

model was highly productive, e.g.:

(Pychkhadze, 2011). In the nineteenth century, during the Bulgarian Revival

and the formation of the literary Bulgarian language, a reverse process occurred: not only words but also

entire word-formation models were borrowed from Russian into Bulgarian, including the very Bulgarian

model of

ending with

vernacular Bulgarian forms ending with -не (

even have the same plural form (

,

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In general, Bulgarian linguists agree that nouns ending with

1964, p. 408; Andrejčin, 1978, p. 364; Pъrvev, 1993, pp. 384-385). In contrast, nouns ending with

are irregular and semantically unpredictable.

The regularity of usage and systematic formation of verbal nouns depends on the nominal or verbal nature

of the language. The Swedish linguist A. Lombard argued that nominal nature has been ingrained in the

European way of thinking since the end of the nineteenth century, as a result of which we no longer only

speak but also think with the help of noun phrases (Lombard, 1930).

The usage of noun phrases makes the text more precise, in particular, it shows a tendency to linguistic

Ukrainian and the nominal nature of Russian (Nepyivoda, 1997). Nominal nature is also typical for other

Slavic languages, including Polish, in which the share of noun phrases is constantly growing (Wierzbicka,

1962). This feature is also emphasized by Diana Wieczorek, who argues that Poles perceive the world in a

more ‘object-centered’ way, while Ukrainians have an organic ability to see life in dynamics, movement,

and convey it with a verb, the so-called ‘verbalization’ (Wieczorek, 1994, pp. 58-59).

Czech scientific writing is also typically object-centered, but to a lesser extent (Viková, 1976), and an even

lower degree is typical for Slovak verbal nouns, which, like Ukrainian, were formed based on the vernacular

(Selihei, 2014, p. 38).

The verbal nouns ending with

usually describe an action in its continuity, where verbal nouns

In Russian, verbal nouns do not retain verbal aspect opposition in a systemic fashion:

learningʼ (imperf.) →

ʻto have learntʼ (perf.); they are formed only from

every 6th verb, have an unpredictable semantic result, and cases

ʻreadingʼ make

up no more than 10% of the entire corpus of deverbatives; such pairs usually contain only reflexes of the

verbal category of aspect (Pchelintseva & Volodarska, 2021, p. 20; Peshkovsky, 1938). The reason for this

is the historical development of the category of aspect in Russian, the loss of a range of verbal nouns that

correlated with the perfective, certain restrictions on the formation of such forms from verbs with

quantitative and temporal limits, as well as restrictions on nominalization and the disappearance of a vivid

from both aspectual forms of the verb and consistently retain formal indicators and aspectual semantics,

having a high degree of semantic predictability (Karlík, 2004). Aspectual correlation also remains consistent

in Polish (Puzynina, 1969; Jędrzejko, 1993). Therefore, the East, South, and West Slavic languages at the

systemic level demonstrate different degrees of preservation of verbal aspectuality.

In Bulgarian, verbal nouns, or as they are also called Bulgarian gerunds, are regularly formed only from

imperfective verbs using

(Šipka, 2000). From perfective verbs, such nouns are formed irregularly,

and the grammatical and lexical semantics of such formations are rather unpredictable (Pchelintseva &

Volodarska, 2021).

Verbal nouns in the diachronic aspect are transformations of the passive voice, as evidenced not only by

the morphological structure of the verbal action noun, the base for which is a passive participle, but also

by the similar form of the agent in both constructions, e.g.:

(Jacek Dehnel);

(Mariusz Ziomecki) – passive voice constructions used with a noun in the

accusative case and a preposition przez

(Robert Urbański; Jacek Kondracki) – construction with a verbal noun of

action with an agent in the accusative case and a preposition

.

However, in Ukrainian, a construction with a verbal noun of action is used with an agent in the instrumental

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Eduweb, 2024, abril-junio, v.18, n.2. ISSN: 1856-7576

Eduweb, 2024, abril-junio, v.18, n.2. ISSN: 1856-7576

preservation of the reflexive formant się with verbal nouns of the categorical type. In the East and

South Slavic languages, such forms are impossible. In Czech and Slovak, this tendency is also

preserved, but to a lesser extent, e.g: slk.

(to have run off)

→

to close) →

(temporary closure). As for related East Slavic forms, this

interpretation is hardly applicable or even impossible, cf: ukr.

(closing –

closure), but

(wiping) – ?; rus.

(run-off, to run off) – ? A similar situation

is observed in the South Slavic languages (Skopliev, 2018, pp. 259-260). According to F. Trávníček,

J. Gebauer, B. Havránek, reflexivity in Czech verbal nouns is peripheral and optional, and dictionaries

H. Safarewiczowa also notes (Safarewiczowa, 1954, p. 332), that in Polish and Czech, unlike in Ukrainian

and Russian, the reflexive pronoun is not merged with the verb, but functions freely in the sentence,

although it is characterized by the phenomenon of desemantization as a pronoun:

The category of number of verbal nouns is closely related to the category of aspect. One of the features

of verbal nouns is the lack of plurality and the impossibility of using them with cardinal numerals, since

the singular form accordingly denotes ‘uncountable’ actions, abstractness, and indefiniteness.