Universal meaning possibility/impossibility: Modifications in lexical semantics and lexicographic representation

Possibility is a significant universal meaning. Traditionally, researchers examine modus-related characteristics of an utterance to study possibility. Modal predicates and parenthetical elements are typically considered the primary means of expressing possibility. What makes this research unique is that it examines the modifications in the universal meaning of possibility/impossibility in the semantics of adjectives (veroyatnyy, vozmozhnyy, osushchestvimyy, nevozmozhnyy, nereal’nyy), and takes a lexicographic perspective on the problem. The article highlights the difficulties that arise when constructing definitions for such lexical units for explanatory and ideographic dictionaries. Methodologically, the study employs definitional analysis, component analysis, and ideographic analysis. Through analyzing data from explanatory dictionaries and the Russian National Corpus regarding the context-dependent use of the adjective vozmozhnyy, the study identifies the semantic modifications of possibility that can be represented by this lexeme. Specifically, the study identifies the main types of possibility meanings described in the Russian Corpus Grammar by Elena Paducheva, which include the following: 1) epistemic modality (possibility related to knowledge, that is, while something may be true the speaker has no certain knowledge of whether it is actually happening or not); 2) ontological external modality (possibility of something happening due to certain conditions or factors, even if it does not happen in reality); 3) ontological internal modality (possibility of the subject doing something based on their internal resources and abilities); and 4) deontic modality (possibility of something happening determined by the will of the subject or by social rules). The lexical units were divided into micro-groups and sets based on their semantics of possibility/impossibility, and the analysis also included examining the lexico-semantic variants of polysemantic words, such as vozmozhnyy, veroyatnyy, and dopustimyy. The lexical units with the semantics of possibility/impossibility were then studied in connection with their synonymic, antonymic, derivational, and co-occurrence relations. Through this analysis, the following basic lexemes of the micro-groups (and dominants of synonymic sets) used to express specific types of possibility were identified: predpolagaemyy for epistemic modality; vozmozhnyy for ontological external modality, osushchestvimyy for ontological internal modality, and dopustimyy for deontic modality. The study demonstrated the complexity of the semantics of these lexical units, resulting in overlaps between the sphere of universal meanings and intellectual and social spheres. These findings helped clarify the available lexicographic data and improve our understanding of the group “possibility/impossibility” as part of the class of “universal meanings”. The study was conducted within the framework of the project Universal Thesaurus Dictionary of the Russian Language, which is implemented by the researchers of the Ural Semantic School led by Lyudmila Babenko. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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