Loss and disappearance in the Russian syntactic semantics: converseness and asymmetry

This article deals with the semantics of the verb poteryat’ ‘to lose’ and its potential conversive verb propast’ ‘to disappear’. In the authors’ opinion, the verbs propast’ and poteryat’ are not conver-sive in all their meanings because a more thorough study of the semantics of the two words shows that loss and disappearance in Russian have not only different diathesis but also different presupposition: poterya ‘loss’ means interrupting the relations of possession, and propazha ‘disappearance’ means nonexistence in the perceived world. However, there is an intersection area of the semantics of loss and disappearance. The converseness of the two verbs is determined by the possibility of using conver-sive transformation Xn₀m poteryal F_Acc [X has lost Y] ^ (u Xg_En) propal 7n₀m [Y has disappeared from X], which allows to include information about the lexical conversive term propast’ in the dictionary entry of the verb poteryat’ taking into account the presuppositional part of the meaning. The verb poteryat’ has two presuppositions of possessive relations and a prior perceptual contact of a subject with the lost object or prior knowledge about the location of the object (perceptual-cognitive presupposition). The latter presupposition can be combined with the possessive presupposition or replace it. The verb propast’ has the same presupposition. In general, if the cognitive-perceptual presupposition is actualized, that is, if loss and disappearance interrupt the perceptual and cognitive contact, the verbs are conversive. If loss destroys possessive attitude only, and disappearance interrupts existence, in the general case the verbs are not conversive. For example, the loss of a body part, which is the inalienable accessory of a person, is not equivalent to its disappearance, because interruption of possession relation is not accompanied with interruption of knowledge of the separated body part location, which is not compatible with the semantics of disappearance, suggesting the interrupting knowledge about the location of the body part. There are also restrictions on mutual converseness of the verbs related to their polysemy. For example, the meaning of functional unsuitability of a thing of the verb propast’ does not allow it to engage in a converse relation with the verb poteryat’.

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