Verbs of emotional state in counter-optative utterances

The paper is focused on infinitive utterances (IU) expressing the meaning of undesirability, or counter-optative IU (Ne spuskat’sya by k dvorniku), with verbs of the lexical-semantic group (LSG) of emotional state (according to the classification by L. G. Babenko). Special attention is paid to the verb aspect, the temporal vector of the IU, and the presence of the potential seme of a negative evaluation of the denoted situation in the meaning of the verb. The selectivity of the syntactic model under consideration towards verbs of the LSG of emotional state is investigated. The following prerequisites for a verb of emotional state to be used in a counter-optative IU were determined: the presence of the potential seme of a negative evaluation of the denoted situation in the meaning of the verb, the imperfect aspect of the latter, and the future temporal perspective of the whole utterance. Also, counter-optative infinitive utterances were found to demonstrate quite a high degree of selectivity in using the words of LSG of emotional state. The results show that when selecting verbs to be the main component of counter-optative infinitive utterances, preference is given to imperfective verbs of emotional state. The future temporal perspective (the prospective and prospective-consequent temporal vector) is a condition that enables selecting the verbs of emotional state in counter-optative infinitive utterances. The factors contributing to the use of verbs of the LSG of emotional state in counter-optative infinitive utterances, or conversely, preventing their use, are to be studied further.

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