INTRA-VERBAL WORD FORMATION IN RUSSIAN AND CZECH LANGUAGES: (A Systemic-Functional Comparison)

Intra-verbal word formation in Russian and Czech is characterized by systemic simi larities largely due to the analogous structure of the morphological derivational category of verb. There are also significant correspondences in the system of word formation types, formants, and methods of word formation, as demonstrated fragmentarily in this article. This systemic similarity is combined with differences in the implementation of individual word formation models, their motivating basis, productivity, and semantics. A comparative approach to studying intra-verbal word formation reveals the peculiari ties of the semantics of single-structured phasal-temporal verbal derivatives in each lan guage, namely, a clearer expression of the temporal boundaries of action in Russian verbs with prefixes such as “за-”, “по-”, “у-”, compared to Czech verbs (with prefi xes “za-”, “po-”, “u-”). Using the Russian-Czech sub-corpus of the National Corpus of the Russian Language opens up the possibility to compare the use of similar derivatives in parallel texts—original fictional or journalistic text and its literary translation into another language. In expressing a sequence of consecutive actions, speech acts and visual perception in Russian are integrated into this sequence through the use of perfective verbs, including initiatory ones, whereas in Czech narration, the boundaries of a speech act in frequent use of non-derived imperfective verbs may remain unexpressed. This pattern is demonstrated in the article using parallel texts that include forms of the Russian verbs “закричать” (to shout) and “увидеть” (to see) and their Czech equivalents. Thereafter, the formation of the verbs with time action meanings in the compared languages are interconnected with the patterns of constructing narrative texts and expressing boundaries of actions in the narrative chain.