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Demonstrative Tot in the History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire by Piotr Tolstoy

Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The article examines the use of the demonstrative pronoun tot in the language of The History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire (manuscript BAN, 31.3.22), which was translated by Piotr Tolstoy from Italian at the beginning of the 18 th century. The examples of tot are grouped by syntactic and semantic functions and compared to the Italian original. While some Italian-Russian parallels for other demonstratives are merely constant (such as quello - onyj , questo - sei , tale , tanto - takoj ), the demonstrative tot can be used to translate any Italian anaphoric demonstrative, which indicates that it was being unmarked as a means of anaphora. The noun + tot group often serves as the equivalent of a noun with a definite article, but in these cases an antecedent can be found in the preceding text and therefore the demonstrative is a means of anaphora; if an antecedent cannot be found, the translator has to use another grammar construction. This implies that the demonstrative tot was not a complete analogue of the definite article. In many cases tot does not have a corresponding demonstrative in the Italian text: the fact that reveals the various grammatical functions of tot . For example, as a determiner, it is widely used in the Russian text to translate different Italian syntactic constructions; some adverbial collocations and compound conjunctions with tot are used to translate Italian adverbs and conjunctions that do not contain demonstratives.
DOI: 10.55959/msu0130-0075-9-2024-47-04-5
Language: English
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4401825563
FWCI:
Cites: 2
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Related to: 10