“Duch jazyka”: obščie varianty i različnyj vybor dlja vyraženija celevogo otnošenija v ital’janskom i v russkom jazykach

The model of grammar as a set of rules is relevant to the description of the functional core of nuclear simple sentences. Outside this core, in marginal roles at the level of simple sentences, and in the expression of interclausal links, function is logically prior to grammatical rules and grammar provides paradigms of alternative options in order to match independent relevant functions. From this perspective, it is important first to define a conceptual structure for the analysis of interclausal links, such as the purposive one, then examine the set of means available for its expression (Prandi, 2004: 293, 306). Purpose is defined as a kind of forward-looking motive, that is, the content of an agent’s intention (Prandi, 2004: 321). The paradigms of options provided by the Russian and Italian language systems to express this relationship are very similar. They range from purposive and causal complex sentences containing conjunctions such as čtoby and affinchè (‘in order to’) and potomu čto and perché (‘because’), to phrasal prepositions containing a predicative noun, such as s nadeždoj and con la speranza di (literally ‘with the hope of’), and gerunds, such as želaja and desiderando (‘hoping’) through to coordinative sentences and two juxtaposed utterances in the domain of textual coherence, where the purposive relationship is completely inferred. However, in use (as intended by Coseriu, 1969) Russian and Italian show different preferences in the forms they choose for the expression of purposive relationship. This phenomenon, which could be defined ‘genius of language’, does not involve a different categorization of reality, but rather is a mark left on texts by the choices taken by speakers. The study of the options favoured by Italian and Russian in the expression of purpose was carried out on a bidirectional parallel corpus we created, consisting of four contemporary novels. This kind of analysis is based on the methodology introduced by V.G. Gak (2006). Although, owing to corpus small dimension, the results of the study do not have statistical value, they show very clear tendencies. Russian juxtaposition or coordination often corresponds to the Italian hypotactic forms. Russian also shows a high frequency of gerunds, when in the Italian text there is a subordinate clause or a phrasal preposition containing a predicative noun. Finally, nominalization of the purpose clause is much more frequent in Russian than in Italian. On the whole, what Givón (1979: 223) defines ‘pragmatic mode’ of discourse, characterized by loose coordination, seems to prevail in Russian, while in Italian ‘syntactic mode’ with tighter subordination dominates. Arutjunova (1998: 482) makes a similar distinction between ‘hierarchic prose’ and ‘actualizing prose’. We have proposed an explanation for this phenomenon on a diachronic basis.