Article

Name: Danish Spatial Adverbs as a Means of Spatial Empathy in Fiction

Authors: Dina B. Nikulicheva

Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation; Moscow State Linguistic University, Moscow, Russian Federation

Abstract:

Scholars note that languages distinguish between three types of spatial orientation, or spaces: egocentric (oriented toward the speaker), endocentric (oriented toward another person) and non-centered (without a clearly defined center of orientation). The article aims to show that although all languages can support these three types of spaces, the ratio and the specific weight of the orientation markings “I” / “Another person” / “External Objects” can differ significantly from language to language. The article illustrates this phenomenon by comparing parallel Danish and Russian texts. The “multiplicity of subject spheres” is the concept proposed by the “Communicative Grammar of the Russian Language” and is fundamentally important for our study. The study compares parallel literary texts and relies on the national corpus of the modern Danish language KorpusDK as a tool for verifying the data obtained. The research method includes comparison of omissions and increments of meaning in the Russian literary translation compared to the Danish originals containing spatial adverbs. As a result, the article illustrates how Danish spatial adverbs (systematically omitted in Russian translations) lead to “merging of the reference points” of the author, reader and character, and, thus, create a communicative-pragmatic effect, which we propose to call “spatial empathy”.

Keywords: Danish language, spatial adverbs, spatial orientation, body orientation, functional orientation, cartographic orientation, subject of utterance (author/speaker), subject of narrative (character), subject of message (reader/addressee), spatial empathy

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