In the ever after world

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In the ever after world
Fuzziness and Vagueness in Russian
and American fairy tales Lyubov Borodina
Winter 2005
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• Research area
• Semantics
• Syntax
• Pragmatics

Key terms and concepts Fuzziness A term
derived from mathematics and used by some
LINGUISTS to refer to the INDETERMINENCY involved
in the analysis of a linguistic UNIT or PATTERN.
(Crystal, David,1991. A Dictionary of Linguistics
and Phonetics. Words used to convey fuzziness
about, sort of, rather, quite, like,
etc. Vagueness is an expression which has more
than one possible interpretation.
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Vagueness Sometime long, long ago, in a kingdom
you wouldn't know, lived Tsar Dadon the
Glorious who began his reign in a notorious way
by invading his neighbors, destroying their homes
and their labors. Later, though, nearing old
age his life entered a new phase, and the tsar
wanted peace. Fuzziness Alionushka lay ill the
sorceress came to her and said Do you want me
to heal you? Go to such and such a sea at
twilight and drink water there.
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• Justification
• Bridging the gap in the research
• Contributing to the linguistic studies of
  childrens literature
• Applying the results of the research in education
• Supporting studies of the categories of fuzziness
  and vagueness
• in other research fields (e.g., computational
  linguistics).

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• Literature review
• Filip Devos. Semantic vagueness and lexical
  polyvalence.
• Studia Linguistica, 2003, 57/3, 121-141.
• Qiao Zhang. Fuzziness vagueness generality
  
• ambiguity. Journal of Pragmatics, 1998, 29,
  13-31.
• Jucker, Andreas H. Smith, Sara W. Ludge, Tanja.
• Interactive aspects of vagueness in
  conversation.
• Journal of Pragmatics, 2003, 35,1737-1769.

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• Research questions
• What means of expressing fuzziness and vagueness
  grammatical, lexical,
• stylistic are prevalent in fairy tales?
• Is there any distinction between fuzziness and
  vagueness in fairy tales?
• In which childrens literature Russian or
  American the expressions of
• fuzziness and vagueness are more abundant?
• Do texts, while being translated or retold,
  undergo enrichment?

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• Enrichment
• Russian version
• In the three-ninth kingdom, in the three-tenth
  state, there was a girl
• too beautiful to be described.
• English version
• In the thirtieth kingdom beyond three times nine
  lands
• Beyond twenty-seven lands, in the thirtieth
  kingdom .

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• Methodology
• Materials
• Russian fairy tales and their counterparts in
  English
• American fairy tales and their translated
  versions in Russian
• Data collection
• Reading printed and online textual material.
• Analysis
• Quantitative
• Qualitative

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• Limitations of the study
• The research is hindered by lack of printed fairy
  tales in Russian
• The counterparts of the fairy tales containing
  abundant examples
• of fuzziness and vagueness are not always
  available
• Translations of some fairy tales only vaguely
  remind one of the original
• The definition of the categories of fuzziness and
  vagueness
• differ in various sources

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Examples Temporal Fuzziness I have come to
earn an heroic horse from you, Ivan told the
witch Baba Yaga. By all means, Prince, and you
will have to serve me for a year, only three
altogether.
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Examples The Tale of Ivan Tsarevich, the
Firebird, and the Gray Wolf Spatial
Fuzziness "Then go to the Thrice Tenth Kingdom
and bring me back some magical life-and-death
water, said the Wolf.
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Examples Referential vagueness The Tale of
the Golden Cockerel Remember you said you'd
acquireand grant me anything I desire.Well,
there is something I've seen.I want her, the
Shamakha Queen!"
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Examples Fuzziness or deliberate vagueness? A
tsar to his servant Go there I dont know
where myself and bring me something I dont
know what myself.
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And they lived happily ever after.