TRIANGULATION AS A RESEARCH METHOD IN EXPERIMENTAL LINGUISTICS

The paper focuses on the results of experimental research into semantics of Russian grading adverbs dostatochno, dovol’no, vpolne and otnositel’no. Despite their rich syntactic potential and functional polyvalence, Russian adverbs are still relatively under-researched. Moreover, there has not been offered a comprehensive study of the analysed grading adverbs. The information in the dictionary entries does not make it possible to put forward a plausible hypothesis as regards the semantic features in the semantic structure of the adverbs − when we turn to modern dictionaries, we discover that in dictionary entries of these adjectives one word is defined through the other, e.g. dostatochno is defined as «dovol’no» [Ушаков 2008]; dovol’no – «dostatochno» [Ушаков 2008]. Then the definitions may coincide, e.g. vpolne is defined as «sovershenno, ochen’, v polnoj mere» [Ушаков 2008]; dovol’no – «stol’ko, skol’ko trebuetsia; dostatochno» [Ефремова 2000]; dostatochno – «stol’ko, skol’ko trebuetsia; dovol’no; v dostatochnoj stepeni; nemalo» [Ефремова 2000]; относительно – «bolee ili menee, do nekotoroj stepeni, sravnitel’no» [Ушаков 2008]; «v izvestnoj mere, do nekotoroj stepeni; sravnitel’no» [Ефремова 2000]. However, in many cases if we try and substitute one of the synonyms for one of the others, native speakers (informants) will qualify the resulting utterances as unacceptable, cf. vpolne vozmozhno / vozmozhnyj / smyshlenyj, vs *dostatochno vozmozhnyj, *dovol’no vozmozhnyj and otnositel’no vozmozhnyj. Moreover, even if the resulting sentences are assessed as acceptable, the information conveyed by the utterances will differ. It means that the group of words calls for further investigation and stricter semantic definitions. In the paper, we shall try and suggest semantic features that will enable the user to distinguish the words. We shall consider the complex research procedure based on hypothesis-deduction method (with semantic experiment as its integral part), corpus-based experiment and the analysis of search engine results. The process of verification that increases validity of research findings by incorporating several methods in the study of the same phenomenon in interdisciplinary research is often referred to as triangulation. The preliminary stage of the research into the meaning of the adverbs consists in gathering information on their distribution, valence characteristics and all possible contexts they may occur in. The results of this preliminary analysis enabled the authors to frame a hypothesis on the meaning of the linguistic units in question. Then the authors proceed to the experimental verification of the proposed hypotheses supported by corpus-based experiment and the analysis of search engine results. The research findings result in stricter semantic descriptions of the adverbs in question.