La gradazione e la semantica dei predicati modificati

The article presents a study of the syntactic and semantic compatibility of the approximative adverbs quasi / почти with verbal predicates in the Italian and Russian languages. We propose actional parameters offered by Vendler (1967), Bertinetto (1992) and Maslov (1948) as a methodological support of the research. We have analyzed the interaction of various actional types (states, achievements, accomplishments and processes) with scalar adverbs, trying to show how these adverbs modify a semantic expression associated with the internal structure of the verb. The meaning of approximative adverbs correlates closely with aspectual coordinates such as duration, telicity, and dynamicity, depending also on whether the form of the verb is positive or negative. Our analysis has revealed a variety of possible combinations and interesting phenomena of semantic idiosyncrasy.