How Russian and English languages describe the underlying situation

The article analyses the key differences in how the underlying situation is described in the English and Russian languages. The author pays particular attention to such parameters as the choice and the order of priority of features used to describe a situation by the two languages. Among other things, the English clauses may opt for the use of inanimate subjects (or ‘formal doers’) with active verbs while the Russian language rather prefers animate subject (or the ‘doer’). Another focus is on the cases of implicit meaning, in particular implicit negation, which prove rather common in English being infrequent in Russian.