Russian sentences of the type Mne negde spat′ ‘I have no place to sleep’: Once more
- Authors: Mel’čuk I.A1
-
Affiliations:
- Université de Montréal
- Issue: No 5 (2025)
- Pages: 154-174
- Section: Special issue in memory of Leonid L. Iomdin
- URL: https://journals.rcsi.science/0373-658X/article/view/309292
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.31857/0373-658X.2025.4.154-174
- ID: 309292
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Abstract
The paper describes Russian sentences of the form (i) Mne est′ gde spat′ ‘I have a place to sleep′ and (ii) Mne ØPRES Byt′I.1 negde spat′ ‘I have no place to sleep′. It is shown that there is no syntactic parallelism between such sentences: in (i), the wordform est′ is the present-tense form of the existential verb Byt′III.2 ≈ ‘there be′, and the wordform gde is the pseudo-relative pronominal adverb GDE2a , which depends on the verb in the infinitive (on spat′); in (ii), the wordform ØPRES Byt′I.1 is the zero present-tense form of the copula Byt′I.1 ‘be′, and negde ≈ ‘there being no place′ is a predicative pronominal adverb, which obligatorily depends on Byt′I.1 in the role of a support verb. The lexical entry for NEGDE is supplied. A phrase of the form gde mne spat′ lit. ‘where to me to sleep′ is a particular syntactic formation: a modal-infinitive phrase. Such a phrase and the verb Byt′III.2 constitute a syntactically discontinuous collocation of a special type. The problem of actant transfer in collocations with a support verb (from the base to the collocate) is considered; the schematic overviews of the vocables Byt′ and GDE are proposed.
About the authors
I. A Mel’čuk
Université de Montréal
Email: igor.melcuk@umontreal.ca
Montreal, Canada
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