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Russian constructions with semi-auxiliary verbs and adjectives: the puzzle of complement clause
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Russian constructions with semi-auxiliary verbs and adjectives: the puzzle of complement clause
Annotation
PII
S0373658X0003716-6-1
DOI
10.31857/S0373658X0003716-6
Publication type
Article
Status
Published
Authors
Alexander B. Letuchiy 
Affiliation:
National Research University Higher School of Economics
Vinogradov Russian Language Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences
Address: Russian Federation, Moscow, 101000; 119019
Edition
Issue 2
Pages
7-28
Abstract

The paper focuses on Russian constructions like Mne pokazalos’ strannym, čto Fedja ne priexal ‘It seemed strange to me that Fedja did not come’. More precisely, I consider syntactic properties of the instrumental case form strannyj, analyze its argument structure, and address the question of its part of speech characteristics. I show that this unit combines properties of predicatives like stranno (it is compatible with an argument clause, which is not characteristic of full forms of adjectives) and those of adjectives like strannyj (it is marked for instrumental case, while predicatives are usually thought to lack case distinctions). I claim that a possible solution that allows to explain these mixed properties is to describe a semi-auxiliary like pokazat’sja ‘seem’ + an instrumental case form as a single syntactic unit (the fact that the instrumental form disfavours separation from the matrix verb and contexts where the verb is elided seem to confirm this analysis). At the same time, alternative ways of analysis are also considered.

Keywords
adjective, argument raising, complement clause, control, instrumental case, predicative, semi-auxiliary verbs, tightness of syntactic connection
Received
04.07.2018
Date of publication
04.07.2018
Number of purchasers
8
Views
665
Readers community rating
0.0 (0 votes)
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References

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