Article

Name: From sentence to construction: Vot tebe i X

Authors: Mikhail Ya. Dymarsky

Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation; Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

Abstract:

The article examines the syntactic model illustrated in the title, which initially generates standard demonstrative-nominative sentences with a dative of recipient that do not exhibit interpretative potential. The use of not just the particle vot, but the complex vot i introduces nuances of situational dynamism and finality into the utterance. It is assumed that, thanks to the presence of these nuances, the model has acquired a wide functionality as a means of implementing a number of communicative tactics: in addition to indicating a real object, the recipient of which is the addressee of the utterance (the original mode of functioning), it indicates a real or virtual object that in one way or another affects the sphere of the addressee, who, however, is not the recipient of this object; an indication of the ease of achieving the result stated; an expression of surprise/irritation caused by the discrepancy between object X and the speaker’s previous ideas about it; an expression of annoyance at failure; and mimicry of the interlocutor. An important consequence of this functional expansion is the transformation of the dative form of the pronoun from the dative of recipient to the dativus ethicus and the removal of restrictions on the expression of component X: if in demonstrative-nominative realizations this component is expressed by a specific noun in referential use, then in derivative realizations it can be any noun, a conjugated form of a verb, an adverb, an interjection, etc. The result of these processes was the phraseologizing of the model, that is, its transformation into a typical construction (in the sense of the Constructions Grammar). Overall, the construction represents one of the striking phraseologized means of interpretive syntax.

Keywords: Russian language, syntax, demonstrative-nominative sentence, grammar of constructions, phraseology, ethical dative, interpretive syntax

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