What isforfor?: Reconstructing the development ofwhat forconstruction in russian

Autor: Kyongjoon Kwon
Rok vydání: 2015
Předmět:
Zdroj: Transactions of the Philological Society. 113:305-326
ISSN: 0079-1636
DOI: 10.1111/1467-968x.12057
Popis: The present article addresses the question of what for is for in the so-called what for construction of Russian, namely, za in the cto za construction. Establishing that za in certain contexts is in fact a predicator that connects a subject to its predicate, this paper argues that the same element in the cto za construction also belongs to this grammatical category and should not be considered a preposition with an eccentric case assigning property. This analysis crucially assumes that the construction starts out as a wh-question of a small clause base. Various aspects concerning the suggested development of the cto za construction are addressed in detail: (i) how a wh-predication transforms into a wh-modification, (ii) how the expressive semantics can be imbued by the expression, and (iii) whether German provided a source of the construction for other languages, including Russian. a crazy synchronic state of the grammar has arisen via diachronic changes that are highly natural and, presumably, motivated independently by various communicative factors. (Givon 1979: 235, emphasis added)
Databáze: OpenAIRE