| 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) |
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