V TO ZHE VREMYA AND VMESTE S TEM: SEMANTIC EVOLUTION AND FUNCTIONAL FEATURES

The paper uses French parallel subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus to examine how the number of function words in Russian increases thanks to the semantic and functional evolution of content words or combinations. Two linguistic units are analysed: connectives v to zhe vremya and vmeste s tem, which in their fi rst defi nitions are considered synonymous. Semantic analysis, both qualitative and quantitative, allows to clarify this statement, as well as to specify the meaning of both expressions. The basic meaning of v to zhe vremya is temporal and means simultaneity, or, more broadly, the coexistence of entities, properties, and states of aff airs, and it is in this meaning (in combination with a conjunction i) that it is most commonly used. The relation of coexistence may also be established at the utterance level. The next one is a more frequent, although by a large margin: the use of v to zhe vremya with the connective no’ expressing the “contrary to expectation” relation. The use of v to zhe vremya as part of additive connectives is marginal. The additive meaning is, on the contrary, primary for vmeste s tem: an object, some property, quality or state of aff airs coexists with another object, quality or state of aff airs. In the additive meaning, vmeste s tem is usually combined with the conjunction i, but it can also be combined with no i and a (i). Vmeste s tem may express the “contrary to expectation” relation, both keeping its basic meaning (in combination with the conjunction no) and forming a single linguistic unit (with the conjunction a), as well as the temporal simultaneity, but this last one is not typical. Thus, the main area of overlap in the use of v to zhe vremya and vmeste s tem is the relation “contrary to the expectation” that they express in combination with no and a.