CONTROL, PRESUPPOSITIONS, AND THE SEMANTICS OF COUNTER-OPTATIVE INFINITIVE UTTERANCES

The paper deals with non-trivial realizations of counter-optative infinitive-dative constructions, which cannot be read univocally in principle: Ne ubit’ by mne tebya tol’ko (B. Vakhtin). The specific property of utterances of the type is that the [± Control] meaning is expressed in them more than once: in the verb itself, in the infinitivedative construction, (optionally) in the verb governing the whole construction (Tol’ko bojus’ — ne ubit’ by mne kogo! (M. Gor’ky)), and in the communicative presupposition of the speech act, which includes the construction under consideration.This may lead to a conflict of the [± Control] opposite feature meanings. Besides, the control may be split into [+ Control] over the action and [– Control] over its object: “Ne ubit’ by cheloveka”, — mel’knulo u menya (M. Prishvin). Cases of type A vam by, Varvara Mikhajlovna, ne volnovat’sya tak, a? (M. Gor’ky) contain the [– Control] meaning expressed twice (in the verb and in the infinitive-dative construction), which conflicts with the [+ Control] meaning lying in the presupposition of the advice speech act. The conflict of opposite meanings of the [± Control] feature is created with participation of the temporal vector of the infinitive utterance, of its personal reference, of the particular verb meaning; but the crucial role in the emergence of the conflict is played by presuppositions of semantic (including factual and existential subtypes) and communicative types.