THE SYNTACTIC MEANING OF THE PREDICATIVE USE OF THE FULL FORM OF THE ADJECTIVE IN THE NOMINATIVE CASE AND ITS SEMANTIC IMPLICATIONS

The choice between the use of the short form of a predicative adjective and its full form in the nominative case is most often explained semantically. This paper, on the contrary, takes a syntactic approach to this question. When the short form of a predicative adjective is used, the attribute expressed by this adjective is given to the substantive subject of the clause absolutely, that is, directly. But when the speaker uses the nominative of the full form of the adjective (эти фрукты сочные, он умный), the feature is given only relatively, via an elliptic noun with a tautological or generic sense. The intermediary noun is omitted due to its total lack of informative load and in the surface structure only the adjective remains.
This paper shows that any predicative adjective in the full form in the nominative case is originally an attributive adjective, and it can be used predicatively only as a result of nominalization, which has a decisive infl uence on the choice between the nominative case of the full form and the short form of the adjective. Several restrictions on the use of the predicative full form are further discussed: the inability to use the full form if the subject is unique in its kind or if the adjective has a strong government. A number of semantic nuances traditionally attributed to the semantics of each form are also discussed, such as the expression of a temporary or permanent feature depending on the chosen form and the expression of an excess of feature when the short form is used. It is shown that it is the syntactic approach that allows us to explain these limitations and nuances which stem from the syntactic sense of the chosen predicative construction, with a short form or with a full form in the nominative case.