Russian tautological sentences of the type NP i NP: syntax and semantics

The object of this paper is Russian tautological sentences consisting of two identical noun groups with the particle i ‘and’ between them (NP i NP), cf. Platje i platje (nichego osobennogo), lit. ‘A dress like any other dress (nothing special),’ Devuska i devushka (sovershenno obychnaja) ‘A girl like any other girl (completely ordinary).’ It is obvious that the meaning of this type of sentence is not a “sum” of the meanings of its constituents, a pattern such as this exemplifies a Russian construction that is a sort of a phraseological unit. I demonstrate that this construction is a result of consecutive application of two well-known rules (or transformations) to a well-known Russian tautological identity proposals NP est’ ʻisʼ NP, cf. Mal’chiki est’ mal’chiki ‘Boys will be boys,’ lit. ‘Boys are boys;’ Platje est’ platje, lit. ‘Dress is dress;’ Devushka est’ devushka, lit. ‘Girl is girl.’ In the first step of the transformation the particle i is inserted ahead of est’ ʻis,ʼ cf. Mal’chiki i est’ mal’chiki; Platje i est’ platje; Devushka i est’ devushka. I show that i in such contexts denotes that the given object has been mentioned in previous context. In the second step, the copular verb est’ is omitted. Certain semantic shifts accompany the application of the last rule. These shifts are described in the paper.