SUBORDINATION DECAY AND LEXICALIZATION OF A PREDICATIVE STRUCTURE

Constructions of the type (1) On zanimaetsya chert znaet chem, lit. ‘He is engaged in the devil knows what’ are considered in light of the “hypothesis of two syntactic beginnings” (or “heads”) previously put forward by L. L. Iomdin. It is shown that such a hypothesis could appear only on the basis of the postulates used to calculate syntactic relations and model sentences in the Syntactically Marked Sub-Corpus of the National Corpus of the Russian Language (SynTagRus), but that this hypothesis contradicts these same postulates. The structure under consideration is analyzed as a result of the disintegration of subordination in the initial structure Chert znaet, chem on zanimaetsya (‘The devil knows what he is engaged in’). There is no double dependence of the form of the instrumental case (from znaet ‘knows’ and from zanimaetsya ‘engaged in’) not only in the derivative, but also in the original construction, where the verb znaetsubordinates not the pronoun, but the whole subordinate clause. In the derivative construction (1), we observe the result of the lexicalization of the former main part of a complex sentence, which turns into a unit similar to other former main parts with an uncertainty value (neizvestno, nevedomo ‘unknown’) and, just like these indicators, subordinates not the subordinate part in whole, but only what remains of it after its predicative center is moved to the left from the former main part. This degenerated link cannot be called subordination; it is only a reflex of subordination. The basis for lexicalization is that the structure chert znaet, adjoining, as in (1), the interrogative relative pronoun, expresses a unique semantic and pragmatic complex of meanings that is not available for standard indefinite pronouns: the maximum degree of uncertainty + the disapproval of the speaker. In this case, the meaning of the uncertainty, which is characteristic of the original construction, can be reduced to zero. The lexicalized structurechert znaet significantly enriches the repertoire of means of expressing the semantic category of uncertainty.