Does “X est’ X” mean “X eto X”? Looking for an answer in synchrony and diachrony

 
PIIS0373658X0001003-2-1
DOI10.31857/S0373658X0001003-2
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Affiliation: St. Petersburg State University
Address: Russian Federation, St. Petersburg, 199034
Affiliation: University of Helsinki
Address: Finland, Helsinki, 00014
Journal nameVoprosy Jazykoznanija
EditionIssue 3
Pages110-124
Abstract

The paper deals with the Russian tautologies X est’ X ‘Х is X’ and X eto X ‘Х this is X’. We elaborate on the diachronic and synchronic analyses of the two constructions based on the data from the Russian National Corpus. The paper discusses a) milestones in the development of these two tautologies in Russian (taking into account the pattern X sut’ X ‘Х are X’ that has completely disappeared from the language); b) frequency of different syntactic phrases used as the repeated element X (based on the Russian National Corpus data); c) syntactic constraints on phrases in both constructions; d) semantic and pragmatic features of the two types of constructions. We argue that X est’ X most often appeals to different components of X’s meaning (e. g. its connotations), while X eto X expresses the subject’s identity to itself, being a tautology in the Wittgensteinian sense.

Keywordscorpus linguistics, microsyntax, pragmatics, Russian, semantics, syntactic phrasemes, tautologies
Received08.05.2017
Publication date08.05.2017
Number of characters853
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