Semantics of Predicative Prepositional Case Forms of Noun: State and Evaluation

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of predicative prepositional-case forms of the noun, capable of expressing thoughts about the state, in varying degrees approaching the category of the state. The relevance of the research topic is due to the development of personal bisubstantial construction in modern Russian, in the syntactic conditions of which the idea of the state and/or evaluation is further developed. Prepositional-case forms like v forme, v trende, v zamote (in form, in trend, in fact) occupy an intermediate position between the noun and the category of state, and therefore the purpose of the study is to specify their status depending on the ratio of this state and evaluation in their semantic structure. The methodological basis of the research is the theory of transitivity developed by V. V. Babaytseva, as well as the transitivity scale as the main methodological tool, the hypothesis of syntactic constructions of bisubstantial sentences put forward by N. A. Gerasimenko, as well as the theses of K. Ya. Segal and M. S. Milovanova on the axiological semantics of forms the value-evaluative potential of which is realized in certain syntactic constructions. The research material is the prepositional case forms of the noun extracted from the National Corpus of the Russian language and social networks, functioning in a predicative position and denoting the state and/or assessment. The article proposes a variant of the analysis of specific word forms from the point of view of the degree of their distance from the class of nouns and their convergence with the category of state (degree of predication), which is the reason for the novelty of this work. The article concludes that the increase in the number of such lexemes is associated with the actualization of bisubstantial sentences, provoked by the tendency to emancipation of prepositional-case forms of the noun, on the one hand, and the course outlined in the consciousness of modern man on his personality, on himself as an object of cognition, on the other.