The “redundant” dative case with the Russian verb

Abstract

The article determines the place of the Dative case in the system of Russian cases, taking into account the works of R. Jakobson, E. Kurilovich, and others. Five of its main semantic-syntactic functions are indicated in the article: an addressee, a subject of the state, a subject of potential action, a subject of the relationship and a possessor. Each semantic role has its demands on the lexical semantics of words which fill the corresponding syntactic position. Most often, for the Dative case of a noun, this is naming a human and, in general, a living being. It is observance or non-observance of this condition that allows us to evaluate some speech examples as completely usual ones, corresponding to the language norm, and others as occasional, representing speech creativity. The main object of the article is statements in the Russian language in which the presence of an object in the Dative case does not follow from the semantics of the predicate and is not provided for by the structure of the syntactic model. It is about examples of the type Ya pla-chu ne tebe, a tyote Sime [I'm crying not for you, but for Aunt Sima]. Two possible explanations for this phenomenon occur in the speech activity of the speaker: through the development of the verb of a secondary (figurative) meaning and through the semantic-syntactic transformation of the phrase (blending of models). In the first case, the verb, passing from one lexical-semantic group to another, also accepts the syntactic conditions of usage which are typical for the new group (for example, zabyt' komu-to in the meaning of “forgiving someone”). In the second case, utterances with an optional Dative case are interpreted as a result of blending, inappropriate mixing of the two models and the combination of the corresponding propositions. For example, the phrase On zatopil zhene plitu [He lit his wife a stove] means “He lit the stove + he did his wife a favour.” Theoretical positions are illustrated in the article by quotations from Russian fiction. On the one hand, we face violations of the linguistic norm. On the other hand, they follow the important tendency in the Russian language to “pack” information into compact language structures. It is shown that the word form in the Dative case, behind which there is a wide range of semantic-syntactic functions, possesses considerable freedom of behavior in speech production. Cases of the use of an optional Dative object, which occur in Russian texts, lead to the formation of semantically complex, but formally compact structures. The study of this phenomenon leads us to general problems of the Russian syntax development. © 2018 Tomsk State University. All rights reserved.