Дистантное употребление рефлексива в составе инфинитивной клаузы в русском языке: XIX век vs. современная норма

Scando-Slavica. 2020. Т. 66. № 2. С. 281–303.

Пекелис О. Е.

The paper deals with the long-distance usage of the Russian reflexive pronoun

sebja when it occurs within an infinitival clause. In this usage, the antecedent of

sebja is the subject of the main clause and not the understood subject of the

infinitive. Based on the Russian National Corpus data, restrictions on the

long-distance usage of sebja are investigated with reference to the Russian

language of the nineteenth century and according to the contemporary

norm. I identify three factors (the semantic role of sebja, the availability of the

local reading of sebja, the empathy locus) that influence the acceptability of the

long-distance usage of the reflexive in modern texts, but which played little, if

any, role in the texts of the nineteenth century. The study, conducted within a

broader project that involved the micro-diachronic analysis of Russian (its

grammar and lexicon), illustrates how investigating the earlier periods of a

language’s life may shed light on the properties of that language today.

Keywords: русский язык, рефлексив, инфинитив, русская грамматика, микродиахрония

Publication based on the results of: Corpus technologies in the study of language variation and change (2021)