Интерпретация сложных предложений с разными типами матричных предикатов в контексте отрицания и модальных операторов

Russian Linguistics. 2025. Т. 49. № 2. Статья 2.

Letuchiy A.

The article discusses types of interpretation that Russian complex sentences with factive,implicative and interpretation verbs get under negation and modal operators. By default,the external negative and modal context affects only the main situation. However, one findsexceptions of this rule. We call ‘transparent readings’ those readings in which the exter-nal context affects semantically both the matrix and the embedded clause. It turns out thatthe choice of the reading depends both on the class of the matrix predicate (Russian dataopposes emotional predicates, knowledge predicates, and predicates with semantics of eval-uation like dojti do ‘go so far as to’ or opustit’sja do ‘stoop to’) and on the properties ofthe external context (subject control verbs tend to license transparent readings, while objectcontrol predicates tend to avoid transparency). I show that the main feature responsible fortransparency is the strength of semantic and syntactic link between the clauses, and con-structions with transparent readings are similar to restructuring constructions. Additionally,external context can cause changes in the formal strategy of dependent clause embedding. Iaddress three formal strategies that can be chosen under the influence of the external context:the combination of complementizer čto and subjunctive forms; the complementizer čtoby;the strategy I call ‘morphosyntactic copying’. The use of these strategies facilitate transpar-ent readings, even with object and indirect object control predicates, partially because twoof them they make it possible to omit the subject of the deepest embedded clause.

Keywords: русский язык, модальность, restructuring, Russian language, modality, negation, отрицание, реструктурирование, сложное предложение, complex sentence, scope, сфера действия, morphosyntactic copying, морфосинтаксическое копирование