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For the first time non-sentence adverbials in Russian are analyzed in their totality, i.e. from a lexical, syntactic and propositional-semantic point of view. They are classified, defined and interpreted according to four propositional structures identified in Russian: (1) state descriptions and (2) activity descriptionsboth created by simplex verbs; (3) event descriptions and (4) process descriptionsboth involving complex verbs. All four structures function as statement models and are used to represent semantic paraphrases of utterances in order to be able to show the exact contribution from an adverbial to the meaning conveyed by the entire utterance. The paraphrases allow us to define the domain of an adverbial, its scope and its subdomain possibilities corresponding to its possible meanings. They also allow us to describe lexical differences, i.e. the way a specific adverb differs from other adverbs belonging to the same synonymous group. It appears that members of various synonymous groups differ from one another with respect to subdomain, i.e. their differences in meaning are treated as being reflexes of originally deep syntactic differences. In this connection the so-called entailment structure of all verbs involving an activity description seems to have a special explanatory power. Keywords: Simple and complex propositional structures; perfective and imperfective aspect;domain, scope and subdomain; synonymous groups; entailment structure.In Russian traditional reference grammars (school grammars), the adverbial (Rus. обстоятельство, cf. Eng. adjunct) is treated as an optional part of a sentence which is mainly used to modify its predicate. Moreover, it is usually mentioned that it can also be used to modify other parts of a sentence. It is further noted that adverbials can be expressed by different parts of speech and phrases which are freely connected with the sentence element they modify and which can be identified by an "adverb-question" (when, where, how, etc.) corresponding to their semantic behaviour as adverbials of time, place, manner, etc. Adverbials are thus categorized in terms of their syntactico-semantic function, but there seems to be no clear-cut distinction between обстоятельство (adverbial) and дополнение (complement) (see, e.g., Šeljakin 1993,

By considering Russian case as the nominal equivalent to mood whereby its semantic functions are emphasized at the expense of its syntactic functions, it is demonstrated that the nominative, accusative, vocative and genitive cases constitute a mini system in which the nominative and the accusative function as the indicative denoting local reference, the vocative as the imperative demanding local reference and the genitive as the subjunctive denoting non-local reference. At the same time, the genitive enters into another system together with the dative and the instrumental in which they express three different viewpoints, which equally apply to the pure as well as the prepositional case systems. Within the prepositional case system, the accusative and the locative are handled by the notion of contact, while the genitive, dative and the instrumental are treated by the lack of contactthe prepositional analogues to the notion of local reference and non-local reference. It is suggested that the notion 'contact' has had a clear retroactive influence on the function of the accusative in the pure case system. Аннотация Рассматривая категорию падежа в русском языке как эквивалент глагольной категории наклонения и акцентируя тем самым внимание на семантических, а не на синтаксических функциях падежей, авторы статьи показывают, что именительный, винительный, звательный и родительный падежи образуют подсистему, в которой именительный и винительный падежи ведут себя подобно индикативу, обозначая локальную референцию, звательный падеж-подобно императиву, предписывая локальную референцию, и родительный падеж-подобно конъюнктиву, обозначая нелокальную (глобальную) референцию. При этом родительный падеж вместе с дательным и творительным падежами образует другую подсистему, в которой каждый из них обозначает определенную перспективу, что характеризует их употребление как с предлогами, так и без предлогов. Употребление винительного и предложного падежей с предлогами трактуется через понятие контакта, являющегося в предложно-падежной системе аналогом локальной референции, тогда как употребление родительного, дательного и творительного падежей трактуется через понятие отсутствия контакта, являющегося в предложно-падежной системе аналогом глобальной референции. В статье выдвигается гипотеза об обратном влиянии признака 'контакт' на функционирование винительного падежа без предлога. 'Our father ordered a suit from the tailor.' c. U brata ukrali časy. 'A watch was stolen from my brother.' Russian uses the stative preposition u in order to point to the initial state of the action expressed by the verb. This means, for instance, that dom u djadi should be read as it stands, viz. that the uncle had the house (i.e., the house existed with the uncle) before it was bought by the mother. Note that English here verbalizes the direction of the item denoted by the subject or the direct object. In other words, English uses a dynamic preposition instead of the Russian static one. Once again we realize an important difference between Russian and Eng...

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