No abstract

No abstract

The present article addresses the question of what for is for in the so‐called what for construction of Russian, namely, za in the čto za construction. Establishing that za in certain contexts is in fact a predicator that connects a subject to its predicate, this paper argues that the same element in the čto za construction also belongs to this grammatical category and should not be considered a preposition with an eccentric case assigning property. This analysis crucially assumes that the construction starts out as a wh‐question of a small clause base. Various aspects concerning the suggested development of the čto za construction are addressed in detail: (i) how a wh‐predication transforms into a wh‐modification, (ii) how the expressive semantics can be imbued by the expression, and (iii) whether German provided a source of the construction for other languages, including Russian.a crazy synchronic state of the grammar has arisen via diachronic changes that are highly natural and, presumably, motivated independently by various communicative factors. (Givón 1979: 235, emphasis added)

No abstract

No abstract