The paper aims at giving a descriptive and theoretical account of two types of lexical constructions in contemporary Russian. First, we explore the so-called phrasal lexemes, namely constructions that have a phrasal structure, but are lexical in nature. The paper concentrates on the identification and analysis of Russian nominal phrasal lexemes (i.e. phrasal nouns), distinguishing them formally from both free noun phrases and nominal compounds. Second, we discuss the relationship between phrasal nouns and shortening, a mechanism that is generally regarded as marginal (or even extra-grammatical), but is very active in Russian. After giving an overview of shortening strategies in Russian, we focus on a special way to shorten phrasal nouns of the adjective-noun type, namely: ellipsis of the noun plus truncation of the adjective by means of the suffix -ka. A formal and semantic description is offered of these formations. In the final part of the paper, we propose a theoretical analysis of both phrasal nouns and their shortened equivalents with -ka by using the tools of Construction Morphology and Construction Grammar, which allow us to represent in a formal way the relevant features of these constructions and the relation between full and shortened form

Abstrakt Il contributo propone una trattazione complessiva di alcuni tipi di locuzioni aggettivali e avverbiali dell’italiano introdotte dalla preposizione da che hanno la funzione di intensificare il significato dell’elemento a cui si riferiscono attraverso un’iperbole: una vacanza da sogno, bella da impazzire, mi annoio da morire. Alcune di queste strutture mostrano un carattere altamente polifunzionale che si manifesta nella capacità di modificare diverse classi di parole (nomi, aggettivi, verbi), nonché di occorrere da sole, indipendente da una testa sintattica, come segnali discorsivi. Nel lavoro verrà proposta una classificazione corpus based dei diversi pattern sintattici e dei formati semantici che vi si associano. L’analisi offre spunti interessanti anche per una descrizione della polisemia della preposizione da e per lo studio delle relazioni concettuali che codificano l’iperbole. Infine, l’ultima parte del lavoro è dedicata a un’analisi contrastiva italiano-russo-inglese e rappresenta un primo tentativo di individuare convergenze e divergenze nell’uso di iperboli intensificative tra lingue appartenenti a gruppi diversi. "Una festa da paura! Mi sono divertito da morire!". Intensyfikatory o znaczeniu nacechowanym dodatnio i ujemnie oraz ich odpowiedniki w języku rosyjskim Celem niniejszego artykułu jest kompleksowa analiza niektórych włoskich wyrażeńfrazeolologicznych przymiotnikowych i przysłówkowych wprowadzonych przez przyimek ‘da’ i pełniących funkcję intensyfikatora znaczenia elementu, do którego się one odnoszą za pomocą hiperboli: ‘vacanza da sogno’, ‘bella da impazzire’, ‘mi annoio da morire’. Niektóre z tych struktur posiadają wielofunkcyjną naturę: mogą modyfikować różne części mowy (rzeczowniki, przymiotniki, czasowniki), mogą też występować samodzielnie, niezależnie od członu określonego w syntagmie, jako sygnały dyskursywne. Artykuł zawiera klasyfikację różnych wzorców syntaktycznych i tak zwanych formatów semantycznych, które się z nimi łączą, opracowaną w oparciu o korpusową (corpus based) analizę porównawczą. Analiza jest punktem wyjścia do opisu polisemii przyimka ‘da’ i do analizy relacji konceptualnych, które kodyfikują hiperbole. Ostatnia część artykułu poświęcona jest analizie kontrastywnej języków włoskiego, rosyjskiego, angielskiego i stanowi pierwszą próbę wyodrębnienia zbieżności i rozbieżności w zastosowaniu hiperboli intensyfikujących w obrębie języków należących do różnych grup.

Russian, as well as many other languages, displays a wide number of strategies to name non-lexicalized categories, that is, categories which have a conceptual reality, but are not encoded as single lexical items (e.g.fruit, furniture) or set phrases (e.g.equipment for sport, food for dog). One way to address this lack of lexical means is to provide one or more concrete exemplars of the intended category, in an attempt to capture the superordinate non-lexicalized concept. This paper aims to provide an overview of the different generalizing means used in Russian for the online construction of exemplar-driven categories, and, at the same time, to explore the interplay between discourse-resources (e.g. exemplification, listing and reformulation) and system-resources (e.g. collective affixation, co-compounding and discourse markers) in the process of categorization. Particular attention will be focused on the description of schematic general extenders, that is, partially lexicalized syntactic patterns, realizing the different extending, generalizing and similative functions of general extenders. The last part of the paper is devoted to a discussion of the processes of grammaticalization and pragmaticalization of the general extenderi vse takoe‘and so on’ (lit. ‘and all such’). The form is interesting because of its discursive multifunctionality.

Abstract:In the present research project, we will set out to design and populate a multilingual database which lists and describes Italian, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian and Spanish phraseologisms. We firmly believe that the multilingual database will prove particularly useful in second language teaching. We will endorse the holistic perspective of Construction Grammar as our theoretical and applied framework (Goldberg, 1995;Croft, 2001): we conceive of phraseologisms, in particular idiomatic expressions, as 'constructions', i.e., form-meaning pairings whose meaning is not compositional. With reference to Croft (2001), we will describe multi-word units in their phonological, morpho-syntactic, semantico-pragmatic and discursive aspects (Schafroth, 2013) with the aim of providing an updated tool for second language acquisition and teaching purposes.

deictic centre tra and dopo versus Russian sequence of tenses