Russian predicatives: a sociolinguistic approach

Toporkov Pyotr Evgenievich

The paper gives an overview of the main semantic and grammatical problems associated with the lexicographic description of the predicatives in non-literary forms of Russian. The paper traces the formation and modification dynamics in various forms of language. The analysis aims at forming a systematic approach to solving the problem of the semantic-grammatical status of the predicatives in Russian with reference to sociolinguistic data. As a result of the study, the main semantic-grammatical and word-formation patterns of the predicatives are described in the context of language development and variation, including data from other Slavic languages.

Keywords:predicative, evaluative noun, state, appraisal, jargon, dialect, vernacular.