A strange variant of Russian ctoby-construction
Irreality and tense-marking
In my paper, I discuss the choice of the verb form in constructions with a complementizer/adverbial subordinator čtoby. I show that while the situation is rather trivial in biclausal constructions, analysis of triclausal constructions where another clause is embedded under the čtoby-clause reveals a phenomenon which is not accounted for in any Russian grammatical descriptions. The marker can impose the past tense form not only to the verb in its clause, but also to the temporal clause which is embedded deeper. The existence of such an unusual construction results from both semantic and syntactic factors: namely, from the fact that the ‘unreal’ meaning carried by čtoby spreads to the temporal clause and from the syntactic properties of čtoby and kogda, the latter not imposing any formal restrictions on the verb form in the temporal clause. Keywords: irrealis; complementation; sentential arguments; purpose constructions; Russian; tense
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Letuchiy, Alexander
2018.
On tense and irrealis marking in triclausal constructions (and what distinguishes them from biclausal constructions).
Linguistics 56:1
► pp. 163 ff.
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