And all that (stuff): Non-grammatical means of expressing representative plurality in Russian

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Abstract

The study outlines the primary nomenclature of so-called universal extenders in the Russian language; systematizes their semantic, pragmatic, and structural properties; and demonstrates that universal extenders cover a semantic domain similar to that expressed by grammatical markers of representative plurality in other languages. Two main types of constructions with universal extenders are identified. Type 1 are coordinative constructions such as Egor Bulyčёv i drugie (‘Egor Bulychov and others’), where the first conjunct is the focal element X — the central member representing a set — and the second conjunct is a pronominal/adjectival phrase referring to a set of elements similar to or associated with X: i tak dalee (‘and so on’), i tomu podobnoe (‘and the like’), i vsё takoe pročee (‘and all that stuff’), i vsё v tom že duhe / v takom rode (‘and in the same vein/style’), etc. Type 2 are constructions like Operacija ‘Y’ i drugie priključenija Šurika (‘Operation ‘Y’ and Shurik’s Other Adventures’). These are coordinative structures where the first conjunct is the focal element and the second conjunct is a general term for the set to which the focal element belongs, with a compulsory modifier meaning “the remaining part” (drugie, inye ‘other’, ostal’nye ‘remaining’, pročie ‘the rest’) and an optional additional modifier expressing plurality, diversity, and variability (vsjakie, vsjačeskie, vsevozmožnye ‘all kinds of’, raznoobraznye ‘various, diverse’, raznye, različnye ‘different’). The study also shows that Russian has specific prosodic means functioning as universal extenders — both independently and in combination with lexical devices. The research is based on data from the main and multimedia corpora of the Russian National Corpus; for prosodic analysis, data from the pilot version of the prosodically annotated corpus of oral personal narratives What I Saw are also used.

About the authors

V. I Podlesskaya

Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences

Email: podlesskaya@iling-ran.ru
Moscow, Russia

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