Compound nominal predicate in the Russian language of the XVI century

Abstract

Based on a lot of the written sources, the article describes and analyzes the characteristics of the compound nominal predicate in the Russian language in the XVI century. Compared with the modern Russian language compound nominal predicate in the XVI century was a grammatical phenomenon, which was in its infancy. This type of predicate occurred much less frequently than in the modern Russian language; nominal and copulative part of the compound nominal predicate did not have the wealth of forms and ways of expression that it has in the modern Russian language; ties between parts of the nominal predicate were not as close as now. Particular attention is paid to the semantics and distribution of copulative verbs in Russian language of the XVI century. It is concluded that the meaning of copulas in this era is not enough abstract and grammatical: the meaning of many copulative verbs continued to maintain contact with their original meaning and depended on the context. It is analyzed the conditions for the formation of copulative meaning in full-meaning verbs. Other copulas though had no connection with the verbs from which were formed, but were multi-­valued and were able to express different meanings in different contexts. Meanings of copulative verbs were not enough grammatical and it led to the fact that, on the one hand, the same copulative meaning could be expressed by different verbs, and with another – the same verb could express different copulative meanings.