ABOUT THE SYNCRETISM OF SYNTACTIC CONSTRUCTIONS

In any natural language there are constructions that are not properly differentiated syntactically, i.e. contaminated, syncretic ones. The article is devoted to the syncretism phenomenon of the syntactic constructions in the Russian language that are capable of expressing the opposite meaning. The aim is to describe transient, intermediate phenomena in the field of syntactic constructions semantics beyond the precise classifications. The distinction of the transitional, contaminated phenomena should facilitate the linguistic facts classification, as it is based on a dialectical approach to the phenomena that require taking into account all their diversity. The descriptive and transformational methods, the methods of component analysis of the propositional sentence structure, syntactic modeling, and phraseological, etymological, contextual and discursive analysis are used in the study. Illustrative material has been extracted with a help of continuous sampling method from the National Corpus of Russian Language, phraseological and definition dictionaries, fiction literature of XIX–XXI centuries as well as records of oral speech. In the language one and the same syntactic construction can express the opposite meanings depending on the communicative intentions of the speaker. In modern Russian language there is a range of such units. Among them are the specialized sentence models which possess some linguistic means facilitating their rethinking to the opposite ones, and non-specialized sentences that do not possess such means. Denoting the expressive-ironic meaning is usual for the specialized constructions. Each opposition type, subjective or evaluative, has its own specialization means. It was established that the phenomenon of sentence semantics syncretism enable to express the opposite meaning due to the following factors: the linguistic one (language sign asymmetry, due to which one and the same linguistic form is able to express various content; continuous unity of rational and emotional in the language; the ability of the syntactic constructions to express both subjective and evaluative semantics; a variety of contextual tools that are able to provide actualization and realization of both informative and assessing aspects of the meaning) and extralinguistic ones (the variety, complexity and multiaspected items of objective reality; the inseparability of logical and evaluation plans in reality; the human psyche peculiarity, individual communicative concept of the speech subject; the communicative situations variety). The identification of the particular subjective and evaluative semantics of the described constructions is only fulfilled in the context; the problem of the typological descriptions still needs be researched