1732-8160 On Russian Dative Reflexive Constructions: Accidental or Compositional? Rosyjskie celownikowe konstrukcje zwrotne: Przypadkowe czy kompozycyjne?  Zeldowicz Gennadij author Correspondence to: Gennadij Zeldowicz 15 10 2011 Vol. 6, Issue 1 Volume 6 (2011) 153 171 Copyright © 2011 2011 <p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">It is argued that the meaning of Russian dative reflexive constructions, i.e. constructions of the type Ivanu ne rabotaetsja ‘Ivan does not feel like working’, is compositional. It is shown that the reflexive marker -sja in general signals reduced agentivity and/or increased patientivity of the subject. One of the possible particular construals of -sja is ‘the subject’s volitionality is decreased’. For reasons explained in the paper, purely “quantitative” reduction (‘the subject is less willing to carry out the action, and/or has less inner resources necessary for the action’) is improbable, which forces the speakers to look for other circumstances reducing the subject’s responsibility for the action. This is an easy task, since, on the one hand, one may always believe that the subject’s desires and/or inner resources are due to an external irrational force acting upon the subject, and, on the other hand, we tend to speak of such a force only where the action is indeed carried out, which attenuates the responsibility of the subject. As far as the subject in dative reflexive constructions stops to be the initial point in the relevant causal chain and becomes in some sense a beneficiary, the nominative-dative shift in its morphology is only the side effect of non-reflexive-to-reflexive transformation. Thus, both the meaning of dative reflexive constructions and their form turn out to be predictable from the general meaning of the reflexive marker -sja.<br /><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></span></span></span></p> 1 Ackerman Farell, Moore John (2001): Proto-Properties and Grammatical Encoding. — Stanford: CSLI Publications. 2 Arce-Arenales Manuel, Axelrod Melissa, Fox Barbara (1994): Active voice and middle diathesis. — [In:] Barbara Fox, Paul Hopper (eds.): Voice. Form and Function. Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1–21. 3 Babby Leonard (1975): A transformational analysis of transitive -sja verbs in Russian. — Lingua 35, 297–332. 4 Babby Leonard (1983): The relation between causative and voice: Russian vs. Turkish. — [In:] Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Bd. II, 61–88. 5 Christensen J. (1995): Polish impersonal constructions in się as markers of shifts in point of view. — [In:] Harvard Studies in Slavic Linguistics, Olga Yokoyama (ed.), Vol. III, 19–39. 6 Croft William (1991): Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The Cognitive Organization of Information. — Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 7 Dowty David (1991): Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. — Language 67, 547–619. 8 Farkas Donka F., De Swart Henriette E. (2010): The semantics and pragmatics of plurals. — Semantics and Pragmatics 3, 1–54. 9 Gerritsen Nelleke (1990): Russian Refl exive Verbs: In Search of Unity in Diversity. (&#61; Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 15). — Amsterdam–Atlanta: Rodopi. 10 Hopper Paul, Thompson Sandra (1980): Transitivity in grammar and discourse. — Language 56, 251–299. 11 Hopper Paul, Thompson Sandra (1982): Studies in Transitivity. (&#61; Syntax and Semantics 15), New York: Academic Press. 12 Israeli Alina (1997): Semantics and Pragmatics of the “Refl exive” Verbs in Russian. München: Otto Sagner Verlag. 13 Klenin Emily (1980): Individuation: An Historical Case Study. — [In:] Catherine Chvany, Richard D. Brecht (eds.): Morphosyntax in Slavic; Ohio: Slavica, 62–78. 14 Pariser Jon (1982): Dative-refl exive constructions in contemporary Russian. — PhD Thesis. University of California, Los Angeles. 15 Timberlake Allen (1975): Hierarchies in the genitive of negation. — Slavic and East European Journal 19, 123–138. 16 Wierzbicka Anna (1981): Case marking and human nature. — Australian Journal of Linguistics 1, 43–80. 17 ЗЕЛЬДОВИЧ Геннадий М. (1999): О типологии квантификаторов. — Известия Российской Академии наук. Сер. лит. и яз. Т. 58, 43–52. 18 ЗЕЛЬДОВИЧ Геннадий М. (2002): Русский вид: семантика и прагматика. — Торунь: Ун-т Николая Коперника. Зельдович Геннадий М. (2011): Прагматика грамматики. — Москва (in print).