Descriptive and Undescriptive Uses of The Word ‘Zhelatelno’ (‘It’s Advisable’ or ‘It’s Desired’) in Syntactic Reflection

Abstract

The article is devoted to the word ‘zhelatelno’ (‘it’s advisable’ or ‘it’s desired’), which in its main uses belongs to descriptive vocabulary. Th is word is always a syntactic predicate. ‘Zhelatelno’ refers to the word ‘obiazatelno’ (‘it’s required’). Both words express the volitional attitude of the speaker, which is clearly evident in the contexts where they denote graded features. The predicate ‘zhelatelno’ is used in two basic syntactic constructions: ‘zhelatelno chtoby’ (‘it is advisable that’) and ‘zhelatelno + infi nitive’ (‘it’s advisable + infi nitive’). The author demonstrates pragmatic specifi city of the word in diff erent syntactic functions and establishes its connection with speech acts of ‘zhelatelnost’ (‘advisability’) and expression of will. The value of ‘zhelatelno’ is original, direct. In modern speech, it is perceived as outdated and does not create a speech act of advisability, and is characterized by the use in a variety of directive speech acts in the pragmatic meaning of recommendation. The nondescriptive use of ‘zhelatelno’ was found in the syntactic constructions of a simple sentence: in coordinating rows, in explanatory rows and in the construction “secondary conjunction connection”. In such constructions, ‘zhelatelno’ is used as a link-word and has the meaning of preference. The study is based on the language material from the Russian National Corpus.

Keywords:

descriptive and undescriptive words, pragmatic, speech act, syntax, construction