Asemantic Conjunctions і (й), а in Compound And Syncretic Complex Sentences

Abstract

Background. In modern studies on Ukrainian grammar conjunctions are categorised into semantically loaded and asemantic. While it is generally accepted that the conjunction / (it) is asemantic, the conjunction a is differently treated as semantically loaded, or partially asemantic, or asemantic. The purpose of the article is to analyse the grammatical and semantic-syntactic structure of compound and complex sentences with die conjunctions / (it), a, to justify the functional similarity and asemantic status of these conjunctions.Methods. The descriptive analysis is used as the main method together with comparative, functional, and transformational analyses.Results. The article addresses the semantics of compound and complex sentences which consist of predicative clauses linked by the conjunctions / (it), a. The findings indicate that these conjunctions are semantically similar and realise a single grammatical function to express syntactic relations between predicative clauses of compound and complex sentences. The semantic-syntactic ties in such sentences are expressed by other means such as lexical components of predicative clauses, their content relations, predicative forms, etc. It appears that these conjunctions form compound sentences with open and closed structures as well as complex sentences.Discussion. The conjunctions / (ft), a are functionally limited to express grammatical relations between predicative clauses in compound and complex sentences. The semantics of such sentences is communicated by the lexical components of predicative clauses, their contents, predicative forms, etc. Thus, the findings did show that both conjunctions are asemantic. Further research should focus on the semantics of simple sentences with homogeneous parts linked by the conjunctions / (ft), a.Article received 25.08.2019