Creating a database of Modern Russian clause linkers: principles, problems, results

Abstract

This paper presents a project on creating a database of Russian connectives (clause linkers), which are linguistic units that connect clauses in polypredicative constructions. This functional class includes conjunctions, particles, prepositional phrases, adverbs, and parenthetical words and phrases. The inventory of connectives was extracted from volume 2 of the “Russkaya Grammatika” (1982), explanatory dictionaries, and dictionaries of functional words. All connectives were manually tagged for various syntactic and semantic parameters, such as their position in a sentence, the relative positioning of the main and subordinate clause, the number of connective components, and the possibility to expand them by adding modifiers (e. g., по той причине что — по той простой причине что). Additionally, all connectives were categorized based on the semantic zone they belong to, such as condition, time, cause, etc. The systematic tagging of connectives allowed for the discovery of several new semantic zones, meanings, varieties of meaning combinations, and new valency structures. Furthermore, problematic connectives were delimited, such as those posing issues regarding their part of speech or their treatment as a collocation (в тот момент, когда; в тех целях чтобы, etc.). This article is based on a paper presented at the 7th International Research Symposium “Russian Grammar: Constants, Contexts, Perspectives” (October 10–14, 2023, Tyumen, Russia).