Abstrakt
Sebrat se a .... a construction between coordination and subordination in contemporary Czech This text investigates the syntactic behaviour of the word SEBRAT SE in constructions where a coordinate form displays subordinate properties, resulting in constructions that cannot be clearly categorized as either coordination or subordination and that can be characterised as peudocoordination (Ross, 2015). The pattern I am going to investigate is: V1 sebrat se - a/and - V2 i.e.
Seber se a hledej znovu! /Go and look for him again. Seber se a padej! / Go on, get moving! Sebrala se a hned se vrátila. / She picked herself up.
She came straight back. Sebral se a zmizel, jen co se narodilo třetí dítě./ He up and left soon 's the third kid came along.
My research of this construction in Czech is based on examples gathered from the Czech National Corpus. The aim of this paper is to introduce the formal and semantic features of pseudocoordination in Czech, which is an inflective language and constructions of compound character are rare in its grammatical system (for Russian see Kiparski, 1971; Škodová, 2009).
I consider pseudocoordination (PseCoor) to refer to the use of the coordinator 'and' in constructions that behave unlike prototypical coordination (ProCoor), defined as a transitional state between coordination and subordination (Haspelmath, 2005). The resulting constructions still display some properties of coordination and cannot be definitively identified as either coordination or subordination.
Thus, syntactic analysis of pseudocoordination is challenging and important, and thorough description is required. Both ProCoor and PseCoor construction types have in common a binary coordinative structure, using the coordinator a (and).
The main claim is that even though these two types share the same surface structure (sebrat se)V1andV2, they do not represent the same phenomenon of coordination and it is necessary to distinguish them, as proposed. I have proposed a two-part analysis.
Firstly, PseCoor is analysed as a complex predicate formed on the level of syntax (Hilpert, 2008). This analysis immediately accounts for a number of properties of PseCoor which allows the comparison with ProCoor.
Secondly, PseCoor is analysed as a means of aktionsart, more precisely as a variety of coordination of substages in the event structure. This also accounts for a number of characteristics of PseCoor, this time on the level of semantics.
In this way, I also presented the criteria for the distinction between ProCoor on one side and PseCoor on the other side in Czech. I argued that ProCoor is a biclausal structure coordinating two separate events while PseCoor coordinates two verbs into one complex predicate and the coordinator a/and serves for coordination in the frame of substages of a single event (comp.
Ross, 2015). On the semantic level I characterised PseCoor as a complex event, the substages of which are coded into two conjuncts of the coordinative construction.
It appears that the verb in the first conjunct denotes an event that expresses the preparation phase for the activity denoted by the verb in the second conjunct. The pseudo-coordinative verb in the first conjunct lexicalises a manner component in the internal event structure.
The verb sebrat se in the first conjunct goes through the process of desemantisation and, instead of the meaning of taking, expresses dynamic aspects of the second event and the decision of the actor of the event to finish the second event.