Jens Nørgård-Sørensen

What languages must convey: the construction-based syntax of Old Russian

This article considers the principal difference between a construction-based and a valency-based syntax, and argues that constructions, like morphological distinctions, are organized in paradigms. It is generally assumed that verb–argument relations were relatively loose in Old Russian. Unlike in Modern Russian, which has a fully developed valency system where the verb determines the number of arguments and their (case) forms, many Old Russian verbs combined with more than one case form or even allowed for distinctly different syntactic constructions. Examples of A2 (argument 2) variation in Old Russian are considered, and it is argued that the syntactic system of Old Russian can be interpreted as construction-based rather than valency-based. It is shown that the concept of construction is a prerequisite for making sense of the case forms filling the argument slots in Old Russian, and tentative examples of construction paradigms are presented.