Syntactic anomaly: "ot slova sovsem" ("from the phrase at all")

Abstract

The article aims to present a comprehensive sociolinguistic and expressive-syntactic analysis of the phrase "ot slova sovsem" ("from the phrase at all") which has become widespread in the Russian language since the beginning of the XXIst century. Computer slang is a possible source of this fixed phrase scheme; its field structure consists of the core ot slova and the periphery zone sovsem. The article hypothesizes that it is feasible to consider this model as an agrammatism and a parcelled construction. The formation of this fixed phrase scheme was accompanied by semantic-pragmatic and grammatical shifts such as desemantisation of the core (the word form ot slova transformed into a signaling speech reference to the speaker’s emotional sphere) and the use of the polyfunctional adverb sovsem as an intensifying evaluative particle. The transition of this model to general usage (due to computer-mediated communication) caused further language transformations: the periphery zone enriched with diverse words of different parts of speech, which enables addressers to convey expressiveness and evaluation ambivalently, i. e. with both negative and positive connotations. The paper presents contexts of this construction usage in the Russian language space (sprachraum) and makes prognoses concerning its use in contexts characterised by hyperintense expressiveness. The research relies on the systemic, definition, classification, modelling, and prognostic methods.