The history of the idiom ne zanimat’: reanalysis that has strayed off the path

The article investigates the history of the idiom ne zanimat’ in the context of the Diachronic Construction Grammar. The starting point for the emergence of this idiom was the negative infinitive with the meaning ‘not to borrow’ that was the head of a matrix modal clause. That is why the idiom itself, in its earliest occurrences, was the head of the clauses whose syntax was identical with the syntax of modal infinitive clauses. Next began the reanalysis of the idiom ne zanimat’ into a single predicate, which brought about changes in the syntax of clauses headed by it. However, approximately in the middle of the 20th century subject marking in the clauses with ne zanimat’ as a head “freezes” in the Dative case, which is the standard means of subject marking in modal infinitive clauses. The article shows which features of the semantic evolution of the idiom caused this effect, and why it is unusual from the viewpoint of the Diachronic Construction Grammar.