Syntax and semantics of the Russian construction nedeliu nazad ‘a week ago’ (lit. ‘a week back’): an attempt of systemic description

The object of the paper is the Russian word combination nedeliu (tomu) nazad ‘a week ago’, lit. ‘a week back (to this)’. The goal of the paper is to answer two questions: a) what part of speech does the word nazad in this collocation belong to; b) what is the function of the pronoun tomu (dative case) in the word combination under discussion. I suggest that the word combination nedeliu / god / desiat’ let (tomu) nazad ‘a week / a year / ten years ago’, lit. ‘a week / a year / ten years back (to this)’ is the result of a change of an original pattern, a sentence of the type (Graf umer.) Tomu uzhe nedelia ‘(The prince died.) It happened a week ago’, lit. (‘The prince died’.) It is already a week back to this’. I argue that both the original pattern and the word combination under discussion are syntactic phrasemes (as defined by Iordanskaya and Mel’čuk). I propose syntactic and semantic representations of both phrasemes in terms of the MEANING–TEXT model of I. Mel’čuk. I argue that tomu in the original pattern is the dative case form of the anaphoric pronoun to which refers to a situation previously mentioned or implied by the speaker (cf. To bylo ranneju vesnoj ‘It was in early spring’). Logically speaking, in the course of its transformation into the phrase under analysis, the original pattern underwent the following changes: i) first, the original pattern partly changed its syntax and became a word combination (a collocation); ii) then the word nazad lit. ‘back’ was introduced into it (cf. semantic shift ‘space’ – ‘time’ in many languages); iii) as a result tomu has lost its anaphorical function and became redundant, so it can be omitted. I discuss syntactic features of prepositions and postpositions as parts of speech, and argue that nazad in the phrase nedeliu (tomu) nazad has formal properties of an adverb rather than of a postposition. I argue that the MEANING–TEXT model of I. Mel’čuk has a great deal more opportunities