Towards the description of grammar periphery: syntax and semantics of Russian item ne dokhodia do (muzeja) (lit.: ‘before reaching the museum’)

The object of the paper is the Russian lexical item ne dokhodia do (muzeja) in contexts like Rynok budet nemnogo ne dokhodia do muzeja ‘The market will be just before the museum’ (lit.: ‘just before you reach the museum on foot’). Academic grammar classifies this item as a derivative (verbal) preposition. I demonstrate that this item does not satisfy the definition of this part of speech. Indeed, any preposition has only one active syntactic valence, so a preposition can subordinate only one syntactic (noun) group, whereas the item under discussion has two active valences and is able to subordinate two syntactic groups. I argue that this item is an adverb. I show the chain of semantic transformations from the main meaning of the source verb dojti — dokhodit’ (‘reach on foot’) to the meaning of the item ne dokhodia do.