Chameleon Sentences [Изреченията хамелеони: рус. НЕЧЕГО РАССКАЗАТЬ и НЕГДЕ СПАТЬ с оглед на българските им съответствия]

We discuss the semantic and syntactic structure of the predicative NEG-words ( BLG н-думи, RUS н-слова) like НЕЧЕГО (сказать), НЕГДЕ (спать) in Russian and their Bulgarian counterparts. Russian predicative NEG-words are syntactic agglomerates headed by a negative existential operator. They include a wh-element (BLG к-дума, RUS к-слово) and an infinitival complement. On the surface level, Russian NEG-words have some properties of dative predicatives, i.e. elements with a dative case-marking of the semantic subject. However, the WH-elements like GDE 'where', CHEGO 'what') are not generated in the same clause as the NEG-head НЕ-. We offer a bi-clausal analysis of Russian NEG-words, with WH-elements raised from a subordinate clause. Modern Bulgarian lacks infinitives, but there are bi-clausal structures headed by overt existential operators IMA 'there is' , NJAMA 'there's not' and a WH-element in the embedded clauses. Thus, the argument structure of negative existentials is identical in Bulgarian and Russian. Modern Russian also has lexicalized modal uses of NEG-words, where the NEG is lexical: a sentence with a modal NEG-predicative cannot be denied, while a sentence with hybrid existential NEG-predicative can. These two groups of Russian predicatives have different Bulgariant counterparts.