Russian predicatives: do not believe your eyes and do not appeal to the obvious [Ru: Не верь глазам своим: русские предикативы и апелляция к очевидному]

This short paper of mine has been written for the book: Проблемы лингвистической семантики и прагматики языковых единиц разных уровней: доклады Международной научной конференции, посвященной памяти доктора филологических наук, профессора Ольги Павловны Ермаковой /редколл.: Ерёмин А.Н. (отв. ред), Исаева Н.А., Петрова О.О. Калуга: КГУ им. К.Э. Циолковского, кафедра русского языка 12–14 октября 2023 г. – 400 с.  My short paper focuses on the proportion of canonic and non-canonic dative subjects in Russian. The dative-infinitive construction imposes a s-selectional restriction on animacy, which forces the reanalysis of underlyingly inanimate nouns as substitutes of animate nouns. The title of the paper revokes the notion of perceptual reports. I argue that the Russian verb видеть 'see' as well as its counterparts in some European languages cannot be treated as a perception verb in contexts like 'X saw how Y was upset', it shifts its meaning and must be analyzed as a putative verb conveying the meaning 'X realizes that p'. Internal states like 'be SORRY', 'be UPSET', etc. cannot be observed from the outside, and the verb SEE develops a new (i. e. putative) meanшng by coercion. Therefore, the embeddability of Russian dative predicatives in the frame 'X saw that [INTERNAL STATE]' is not a valid criterion for checking the status of internal davidsonian states (internal D-states).

NB. Professor Olga P. Ermakova was an outstanding Russian lexicographer, who contributed to the analysis of derived meanings.