Ni chrena v ètom ne razbirajus’

Abstract

The study aims to identify in relation with language use the factors accounting for grammaticalization and pragmaticalization of ‘niVMGEN’-constructions involving vulgar and euphemistic minimizers (ni chrena (ne), ni figa (ne), etc), which have been reanalyzed into negative polarity items.The outcome of the grammaticalization process is a typically univerbated lexical unit that expresses emphatic negation and operates at the negative pole increasing the pragmatic impact of the utterance. The contrastive approach highlights similarities in the use of minimizers between Russian and Italian, putting a spotlight on links among different cognitive domains such as negation, quantification and intensification.