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S. A. Oskolskaya. Towards the absence: on dedicatedness (on the example of caritive constructions) // N. Sumbatova, I. Kapitonov, M. Khachaturyan, S. Oskolskaya, S. Verhees (eds.). Songs and Trees: Papers in Memory of Sasha Vydrina. St. Petersburg: Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2023. P. 557-571.
The paper deals with the notion of dedicatedness of markers or constructions, often used in language comparison. The term dedicated can have different interpretations, which are usually clear from the context. However, when dedicatedness is used as a parameter for comparison of markers / constructions in various languages, this notion needs a robust definition. There are two more popular understandings of dedicatedness. One of them implies that a dedicated marker X expresses mainly a meaning X. Another interpretation includes both the semantic part implied by the first interpretation and a level of grammaticalization / lexicalization: a dedicated marker is supposed to be grammaticalized / lexicalized. It is shown here that both interpretations cause problems. Still, the first one seems to be more applicable to the data of different languages since it is simpler. The examples of most of the cases are taken from the typological study of caritives.