THE GRAMMATICALIZATION PROCESS OF THE RUSSIAN GERUND "NACHINAYA"

Abstract

The article explores the grammaticalization process of the Russian gerund nachinaya (‘starting’) in contemporary written discourse. Based on the data from the Russian National Corpus, the study analyzes the transition of the gerund from a lexical to a functional unit, specifically its evolution into a preposition and a conjunction. The research highlights key mechanism of grammaticalization, including semantic bleaching, loss of connection with the semantic subject, morphological specialization, and the emergence of new syntactic patterns. The findings demonstrate that nachinaya increasingly functions as a grammatical marker. The novelty of the study lies in its comprehensive description of this linguistic transformation and the identification of factors influencing the integration of nachinaya into the system of Russian functional words.