The substantival word form malost’ (English a bit): on the way to adverbs

The article, using the word form malost’, demonstrates the semantic-grammatical shifts occurring in the structure of linguistic units subject to gradual adverbialisation in the Russian language. The chosen subject matter is relevant since the stages, distinctive features, and limits of the transposition of nouns into the subclass of quantitative adverbs have not been thoroughly investigated yet. The study aims to identify and comprehensively analyse substantival word forms representing various stages of proper grammatical transposition into adverbs of quantity and degree in typical contexts. The theoretical significance of the research is determined by the fact that it further develops the concept of part-of-speech transition and syncretism. The article establishes the specific features of the peripheral zones of nouns and denominative adverbs as well as hybrid, substantive-adverbial formations. The study employed descriptive, oppositional, transformational, and contextual analysis in conjunction with a linguistic experiment. The research materials included lexicographic interpretations of the word form malost’ (English a bit) presented in dictionaries as a noun and an adverb and contexts of their use obtained from the Russian National Corpus. The author’s own examples were partially used as well. The article shows that the word form malost’ gradually weakens and loses the properties of the original noun class on the way to adverbs of quantity and degree and acquires the features of quantitative adverbs. The word form is established to clearly exhibit the semantic-grammatical properties of the substantive word class in the core zone of nouns. The first step towards adverbs is found in the periphery zone of nouns. It is associated with semantic-syntactic shifts in the word form structure. The hybrid, i. e., substantive-adverbial, structure is characterised by dual properties. The adverbialisation limit for the word form malost’ (English a bit) is the zone of peripheral adverbs that do not violate the semantic identity of the original lexemes. The article substantiates the thesis that the adverbialisation of the word form malost’ is exclusively grammatical in nature. The research results can be used in the practice of teaching Russian grammar in higher and vocational educational institutions. Moreover, they can be employed to create a transpositional grammar of the Russian language.