Semi-Notional-Semi-Functional Words as Analogues of Conjunctions in the Modern Russian Language

The article deals with “hybrids” - words that are analogues of conjunctions and represent a special grammatical-functional class of words of semi-notional and semi-functional type. Such linguistic units can be used autonomously or as part of a conjunction means. Two main conditions of hybridisation (functional cohesion) in the modern Russian language have been established: the position of the notional word (between syntactic units) or the contact position with the existing conjunction means (substantiation). The studied linguistic units are distinguished by the degree of diffuzziness and are able to include the nuclear part of the semantic space of a notional word in the conjunction component, complicating the meaning of the ‘hybrid’ included in the extended gradual (or gradual-integrative) paradigm. In the course of the study, the main grammatical and functional features of ‘hybrids’used to distinguish (contrast) words that give completely different classes of linguistic units are determined. It is established that such ‘hybrid’ words, on the one hand, have a nominative meaning (sufficiently informative), on the other hand, convey different types of relations between words; nominative units, being subjected to desemantisation, show the properties of a functional element and become conjunction analogues, which perform a linking function, but are not conjunctions in the conventional sense of the word.