LAUSR

ABSTRACT The aim of the present article is to verify one of the fundamental principles of Construction Grammar: the absence of a clear boundary between free expressions and phrasemes. Proceeding from this postulate, properties of linguistic expressions such as idiomaticity, fixedness and non-compositionality should be viewed as a matter of degree. The data for the investigation are Russian expressions based on the pattern nu i X. The focus is on both idioms (nu i nu ‘well, now!’) and on compositional collocations introducing a special question (Nu i kak tebe ėta stat′ja? ‘Well, so what do you think of this article?’). Located between these poles are many items that are not fully compositional but also do not belong to the field of traditional phraseology (nu i ladno ‘well and good’, nu i pust′ ‘so be it’). Using statistical analysis, the article identifies the most stable items following the pattern nu i Х. Semantic analysis permits us to identify two groups of constructions: ‘surprise’, and ‘indifference’. Occurring within each group are constructions with different degrees of idiomaticity. Thus we are dealing with a continuum, that is, a gradual transition from free co-occurrences to idiomatic ones.