TOWARDS SYNTACTIC UNITS AND SYNTACTIC MYTHS (PART 1)

Within the modern methodological framework of regarding science as «operations with statements» (B. Latour, S. Woolgar) the article aims at answering the question: which approaches to syntactic units could really be labelled as «the Russian grammar tradition»? Two aspects constituting this tradition are discussed: independent statements made by outstanding scientists (original texts) and their later interpretations (post-texts) which may be rather distant from the original paradigm these statements were made in. Comparing the original texts and later post-texts we discover and try to systematize the misrepresentations and misinterpretations which are further spread among new generations of linguists via internet. Thus, comparison of statements on syntactic units made by Russian linguistic classics – A.A. Shakhamatov and V.V. Vinogradov – and their reflection in the works of their successors reveals a number of inaccuracies which themselves form a tradition. The fact that substantial misinterpretations of the «ancestors»’ syntactic views can be found even in classical university textbooks is illustrated by the presentation of M.V. Lomonosov and A.A. Shakhamatov in V.A. Beloshapkova’s well-known Russian syntax for universities as the founders of the allegedly traditional idea that two syntactic units should be distinguished: sentence («predlozhenie») and word combination («slovosochetanie»). Also we demonstrate the following types of misrepresentations and misinterpretations: 1) the tendency of integrating Shakhamatov’s and Vinogradov’s view on syntactic units into the structuralistic level-based approach to language; 2) the distortion of causal relations in textbook explanations why this or that scientist formulated his or her idea of syntactic units and 3) the excessively broad or narrow approach to the idea of succession which can be selected by authors of post-texts to defend their own position in Russian grammar tradition and to cross scientific opponents out of it. Recognizing that some of these inaccuracies arise from the original texts themselves (changes in the scientist’s views during his life; ambiguous statements; combination of terminological and non-terminological usage of the same word), we argue that a lot of them still stem from conscious or unconscious wish of an author of a textbook or other post-text to present an integrated view of the Russian grammar tradition rather than investigate the real history of operations with statements on syntactic units in it.