Page 21 - Dalle origini ai giorni nostri: convergenze e divergenze tra lingue slave

Epistemic and pragmatic functions of ja ne znaju ‘I don’t know’ in contemporary Russian

by an equivalent increase in the amount of cars manufactured in Russia,
where the automobile industry has been severely affected by the econom-
ic downturn which has left the sector stuck in an old industry technolo-
gy and lack of professional training and competence. She reformulates the
idea that there is a dearth of učitelej ‘teachers’ in the car sector with masterov
‘foremen’, preceded by ja ne znaju prefaced by the irrealis marker tam.
In example (9), the speaker is arguing that Russian liberals should go
back to the tradition of Russian liberalism which was represented by the
Cadets and Herzen. In this context ja ne znaju is employed for self-correc-
tion by editing the previous utterance in an environment prefaced by the
discourse markers nu ‘well’ and tam ‘there’.
Several tokens of ja ne znaju reveal that the construction also performs
a more specific text-structuring function as a device employed to man-
age textual progression. In turn-initial position in the sequential envi-
ronment of a response to a question, it smoothes the transition between

Example 8
Nu probki v Moskve da vot znaete i
well jams in Moscow yes here you.know and
v drugich gorodach probki vse kupili sebe mašiny
in other towns jams all bought REFL cars
i vse voobšče šikarno žily nu otnositel’noostal’nych
and all generally chic lived well relative remaining
vremën nikogo ne volnovalo v ètot moment to
times nobody NEG worried in this moment that
čto v Rossii kak by isčezaet voobšče proizvodstvo
that in Russia how BY disappeargenerally production
kak takovoe čto ne učat rabočich tam net
as such that NEG teach workers there NEG
učitelej tam ja ne znaju masterov oni vse
teachers there I NEG know foremen they all
kuda-to isčezajut nu kto-to vymiraet a novye ne
somewhere disappear well someone dies and new NEG
prichodjat net professional’nogo obrazovanija tam eščë massy veščej
come NEG vocational education there still mass things
net
NEG
Well, traffic jams in Moscow, right? You know? And in other cities there are traffic jams.
Everyone bought a car for themselves and everyone generally lived chic, well, relative to all other
times. Nobody was worried at that moment that in Russia, as it were, production as such was
disappearing altogether? They don’t teach workers there, there are no teachers, I don’t know,
masters, they all are disappearing somewhere … Well, someone dies, but new ones do not come.
There is no vocational education, there are still a lot of things missing there.

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