PREPOSITIONAL CONSTRUCTIONS WITH 'NA' IN FOLK DIALECTS OF NORTH-WEST BELARUS.

This article is a study of such prepositional constructions as aslepnuts na vochy, hvarets na astsu, azlabitstsa na sina, graz na dudtsy, ehats na kani in folk dialects of north-west Belarus. These constructions have received too little attention in the research on the standard variety of Belorussian and a few issues still need analysis: the usage patterns of the structure and its relations with other dialects. In this paper, we discuss the structural features, the geographical expansion and the prescriptive status of the construction. Our study revealed that the constructions can express different meanings, and they modify the meaning of the verb. The analysed structure exhibits high productivity in the dialects of north-west Belarus. We believe that all prepositional constructions of this kind were derived from non-prepositional constructions; the exact time of such shift is difficult to determine, since the two kinds of constructions have existed in parallel for a long time. The prepositional construction ehats na kani is normative in modern Belorussian and Russian. In the west of Belarus, people also use the prepositionless variant of the construction: ehats kanem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]