X (si) e X: tavtologiite v svetlinata na korpusnite danni

The article deals with the Bulgarian tautologies X si e X and X e X, investigated on the basis of the “Bulgaria National Corpus”. The main purpose of this paper is: a) to examine the lexical features of the binominative tautologies (semantic classes, frequency); b) to determine the role of the clitic si in the tautological pattern X si copula X; c) to outline the main differences between both tautological patterns. Equative tautologies are the necessarily true statements that encode the value of evidence. We affirm that in the pattern such as X si e X it is the modal particle si to assume the role of evidential marker. Analysis showed that the pattern X si e X is subjected to some structural restrictions and lexical preferences, while the pattern X e X is not. We have suggested that the construction X si e X, in contrast with X e X, represents a formal idiom.