ИСТИНА

The paper deals with Russian verbs grabit’/ograbit’ ‘to rob’, obvorovyvat’/obvorovat’ ‘to burgle’ that are usually considered to have an inexpressible (or blocked) semantic valency of the object taken by the robbers. Some forms that are governed by these verbs and supposedly act as the means of expressing this valency are analyzed. It is shown that a dependent in the na + accusative form (ograbit’ (bank) na million dollarov ‘to rob (a bank) on a million dollars’) used with all these verbs does not realize this valency but contains a description of the taken object. The paper looks closely at the word combinations like grabit’ nagrablennoe ‘to steal the loot [to rob the stolen]’ which are possible only for the verb grabit’, and considers this valency to be filled here; thus the verb grabit’ has to be regarded not as a word with an inexpressible valency but rather as a word that has two government patterns where the valency of the taken object is expressible in only one of them.