Coordinated tautologies in Russian.

The paper discusses a particular pattern of tautological constructions in Russian called coordinated tautologies. The notion was introduced in 2008 by J. Meibauer who used it to describe constructions like Work is work and holidays are holidays. Opposed to other tautologies, these constructions include not one, but two pairs of repeated elements with the meaning that two objects or events are distinct in a relevant way. In Russian there are a few models of «simple» tautologies (X est’ X, X eto X, etc. ‘X is X’), and it is discussed whether their semantic properties are inherited by «complex» coordinated tautologies. It is argued that constructions like Druzhba druzhboi, a sluzhba sluzhboi also belong to the class of coordinated tautologies despite their structural difference.