Быть или не быть: от полнозначности к нулю : проблема связки в современной теории русского синтаксиса

In the article the author examines one of the central problems of the Russian syntax – the problem of the copula. The point is made, that the comparative analysis of syntax in Slavonic languages conducted by R. Mrazek allowed him to call neutralizing or absence of the verbal predicate in the sentence the distinctive feature of Russian sentence. In the article the author describes different aspects of the problem: the list of copulas, their functions in the sentence, their meanings and roles in organizing of the structure and shaping of the semantics of the sentence. The author states, that diversity of the approaches to the copula is determined by multidiversional nature of the verbal component in the sentence. The verb can perform different functions in the sentence: propositional, predicative, copulative and/or predictive function, thus it can play the role of the predicate, modifier, explicator, compensator, complicator and/or copula. Contemporary understanding of the copula is given with syntactic tradition in the background.