Interjection увы as component of an adversative-concessive joint

The following article describes the functions of the interjection увы ‘alas’ in an adversative-concessive joint увы, но ‘alas, but; regretfully’. The interjection увы ‘alas’ is actively used in speech; since it is a neutral interjection, it can be employed in a wide variety of contexts. Its role in the sentence may depend on its syntactic position. Using the language material found in the National Corpus of the Russian Language, we analyze the functioning of the joint увы, но ‘alas, but’ in mass media and spoken texts, as well as the shades of meaning which are realized in specific contexts. In constructions with the joint увы, но ‘alas, but’ we observe a reduction of the predicate, which could have contained the parenthetic-modal combination with the meaning of regret. This results in the formation of the meaning of inevitability: the joint увы, но ‘alas, but’ and the synonymous к счастью ‘fortunately’ or к сожалению, но ‘unfortunately, but’ show that the situation has formed in a certain way, and the current state of affairs is perceived as undesirable, or the speaker is not sure how to feel about it, but is forced to accept the situation as it is, since it is supposedly impossible to change it. Such constructions denote a complex combination of meanings: aside from regret, they also express a shade of meaning of inevitability, the degree of which may vary depending on context. The joint увы, но ‘alas, but’ may contain various concretizing elements which make the meaning of the sentence more specific.