Cover not available
Article published In:
Verb Phrase and Fluid Construction Grammar
Edited by Luc Steels and Katrien Beuls
[Constructions and Frames 9:2] 2017
► pp. 302–320

Russian verbs of motion and their aspectual partners in Fluid Construction Grammar

 | AI Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
 | AI Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
 | Sony Computer Science Laboratories Tokyo
Russian boasts a highly complex aspectual system which can appear irregular and difficult to learn. It has recently been suggested that motion verbs, which are normally seen as exceptional in their nature, may in fact be at the core of this system, motivating aspectual behavior based on stem directionality. This suggests that analyzing motion verbs may help understand the Russian aspectual system as a whole. The present work demonstrates how Russian motion verbs and their aspectual partners can be implemented and processed successfully with Fluid Constructional Grammar. The study presents an example of language processing in both production and comprehension in operation and highlights the flexibility and power of this formalism, despite the challenges that this complex aspectual system poses.
Keywords: Russian aspect, motion verbs, Fluid Construction Grammar, computational constructional morphology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Stem directionality
    • 2.2Grammatical aspect
    • 2.3The cluster model
    • 2.4Cluster model and FCG
  • 3.Grammar design
  • 4.Operationalization in FCG
    • 4.1Semantics
    • 4.2Constructions
      • 4.2.1Non-prefixed verb forms
      • 4.2.2Prefixed verb forms
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 30 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.00006.beu
References (18)
References
Beuls, K. (2011). Construction sets and unmarked forms: A case study for Hungarian verbal agreement. In L. Steels (Ed.), Design patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar (pp. 237–264). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bottger, K. (2004). Grammaticalization the derivational way: The Russian aspecutal prefixes: po-, za-, ot-. In W. Bisang & N. Himmelmann (Eds.), What makes grammaticalization?A Look from its fringes and its components (pp. 187–210). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Dickey, S. (2007). A prototype account of the development of the delimitative po- in Russian. In D. Divjak & A. Kochanska (Eds.), Cognitive paths into the Slavic domain (pp. 329–374). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gagarina, N. (2009). Verbs of motion in Russian: An acquisitional perspective. The Slavic and East European Journal, Special Forum Issue: Teaching and Learning Russian Verbs of Motion, 53(3), 451–470.Google Scholar
Gerasymova, K. (2010). Emergence of aktionsarten: The first step towards aspect. In A. Smith, M. Schouwstra, B. de Boer & K. Smith (Eds.), The evolution of language (Evolang8) (pp. 145–152). Singapore: World Scientific. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012). Expressing grammatical meaning with morphology: A case study for Russian aspect. In L. Steels (Ed.), Computational issues in Fluid Construction Grammar, volume 7249 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (pp. 91–122). Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer.Google Scholar
Gerasymova, K., & Spranger, M. (2012). An experiment in temporal language learning. In L. Steels & M. Hild (Eds.), Language grounding in robots (pp. 237–254). Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gerasymova, K., Spranger, M., & Beuls, K. (2012). A language strategy for aspect: Encoding aktionsarten through morphology. In L. Steels (Ed.), Experiments in cultural language evolution [Advances in Interaction Studies 3] (p.p. 257–276). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Janda, L. (2007). Aspectual clusters of Russian verbs. Studies in Language, 31(3), 607–648. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008a). Semantic motivations for aspectual clusters of Russian verbs. In C. Y. Bethin (Ed.), American Contributions to the 14th International Congress of Slavists (pp. 181–196). Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers.Google Scholar
Janda, L. A. (2008b). Motion verbs and the development of aspect in Russian. Scando-Slavica, 54(1), 179–197. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Janda, L. (2009). Totally normal chaos: The aspectual behavior of Russian motion verbs. Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 281, 183–193.Google Scholar
(2010). Perfectives from non-determined motion verbs in Russian. In V. Hasko & R. Perelmutter (Eds.), New approaches to Slavic verbs of motion (pp. 125–140). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marques, T., & Beuls, K. (2016). Evaluation strategies for computational construction grammars. In Proceedings of COLING 2016, the 26th International Conference on Computational Linguistics: Technical Papers (pp. 1137–1146). Osaka, Japan.Google Scholar
Nesset, T. (2008). Path and manner: An image-schematic approach to Russian verbs of motion. Scando-Slavica, 541, 135–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nikolaev, V. (2012). Za-perfectives in Russian motion verbs. PhD thesis. Georgetown University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Steels, L. (2011a) (Ed.). Design patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011b). A first encounter with Fluid Construction Grammar. In L. Steels (Ed.), Design patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar (pp. 31–68). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar