Cover not available
Part of
Space in Diachrony
Edited by Silvia Luraghi, Tatiana Nikitina and Chiara Zanchi
[Studies in Language Companion Series 188] 2017
► pp. 347–368

Prepositional phrase vs. bare instrumental

The trajectory of motion in Russian

 | ILLC/University of Amsterdam
The trajectory of motion in Russian can be expressed by a prepositional phrase with the noun in the dative case or a bare NP in the instrumental case. It is argued that the latter construction is falling into disuse, along with the general trend toward analyticity in Slavic languages (Comrie et al. 1996). In this paper, I present a corpus-based diachronic study of the distribution of the two constructions with respect to various variables, such as noun frequency, the conceptualization of the Ground object, verb aspect, and others. I provide an argument that the bare NP construction is going through lexicalization as an adverb.
Keywords: corpus study, Russian, trajectory of motion, lexicalization
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data
  • 3.Noun-related factors
    • 3.1Constraints on Russian instrumental case
    • 3.2Configuration of the Ground object
    • 3.3Noun frequencies
  • 4.Verb-related factors
    • 4.1Manner vs. non-manner verbs
    • 4.2Aspect
    • 4.3Inherent trajectory of the verb
    • 4.4Verb frequencies
  • 5.Genre
  • 6.Discussion and concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.188.13phi
References (20)
References
Brinton, Laurel J. & Traugott, Elisabeth C.. 2005. Lexicalization and Language Change. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L.. 1985. Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form [Typological Studies in Language 9]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. From usage to grammar: The mind’s response to repetition. Language 82(4): 711–733. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Comrie, Bernard, Stone, Gerald & Polinsky, Maria. 1996. The Russian Language in the Twentieth Century, 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Gahl, Suzanne & Garnsey, Susan M.. 2006. Knowledge of grammar includes knowledge of syntactic probabilities. Language 82(2): 405–410. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ganenkov, Dmitrij S.. 2002. Tipologija padežnich značenij: semantičeskaja zona prolativa (Typology of case meanings: semantic zone of prolative). In Grammatikalizacija prostranstvennych značenij. Issledovanija po teorii grammatiki 2, Vladimir A. Plungian (ed), 35–55. Moskva: Russkie slovari.Google Scholar
Janda, Laura A.. 2006. Totally normal chaos: The aspectual behavior of Russian motion verbs. Harvard Ukrainian Studies 28(1): 183–193.Google Scholar
. 2008. Semantic motivations for aspectual clusters of Russian verbs. In American Contributions to the 14th International Congress of Slavists, Ohrid, Vol. 1: 181–196, Bloomington, IN: Slavica.Google Scholar
Nikitina, Tatiana. 2008. Pragmatic factors and variation in the expression of spatial goals. In Syntax and Semantics of Spatial P [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 120], Anna Asbury, Jakub Dotlačil & Berit Gehrke DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Variation in the encoding of endpoints of motion in Russian. In New Approaches to Slavic Verbs of Motion [Studies in Language Companion Series 115], Victoria Hasko & Renee Perelmutter (eds), 267–290. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rakhilina, Ekaterina V.. 2000. Kognitivnyj analiz predmetnych imen: Semantika i sočetaemost’ (Cognitive analysis of object names: Semantics and compatibility), 2nd edn. Moscow: Russkie slovari.Google Scholar
Rakhilina, Ekaterina V. & Tribushinina, Elena. 2010. The Russian instrumental-of-comparison: Constructional approach. In Slavic Linguistics in a Cognitive Framework, Marcin Grygiel & Laura A. Janda (eds), 145–174. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I.. 1996. Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish. In Grammatical Constructions: Their Form and Meaning, Masayoshi, Shibatani & Sandra A. Thompson, (eds), 195–219. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
. 2004. The many ways to search for a frog. In Relating Events in Narrative, Vol. 2: Typological and Contextual Perspectives, Sven Strömqvist & Ludo Verhoeven (eds), 219–257. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
. 2006. What makes manner of motion salient? Explorations in linguistic typology, discourse, and cognition. In Space in Languages: Linguistic Systems and Cognitive Categories [Typological Studies in Language 66], Maya, Hickmann & Stéphane Robert (eds), 59–81. Amsterdam: John Bejamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 1983. How language structures space. In Spatial Orientation: Theory, Research and Application, Herbert L. Pick & Linda P. Acredolo (eds), 225–282. New York NY: Plenum Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description, 3 Vols, Timothy Shopen (ed), 57–149. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
. 1991. Path to realization: A typology of event conflation. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on the Grammar of Event Structure, 480–519. Berkeley CA: BLS.
. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tily, Harry, Gahl, Susanne, Arnon, Inbal, Snider, Neal, Kothari, Anubha & Bresnan, Joan. 2009. Syntactic probabilities affect pronunciation variation in spontaneous speech. Language and Cognition 1(2): 147–165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar