Chapter 12. Verbs of rotation in Russian and Polish

The aim of this article is to provide an account of possible parameters of semantic variation within the domain of rotation in Russian and Polish. The paper presents a corpus-based analysis (supplemented by questionnaires) of five Russian and five Polish verbs, both cognates and not. The results of this study show a considerable difference between verbal frames of rotation lexicalized in both languages despite of their close relations. In particular, the speed of rotation is relevant for Polish verbs, but not for their Russian counterparts. On the contrary, the difference between controlled and uncontrolled rotation is relevant for Russian, but not for Polish. It is argued that the comparison of cognates from genetically related languages is not only possible, but can be extremely useful in the typological perspective.