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In:Space in Diachrony
Edited by Silvia Luraghi, Tatiana Nikitina and Chiara Zanchi
[Studies in Language Companion Series 188] 2017
► pp. 347–368

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Prepositional phrase vs. bare instrumental

The trajectory of motion in Russian

 | ILLC/University of Amsterdam
Published online: 14 August 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.188.13phi
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.
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
References (20)
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