Polysemy is defined as a multiplicity of related meanings connected by a single linguistic form. Polysemy can be understood in relation to both homonymy and contextual variation. Homonymy presents unrelated inventories of meanings connected by a given form, while contextual variation describes meanings that can be attributed to the effects of context. Polysemy borders on both homonymy and contextual ...

We present three case studies of the distribution of adjective + head noun (‘adjective’) vs. head noun + noun-genitive (‘genitive’) constructions based on datasets extracted from the Russian National Corpus. Each case study focuses on a different set of non-head referents: case study 1 examines non-heads that are country names (like ‘Norway’ as in <i>norvežskij</i> N vs. N <i>Norvegii</i>), case ...

In this study we explore the relationships of constructions in families and clusters. We examine fifty-seven multi-word Russian grammatical constructions that encode prohibitive semantics and model them as a radial category network that consists of two distinct clusters formed by eleven families of constructions. We show that each cluster of families is centered around a local prototype. The data ...

We present a study of four North Sámi adpositions that can be used as both prepositions and postpositions and thus be termed “ambipositions”. We advance three hypotheses concerning 1) dialectal differences in use of ambipositions in North Sámi, 2) differences between their use as prepositions and postpositions, and 3) a possible typological correlation between the frequency of ambipositions and ...

Nearly two thousand perfective verbs in Russian are formed via the addition of so-called “empty prefixes” (čistovidovye pristavki) to imperfective base verbs. The traditional assumption that prefixes are semantically “empty” when used to form aspectual pairs is problematic because the same prefixes are clearly “non-empty” when combined with other base verbs. Though some scholars have suspected that ...

This article shows how constructional and usage-based approaches to linguistics can be used to identify strategic input for L2 learners, i.e. input that reflects high frequency patterns in the target language. We suggest a methodology combining constructional and grammatical profiles, and argue that this methodology enables us to identify the most relevant morphological and syntactic constructions, ...

We test the hypothesis that Russian verbal prefixes express meaning even when they are used to create a “purely aspectual” pair (“čistovidovaja para”). This is contrary to traditional assumptions that prefixes in this function are semantically “empty”. We analyze the semantic tags independently established in the Russian National Corpus (www.ruscorpora.ru) for 382 perfective partner verbs with five ...

Slavic studies in Norway have been shaped by specific facts that facilitated the development of the field, described in Section 1. Section 2 approaches the current state of our field in Norway from the perspectives of language teach- ing, linguistics, literature and culture, as well as publication venues and spe- cial resources for Slavists. I conclude in Section 3 with comments on current trends ...