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The present study explores a frequent concept in modern media discourse, namely "threat," based on a corpus analysis of the two Russian nouns groza and ugroza from 1800 to 2020. We show that the two words share a network of submeanings, but that they have different centers of gravity in the network. We identify four submeanings and suggest that the distribution of the two words has changed over time. In present-day Russian, groza is dominant in the meaning 'thunderstorm,' while ugroza describes a wide variety of threats. Our analysis of origins of threats and affected entities has also revealed a diachronic development, whereby origins of threat change from concrete physical threats via military threats to more generalized dangers, such as nuclear and environmental disasters, diseases, and terrorism, while entities affected by these threats undergo a change from concrete persons via communities and states to the entire planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between future time and future tense forms in Russian is complex. The forms traditionally attributed to the future tense in certain cases do not refer to future time. Those cases have been previously presented as an inventory not representing a plausible cognitive model and/or attributed to the sphere of modality. In this article, we suggest a data-driven approach applied to the spectrum of meanings of Russian future tense forms. We analyzed corpus data and discovered that 44% of perfective future forms and 22% of imperfective future forms do not unambiguously express future time meaning. Among the non-future time meanings that Russian future tense forms can express are Gnomic, Performative, Implicative, Hypothetical, Alternation, and Stable scenario. Furthermore, we propose that the meanings of the future tense constitute a radial category. Future time reference is the prototypical meaning of the future tense. The remaining meanings comprise extensions connected to the prototypical meaning. We describe the radial category with reference to Langacker’s (2008) model of tense and potentiality. Additionally, we explore the interaction of future tense and modality.

Many dictionaries and other lexicographic resources often describe near-synonyms using one another, which makes it difficult for a foreign language learner to make a choice between them. Although it is true that near-synonyms can be used when referring to the same state of affairs, they often involve different construals, insofar as they represent different ways of viewing the situation in question. Quite often, not all alternatives are possible in a given context, but it is not an easy task to pinpoint which alternative is possible in which context. In this study I consider a group of nearly synonymous verbs with the meaning ‘tremble’ in Russian and attempt to build a radial category network of meanings based on corpus data. I show that the network accommodates the similarities among the verbs, but at the same time also brings out the differences among them.

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 the prefixes are not empty but instead have meanings that overlap with the meanings of the base verbs, proof of this hypothesis has eluded researchers. With the advent of corpora and electronic resources it is possible to explore this question on the basis of large quantities of data. This article presents a new methodology, called “radial category profiling”, in which the semantic network of a prefix is established on the basis of its “non-empty” uses and then compared, node by node, with the semantic network of base verbs that use the same prefix as an “empty” perfectivizing morpheme. This methodology facilitates a comprehensive analysis of ten prefixes, comparing their meanings in “non-empty” and “empty” uses and showing precisely how in the latter case overlap produces the illusion of emptiness. We are able to fully specify the semantic network of each prefix, and discover that for some prefixes there is overlap throughout the network, while for others overlap is restricted to a contiguous subsection of the network. We investigate the dynamic interactions among prefixes, and identify what meanings are incompatible with the “purely aspectual” function of the so-called “empty” prefixes. The results of our analyses, including complete lists of verbs, are publicly available at: http://emptyprefixes.uit.no/ and http://emptyprefixes.uit.no/methodology_eng.htm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article we apply one of the key concepts in cognitive linguistics, the radial category, to inflectional morphology. We advance the Paradigm Structure Hypothesis, arguing that inflectional paradigms are radial categories with internal structure primarily motivated by semantic relationships of markedness and prototypicality. It is possible to construct an expected structure for a verbal paradigm, facilitating an empirical test for our hypothesis. Data tracking an on-going morphological change in Russian documents the distribution of conservative vs. innovative forms across the cells of the verbal paradigm. A logistic regression model that takes into account the sources of variation (the frequencies of individual verbs and paradigm slots, and individual verb preferences) shows that the language change is implemented differently across the paradigm forms, confirming the expected structure. In addition to markedness and prototypicality, we investigate the impact of frequency and show that there is a good, albeit not perfect match between the expected hierarchy and frequency. We conclude that the diachronic change analyzed in this article gives evidence for the structure of paradigms modeled on the radial category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]