The Semantics of Motion Verbs in Russian

Authors

Maria Gepner, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Keywords

motion verbs, semantics, linguistics, russian language, verb groups, determinate verbs, indeterminate verbs

Abstract

Within the group of imperfective motion verbs in Russian there exists a further subdivision into determinate and indeterminate verbs. Traditionally the distinction is said to lie in the direction of motion the verbs encode: motion in one direction or in different directions. In this paper I am going to argue that this distinction is not enough. I will claim that determinate verbs encode singular eventualities and indeterminate verbs are pluractional. Thus in the normal case, imperfective verbs are plural predicates which include singular and plural events in their denotations, in the case of motion verbs, imperfective denotations are subdivided into a singular and a pluractional predicate.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Gepner, Maria (2016) "The Semantics of Motion Verbs in Russian," Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication: Vol. 11. https://doi.org/10.4148/1944-3676.1105

References

Cusic, D. D. 1981. Verbal Plurality and Aspect. Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University.

Filip, H. 2008. ‘Events and maximalization: The case of telicity and perfectivity’. In S. Rothstein (ed.) ‘Theoretical and Crosslingustic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect’, 217–256. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Filip, H. & Carlson, G. 2001. ‘Distributivity strengthens reciprocity, collectivity weakens it’. Linguistics and Philosophy 24: 417–466.

Filip, H. & Rothstein, S. 2005. ‘Telicity as a semantic parameter’. In J. Lavine, S. Franks, H. Filip & M. Tasseva-Kurktchieva (eds.) ‘Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The Princeton University Meeting’, 139–156. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications.

Forsyth, J.1970. A Grammar of Aspect.Usage and Meaning in the RussianVerb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gepner, M. 2015. Motion Verbs in Russian. Formal Description of Slavic Languages 11 Potsdam.

Heim, Irene. 1991. ‘Artikel und Definitheit’. In Arnim von Stechow & Dieter Wunderlich (eds.) ‘In Semantik: Ein internationa les Handbuch des zeitgenossischen Forschung’, 487–535. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Isačenko, A. 1960. Grammaticheskij Stroj Russkogo Jazyka v Sopostovlenii s Slovackim. Morfologia pt. 2. Bratislava.

Kagan, O. 2007a. ‘On the Semantics of Verbs of Motion in Russian’. In Yehuda Falk (ed.) ‘Proceedings of IATL 23’, 1–15. Lasersohn, P.

1995. Plurality, Conjunction and Events. Kluwer, Dordrecht. Mehlig, H.

2008. ‘Aspect and bounded quantity complements in Russian’. In S. Rothstein (ed.)‘Theoretical and Crosslingustic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect’, 257–290. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Rett, Jessica. 2008. Degree modification in natural language. Ph.D. thesis, Rutgers University.

Romanova, Eugenia. 2006. Constructing Perfectivity in Russian. Ph.D. thesis, University of Tromsø, Tromsø.

Rothstein, S. 2004. Structuring Events: A study in the Semantics of Lexical Aspect. Oxford: Blackwell.

Sauerland, Uli. 2003. ‘A new semantics for number’. In ‘The Proceedings of SALT 13’, 258–275. Cornell University, CLC-Publications, Ithaca, NY.

Součkova, Katerina. 2011. Pluractionality in Hausa. Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics. Vendler, Z. 1967. Linguistics in Philosophy. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.

Wood, E. J. 2007. ‘The semantic typology of pluractionality’. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, UC Berkeley.

Zwarts, J. 2005. ‘Prepositional aspect and the algebra of paths’. Linguistics and Philosophy 28: 739–779.