Old Russian Possessive Constructions : : A Construction Grammar Approach / / Hanne Martine Eckhoff.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Eckhoff, Hanne Martine,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter Mouton, , [2011]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM] , 237
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (215 p.)

This book is a detailed study of the possessive semantic space within the framework of construction grammar. Using corpus data from Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian, the book uses semantic maps to document the relationship between form and meaning in a set of semantically closely related syntactic constructions that can all express adnominal possession and all partially overlap. The book also traces the development of these constructions from the earliest Slavic attestations towards Modern Russian, thus also using the semantic maps as a diachronic tool. This approach results in a much improved analysis of the data at hand: The competing possessive constructions are treated as partly synonymous constructions in the same semantic space. Changes are then seen to follow paths in this space. The constructionist perspective also allows discerning the relative contributions of the possessor nominal, the possessee nominal and properties of the constructions themselves. The book is a contribution to Slavic historical linguistics, to the general understanding of adnominal possession and to forwarding functionalist approaches to syntactic change.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of abbreviations -- Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. A map of the possessive semantic space -- Chapter 3. The constructions in Old Russian -- Chapter 4. ID: Reference points on instance level -- Chapter 5. The ELAB nodes: Intrinsic relationships -- Chapter 6. Types and conventionalised units: TYPE and LABEL -- Chapter 7. Synchrony and diachrony -- Chapter 8. Concluding remarks -- Appendix: Corpus and method -- Notes -- References -- Index