Looking into the Russian future

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 attri...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognitextes 2022-01, Vol.22 (Volume 22)
Main Authors: Kosheleva, Daria, Janda, Laura Alexis
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
aspect
Cognitive linguistics
corpus
Corpus analysis
Corpus linguistics
future tense
Grammatical aspect
Humaniora: 000
Humanities: 000
Kognitiv lingvistikk / Cognitive linguistics
Linguistics: 010
Meaning
Modality (Semantic)
radial category
Russian
Russian language
Russian language: 028
Russisk språk: 028
Språkvitenskapelige fag: 010
Tense
Time
VDP
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:1958-5322
1958-5322
DOI:10.4000/cognitextes.2087