Laura A Janda
Biographic Data
| ID | 755591 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laura A Janda |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laura A |
| FAMILY NAME | Janda |
| SIGNATURE | JANDA L A |
| AFFILIATIONS | UiT The Arctic University of Norway |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5047-1909 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 58 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 37 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The lexicon-grammar continuum: What Persian complex predicates reveal
We argue for the lexicon-grammar continuum by looking into the separability of Persian complex predicates, an open class of verb constructions for which it has been argued that the components are either separable or inseparable. We contend that separability is best described as a scalar rather than an all-or-nothing phenomenon. Our analysis of zadan ‘to hit’ within the framework of Construction Grammar yields a semantic description of zadan compl…
Contextually determined or semantically distinct? The competition between instrumental, long form nominative and short form nominative in Russian predicate adjectives
Based on data from the syntactic subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus, we undertake a quantitative analysis of the competition between Russian predicate adjectives in the instrumental (e.g., pustym ‘empty’), the long form nominative (e.g., pustoj ‘empty’), and the short form nominative (e.g., pust ‘empty’). It is argued that the choice of adjective form is partly determined by the context. Four (nearly) categorical rules are proposed based on…
Understanding ‘many’ through the lens of Ukrainian багато
We reveal an ongoing language change in Ukrainian involving a construction with a subject comprised of the indefinite quantifier багато ‘many’ modifying a noun phrase in the Genitive Plural. Number agreement on the verb varies, allowing both Singular (in 69.1% of attestations) and Plural (in 30.9% of attestations). Based on statistical analysis of corpus data, we investigate the influence of the factors of year of creation, word order of subject …
Russian grammar as a constructicon: Beyond a list
While linguistics traditionally keeps lexicon separate from grammar, Construction Grammar takes the grammatical construction as the basic unit of language. A grammatical construction integrates the roles of lexemes with their typical grammatical contexts, suggesting the advantages of a comprehensive approach. Furthermore, according to Construction Grammar, grammatical constructions comprise a system in which constructions mutually reinforce each …
From data to theory: An emergent semantic classification based on the large-scale Russian constructicon
The semantic classification of over 2,200 constructions in the Russian Constructicon has emerged objectively from empirical analysis. The resulting semantic classification comports with and goes beyond frame semantics, revealing complex patterns of related constructions verified against corpus data and by a panel of native speakers. Our model of a constructicon can inform and complement existing approaches with additional findings. We detail our …
The case for case in Putin’s speeches
Vladimir V. Putin has banned the use of the word ‘war’ to refer to the conflict in Ukraine. While one’s choice of words is deliberate and conscious, grammatical categories are obligatory and pivotal to signaling the roles notions have in a discourse. Over- and underrepresentation of grammatical cases can be identified by Keymorph Analysis, which measures deviations from corpus norms analogously to Keyword Analysis. This first application of Keymo…
The long and the short of it: Russian predicate adjectives with zero copula
The present article presents an empirical investigation of the choice between so-called long (e.g., prostoj ‘simple’) and short (e.g., prost ‘simple’) forms of predicate adjectives in Russian, based on data from the syntactic subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus. The data under scrutiny suggest that short forms represent the dominant option for predicate adjectives. It is proposed that long forms are descriptions of thematic participants in s…
A network of allostructions: Quantified subject constructions in Russian
This article contributes to Construction Grammar, historical linguistics, and Russian linguistics through an in-depth corpus study of predicate agreement in constructions with quantified subjects. Statistical analysis of approximately 39,000 corpus examples indicates that these constructions constitute a network of constructions (“allostructions”) with various preferences for singular or plural agreement. Factors pull in different directions, and…
Directions for Pedagogical Construction Grammar: Learning and Teaching (with) Constructions
How can insights from Construction Grammar (CxG) be applied to foreign language learning (FLL) and foreign language teaching (FLT)? This volume explores several aspects of Pedagogical Construction Grammar, with a specific look at issues relevant to second language acquisition, FLL, and FLT. The contributions in this volume discuss a wide range of constructions, as well as different resources, methodologies, and data used to learn constructions in…
Constructions, their families and their neighborhoods: The case of durak durakom ‘a fool times two’
On the basis of data from the Russian National Corpus, we analyze the meanings and structure of the syntactic construction observed in phrases like durak durakom ‘fool- nom.sg fool- ins.sg’ , which we term the ‘NOM∼INS construction’. We argue that the construction constitutes a network of three closely related subcategories, which we refer to as ‘Extreme’, ‘Paragon’ and ‘Discourse Change’. It is furthermore shown that a diachronic change has take…
Artificial Languages in Czech Literature
Yggur and the Power of Language: A Linguistic Invention Embedded in a Czech Novel
Aspectual opposition and rivalry in Russian are not discrete: New evidence from experimental data
Prezidentskie vybory vs. vybory prezidenta: How to choose
Seeing from without, seeing from within: Aspectual differences between Spanish and Russian
Linguistic categories such as aspect are not identical across languages, and cross-linguistic differences can reveal differences in construal and conceptual categorization, which are key concepts in cognitive linguistics. Spanish-Russian parallel data diverge in situations where Spanish uses a Perfective Past tense form, while the Russian translation equivalent is an Imperfective Past tense form. We classify examples of aspectual mismatch accordi…
Construal vs. redundancy: Russian aspect in context
The relationship between construal and redundancy has not been previously explored empirically. Russian aspect allows speakers to construe situations as either Perfective or Imperfective, but it is not clear to what extent aspect is determined by context and therefore redundant. We investigate the relationship between redundancy and open construal by surveying 501 native Russian speakers who rated the acceptability of both Perfective and Imperfec…
The Slavic Field in Norway
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 and what they mean for the future
An experimental study of Russian possible verbs prefixed in o- and u
В статье представлено экспериментальное исследование потенциальных слов русского языка, об- разованных по двум продуктивным моделям, а именно деадъективных глаголов с приставками о- и у- типа овнешнить и уконкретить, обытовить и украсивить, и др. В частности, проверяются четыре гипотезы о том, определяются ли суждения о приемлемости потенциальных глаголов а) частотностью и статусом слова в языке, б) продуктивностью словообразовательной модели, в)…
The Quantitative Turn
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Predicting Russian Aspect by Frequency Across Genres
We ask whether the aspect of individual verbs can be predicted based on the statistical distribution of their inflectional forms and how this is influenced by genre. To address these questions, we present an analysis of the “grammatical profiles” (relative frequency distributions of inflectional forms) of three samples of verbs extracted from the Russian National Corpus, representing three genres: Journalistic prose, Fiction, and Scientific-Techn…
Who needs particles? A challenge to the classification of particles as a part of speech in Russian
The ongoing eclipse of possessive suffixes in North Saami: A case study in reduction of morphological complexity
North Saami is replacing the use of possessive suffixes on nouns with a morphologically simpler analytic construction. Our data (>2K examples culled from >.5M words) track this change through three generations, covering parameters of semantics, syntax and geography. Intense contact pressure on this minority language probably promotes morphological simplification, yielding an advantage for the innovative construction. The innovative construction i…
Essentials of cognitive grammar by Ronald W. Langacker
Reviewed by: Essentials of cognitive grammar by Ronald W. Langacker Laura A. Janda Essentials of cognitive grammar. By Ronald W. Langacker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 269. ISBN 9780199937356. $26.95. Ronald W. Langacker and his cognitive grammar (CG) have earned a privileged position within cognitive linguistics. L’s books (Langacker 1987, 1991a,b, 2000) have given us the core concepts that define the framework of cognitive lingui…
Charles E. Townsend, 1932-2015
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Tense, aspect and mood
A metaphor in search of a source domain: The categories of Slavic aspect
I propose that human experience of matter provides the source domain for the metaphor that motivates the grammatical category of aspect in Russian. This model is a version of the universal TIME IS SPACE metaphor, according to which SITUATIONS ARE MATERIAL ENTITIES, and, more specifically, PERFECTIVE IS A DISCRETE SOLID OBJECT versus IMPERFECTIVE IS A FLUID SUBSTANCE. The contrast of discrete solid objects with fluid substances reveals a rich arra…
Metonymy in word-formation
A foundational goal of cognitive linguistics is to explain linguistic phenomena in terms of general cognitive strategies rather than postulating an autonomous language module (Langacker 1987: 12–13). Metonymy is identified among the imaginative capacities of cognition (Langacker 1993: 30, 2009: 46–47). Whereas the majority of scholarship on metonymy has focused on lexical metonymy, this study explores the systematic presence of metonymy in word-f…
What constructional profiles reveal about synonymy: A case study of Russian words for sadness and happiness
We test two hypotheses relevant to the form-meaning relationship and offer a methodological contribution to the empirical study of near-synonymy within the framework of cognitive linguistics. In addition, we challenge implicit assumptions about the nature of the paradigm, which we show is skewed in favor of a few forms that are prototypical for a given lexical item. If one accepts the claim of construction grammar that the construction is the rel…
The radial network of a grammatical category — its genesis and dynamic structure
Slavic aspectual prefixes and numeral classifiers: Two kinds of lexico-grammatical unitizers
Seeing from without, seeing from within: Aspectual differences between Spanish and Russian
Linguistic categories such as aspect are not identical across languages, and cross-linguistic differences can reveal differences in construal and conceptual categorization, which are key concepts in cognitive linguistics. Spanish-Russian parallel data diverge in situations where Spanish uses a Perfective Past tense form, while the Russian translation equivalent is an Imperfective Past tense form. We classify examples of aspectual mismatch accordi…
Grammatical profiles and the interaction of the lexicon with aspect, tense, and mood in Russian
We propose the "grammatical profile" as a means of probing the aspectual behavior of verbs. A grammatical profile is the relative frequency distribution of the inflected forms of a word in a corpus. The grammatical profiles of Russian verbs provide data on two crucial issues: a) the overall relationship between perfective and imperfective verbs and b) the identification of verbs that characterize various intersections of aspect, tense and mood (T…
Paradigm structure: Evidence from Russian suffix shift
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 hypot…
A network of allostructions: Quantified subject constructions in Russian
This article contributes to Construction Grammar, historical linguistics, and Russian linguistics through an in-depth corpus study of predicate agreement in constructions with quantified subjects. Statistical analysis of approximately 39,000 corpus examples indicates that these constructions constitute a network of constructions (“allostructions”) with various preferences for singular or plural agreement. Factors pull in different directions, and…
Construal vs. redundancy: Russian aspect in context
The relationship between construal and redundancy has not been previously explored empirically. Russian aspect allows speakers to construe situations as either Perfective or Imperfective, but it is not clear to what extent aspect is determined by context and therefore redundant. We investigate the relationship between redundancy and open construal by surveying 501 native Russian speakers who rated the acceptability of both Perfective and Imperfec…
Metonymy and word-formation revisited
Brdar and Brdar-Szabó (this volume) offer a critique of Janda (2011). Janda (2011) found that the same cognitive strategy that facilitates metonymy, namely use of a conceptual source to access a target, can also be invoked in many patterns of affixal word-formation. In other words, many cases of word-formation appear to be motivated by metonymic association. Brdar and Brdar-Szabó claim that it is incorrect to refer to word-formational processes a…
Russian Aspect at Your Fingertips: Why What You Know about Matter Matters, or a User-Friendly Conceptualization of Verbal Aspect in Russian
Laura A. Janda, Russian Aspect at Your Fingertips: Why What You Know about Matter Matters, or a User-Friendly Conceptualization of Verbal Aspect in Russian, The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer, 2003), pp. 251-281
Figure, Ground, and Animacy in Slavic Declension
La distinction anime/inanime n'est que l'une des nombreuses distinctions pouvant etre faites le long d'un continuum allant de soi vers l'autre. Depuis le slave commun tardif, les langues slaves ont developpe des distinctions diverses et richement articulees le long de cette echelle (ex : viril vs non viril, anime vs inamine, entite vs cadre). Ces distinctions ont ete implantees morphologiquement a travers l'extension analogique du genitif-accusat…
A Semantic Analysis of the Russian Verbal Prefixes za-, pere-, do-, and ot
z a -'d rag* 'c o v e r' z a g lu K a t' -07 *deafen* *d ro w n o u t' z a g o ro d it' zo- 'fence* *block
Česko-anglický slovnik
The radial network of a grammatical category — its genesis and dynamic structure
Spatial Cognition and the Semantics of Prepositions in English, Polish, and Russian
The Shape of the Indirect Object in Central and Eastern Europe
Dans cet article, l'A. etudie les constructions datives dans les langues slaves et dans certaines langues europeenness a cas
The Spread of Athematic 1sg -m in the Major West Slavic Languages
L'A. examine un evenement linguistique inhabituel dans lequel un morpheme qui se limite generalement a une tres petite classe d'items lexicaux devient hautement productif
Figure, Ground, and Animacy in Slavic Declension
La distinction anime/inanime n'est que l'une des nombreuses distinctions pouvant etre faites le long d'un continuum allant de soi vers l'autre. Depuis le slave commun tardif, les langues slaves ont developpe des distinctions diverses et richement articulees le long de cette echelle (ex : viril vs non viril, anime vs inamine, entite vs cadre). Ces distinctions ont ete implantees morphologiquement a travers l'extension analogique du genitif-accusat…
Fifty Years of Linguistics and Cognitive Science: A Retrospective Collection
Common and Comparative Slavic: Phonology and Inflection with Special Attention to Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian
Common and Comparative Slavic: Phonology and Inflection with Special Attention to Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian
Implementation of the Figure-GROUND Distinction in Polish
From Number to Gender, from Dual to Virile: Bridging Cognitive Categories
Russian Aspect at Your Fingertips: Why What You Know about Matter Matters, or a User-Friendly Conceptualization of Verbal Aspect in Russian
Laura A. Janda, Russian Aspect at Your Fingertips: Why What You Know about Matter Matters, or a User-Friendly Conceptualization of Verbal Aspect in Russian, The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer, 2003), pp. 251-281
A metaphor in search of a source domain: The categories of Slavic aspect
I propose that human experience of matter provides the source domain for the metaphor that motivates the grammatical category of aspect in Russian. This model is a version of the universal TIME IS SPACE metaphor, according to which SITUATIONS ARE MATERIAL ENTITIES, and, more specifically, PERFECTIVE IS A DISCRETE SOLID OBJECT versus IMPERFECTIVE IS A FLUID SUBSTANCE. The contrast of discrete solid objects with fluid substances reveals a rich arra…
Gemeinslavisch und Slavisch im Vergleich. Einführung in die Entwicklung von Phonologie und Flexion
Aspectual clusters of Russian verbs
The traditional “pair” model of Russian aspect fails to distinguish among Perfectives and ignores the fact that most verbs exist in larger clusters of three or more aspectually related forms. I propose semantic parameters that account for the interaction of aspect and actionality and use them to construct a semantic map of Russian aspectual relationships. I show, using a multiply stratified sample of 283 verb clusters (including over 2000 verbs),…
Why по слушать, but у слышать
This article provides a preliminary analysis of aspectual prefixation of Russian perception verbs. It is argued that the choice of prefix is not arbitrary, but depends on the meaning of the verb stem
Getting out: A preliminary analysis of вы- and из
This article explores the Russian aspectual prefixes вы- and из- from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. It is shown that the two prefixes have very similar meanings that occupy overlapping parts of the same category network. The meanings attested in natural and specialized perfectives occur in the same network, but natural perfectives occupy a subset of the nodes of the specialized perfectives. It is argued that a network approach to ling…
Хохотнул, схитрил: The relationship between semelfactives formed with -nu- and s- in Russian
What constructional profiles reveal about synonymy: A case study of Russian words for sadness and happiness
We test two hypotheses relevant to the form-meaning relationship and offer a methodological contribution to the empirical study of near-synonymy within the framework of cognitive linguistics. In addition, we challenge implicit assumptions about the nature of the paradigm, which we show is skewed in favor of a few forms that are prototypical for a given lexical item. If one accepts the claim of construction grammar that the construction is the rel…
Paradigm structure: Evidence from Russian suffix shift
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 hypot…
Two ways to get out: Radial Category Profiling and the Russian prefixes vy - and iz
We undertake a detailed analysis of the two closely related Russian aspectual prefixes vy - and iz . The meanings of these prefixes are analyzed in terms of networks of related subcategories, termed radial categories. This method facilitates precise comparison of submeanings and statistical analysis. Our analysis sharpens the traditional insight that elements of Church Slavic origin like iz - have a more abstract meaning than historically East Sl…
Prefix variation as a challenge to Russian aspectual pairs: Are завязнуть and увязнуть ‘get stuck’ the same or different
Two key issues in Russian linguistics are the traditional assumptions that (a) the aspect system presents ‘pairs’ of verbs that are perfective vs. imperfective, and that (b) since the lexical meanings of the two verbs that form a pair are identical, the affix that marks aspect has no semantic content. In relation to prefixed perfectives, this approach can be called the Empty Prefix Hypothesis. The alternative approach, which can be called the Ove…
Metonymy in word-formation
A foundational goal of cognitive linguistics is to explain linguistic phenomena in terms of general cognitive strategies rather than postulating an autonomous language module (Langacker 1987: 12–13). Metonymy is identified among the imaginative capacities of cognition (Langacker 1993: 30, 2009: 46–47). Whereas the majority of scholarship on metonymy has focused on lexical metonymy, this study explores the systematic presence of metonymy in word-f…
Grammatical profiles and the interaction of the lexicon with aspect, tense, and mood in Russian
We propose the "grammatical profile" as a means of probing the aspectual behavior of verbs. A grammatical profile is the relative frequency distribution of the inflected forms of a word in a corpus. The grammatical profiles of Russian verbs provide data on two crucial issues: a) the overall relationship between perfective and imperfective verbs and b) the identification of verbs that characterize various intersections of aspect, tense and mood (T…
Linguistics (45 works) · Philosophy (45 works) · Computer Science (30 works) · Psychology (22 works) · History (21 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (19 works) · Linguistics and language evolution (17 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (16 works) · Lexicography and Language Studies (15 works) · Artificial Intelligence (12 works)