Cover not available
Article published In:
Studies in Language
Vol. 40:3 (2016) ► pp.591–621

“Cyclic” time in the history of Russian

Culture and language internal factors

| UiT The Arctic University of Norway

This article offers a diachronic analysis of the concept of “cyclic” time in Russian, more specifically of temporal adverbials such as utrom ‘in the morning’ and vesnoj ‘in the spring’ that refer to the diurnal and annual temporal cycles in nature. It is argued that evidence from diachrony bears on important theoretical questions: Is the sensitivity to “cyclic” time in language due to cultural factors? How does the external factor of culture interact with language internal factors in the formation of temporal concepts? The proposed analysis indicates that the linguistic development in Russian does not mirror changes in cultural practices and values. Instead, the main burden of explanation is placed on a language internal factor, namely the general drift towards more analytic constructions in Russian, which I argue paved the way for the concept of “cyclic” time as reflected in the grammar of the Russian language today.

Keywords: diachrony, time in language, temporal adverbials, Russian
Published online: 18 October 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.40.3.04nes
References
Anstatt, Tanja
1996 ‘Zeit’: Motivierungen und Strukturen der Bedeutungen von Zeitbezeichnungen in slavischen und anderen Sprachen. Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner.Google Scholar
Børtnes, Jostein
1988 Visions of glory: Studies in Early Russian hagiography. Oslo: Solum and Humanities Press International, INC: New Jersey.Google Scholar
1989 The literature of old Russia. In Charles A. Moser (ed.), The Cambridge history of Russian literature. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Coulson, Seana & Cristobal Pagán Cánovas
2013 Understanding timelines: Conceptual metaphor and conceptual integration. Cognitive Semiotics 5.1-2. 198–219.Google Scholar
Dąbrowska, Ewa
2004 Language, mind and brain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Dickey, Stephen M
2008 A prototype account of the development of delimitative po in Russian. In Dagmar Divjak & Agata Kochanska (eds.), Cognitive paths into the Slavic domain, 326–371. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Divjak, Dagmar S
2015 Exploring the grammar of perception: A case study using data from Russian. Functions of Language 22(1). 44–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, Vyvyan
2003 The structure of time: Language, meaning, and temporal cognition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 The meaning of time: Polysemy, the lexicon and conceptual structure. Journal of Linguistics 411. 33–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Language and time: A cognitive linguistics approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Faarlund, Jan Terje, Svein Lie & Kjell Ivar Vannebo
1996 Norsk Referansegrammatikk. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner
2008 Rethinking metaphor. In Raymond W. Gibbs (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought, 53–66. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Filin, Fedot P
1965– Slovar’ russkix narodnyx govorov. Leningrad/St. Petersburg: Nauka.Google Scholar
Foster, Russell G. & Leon Kreitzman
2004 Rhythms of life. London: Profile books.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford
1966 Person, time, and conduct in Bali (Yale University Cultural Report Series no. 14). New Haven: Yale University.Google Scholar
Gladkova, Anna
2012 Universals and specifics of ‘time’ in Russian. In Luna Filipović & Kasia Jaszczolt (eds.), Space and time in languages and cultures: linguistic diversity, 167–188. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grannes, Alf
1986 Genitivus temporis in early Eighteenth Century Russian. Russian Linguistics 101. 53–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guiraud-Weber, Marguerite
2011 La perception du temps chez les Russes et les Français. In Essais de syntaxe russe et contrastive, 327–334. Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’université de Provence.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin
1997 From space to time. Temporal adverbials in the world’s languages. Munich and Newcastle: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Humboldt, Wilhelm von
1907/1968 Wilhelm von Humboldts Werke, vol. 71. Berlin: B. Behr’s Verlag (reprinted 1968 by Walter de Gruyter & Co.).Google Scholar
Il’ina, Nadežda E
1996 Rost analitizma v morfologii. In Elena A. Zemskaja (ed.), Russkij jazyk konca XX stoletija. Moscow: Jazyki russkoj kul‘tury.Google Scholar
Ipat’evskaja letopis’
1998 Volume 2 of Polnoe sobranie russkix letopisej. Moscow: Jazyki russkoj kul’tury.Google Scholar
Jakovleva, Ekaterina S
1991 Vremja i pora v oppozicii linejnogo i cikličeskogo vremeni. In Nina D. Arutjunova (ed.), Logičeskij analiz jazyka: kul’turnye koncepty, 45–51. Moscow: Nauka.Google Scholar
1992 Jazykovoe otraženie cikličeskoj modeli vremeni. Voprosy Jazykoznanija 41. 73–83.Google Scholar
1994 Fragmenty russkoj jazykovoj kartiny mira (modeli prostranstva, vremeni i vosprijatija). Moscow: “GNOZIS”.Google Scholar
Janda, Laura A
1993 A geography of case semantics. The Czech dative and the Russian instrumental. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Janda, Laura A. & Valery Solovyev
2009 What constructional profiles reveal about synonymy: A case study of Russian words for SADNESS and HAPPINESS. Cognitive Linguistics 20(2). 367–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Mark
1987 The body in the mind. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang
1994 Time in language. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
2009 How time is encoded. In Wolfgang Klein & Ping Li (eds.), The expression of time, 39–82. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George
1993 The contemporary theory of metaphor. In Andrew Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and thought, 202–251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson
1980 Metaphors we live by. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Rafael E. Núñez
2000 Where mathematics comes from: How the embodied mind brings mathematics into being. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W
2008 Cognitive grammar: A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Landau, Barbara & Lila R. Gleitman
1985 Language and experience: Evidence from the blind child. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lavrent’evskaja letopis’
1997 Volume 1 of Polnoe sobranie russkix letopisej. Moscow: Jazyki russkoj kul’tury.Google Scholar
Lomonosov, Mixail V
1755/1972 Rossijskaja Grammatika. St. Petersburg: Akademija Nauk. (Facsimile edition: Leipzig 1972).Google Scholar
Makarova, Anastasia & Tore Nesset
2013 Space-time asymmetries: Russian v ‘in(to)’ and the North Slavic temporal adverbial continuum. Russian Linguistics 37(3). 317–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Malaxovskaja, L.S
1958 Tvoritel’nyj vremeni. In Samuil B. Bernštejn (ed.), Tvoritel’nyj padež v slavjanskix jazykax, 222–245. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk.Google Scholar
Menzel, Thomas
2008 Temporaladverbien oder Kasusfunktion: Der Instrumental der Zeit im Russischen, Polnischen und Serbischen/Kroatischen. In Sebastian Kempgen, Karl Gutschmidt, Ulrike Jekutsch & Ludger Udolph (eds.), Deutsche Beiträge zum 14. internationalen Slavistenkongress Ohrid 20081, 263–275. Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner.Google Scholar
Mikhaylov, Nikita
2012 Tvoritel’nyj padež v russkom jazyke XVIII veka. Uppsala: Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Moore, Kevin Ezra
2014 The spatial language of time. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nesset, Tore
2004 Case assignment and image schemas: Russian temporal adverbials. Studies in Language 28(2). 285–320. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 How Russian became typologically unusual: The history of Russian temporal adverbials with v ‘in(to)’. Scando-Slavica 59(1). 32–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 How Russian came to be the way it Is. Bloomington: Slavica Publishers.Google Scholar
Núñez, Rafael E
2009 Numbers and arithmetic: Neither hardwired nor out there. Biological Theory 4(1). 68–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ostrowski, Donald
(ed.) 2003 The Pověst’ vremennykh lět: An interlinear collation and paradosis. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pavlova, Rumjana
1977 Prostranstvennye konstrukcii v drevnerusskom jazyke v sopostavlenii s drevnebolgarskim jazykom. Sofia: Izdatel’stvo Bolgarskoj akademii nauk.Google Scholar
Panov, Mixail V
(ed.) 1968 Morfologija i sintaksis sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka. Moscow: Nauka.Google Scholar
Peškovskij, Aleksandr M
1914 Russkij sintaksis v naučnom osveščenii. Moscow: Tipografija M. V. Sablina.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Daniel & Anthony Grafton
2010 Carthographies of time: A history of the timeline. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press.Google Scholar
Seuren, Pieter A.M
2013 From Whorf to Montague: explorations in the theory of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sinha, Vera da Silva, Chris Sinha, Wany Sampaio & Jörg Zinken
2012 Event-based time intervals in an Amazonian culture. In Luna Filipović & Kasia Jaszczolt (eds.), Space and time in languages and cultures: linguistic diversity, 15–35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slovar’ russkogo jazyka. (Malyj Akademičeskij slovar’, fourth edition)
1999 Moscow: Russkij jazyk.Google Scholar
Slovar’ russkogo jazyka XI–XVII
vv1. 1975–. Moscow: Nauka.
Toporov, Vladimir N
1961 Lokativ v slavjanskix jazykax. Moscow: Izdatel’ stvo Akademii nauk SSSR.Google Scholar
Turner, Mark
2014 The origin of ideas. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno
1957 Verbs and times. Philosophical Review 661.143–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weisgerber, Leo
1929 Muttersprache und Geistesbildung. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna
1980 The case for surface case. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers.Google Scholar
1992 Semantics, culture, and cognition: universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
1997 Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2005 Russkie kul’turnye skripty i ix otraženie v jazyke. In Anna A. Zaliznjak, Irina B. Levontina & Aleksej D. Šmelev, Ključevye idei russkoj jazykovoj kartiny mira, 467–499. Moscow: Jazyki Slavjanskoj kul’tury.Google Scholar
Whorf, Benjamin Lee
1956 Language, thought, and reality. Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (edited and with an introduction by John B. Carroll). Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Zaliznjak, Anna A. & Aleksej D. Šmelev
2005 Vremja sutok i vidy dejatel’nosti. In Anna A. Zaliznjak, Irina B. Levontina & Aleksej D. Šmelev, Ključevye idei russkoj jazykovoj kartiny mira, 39–50. Moscow: Jazyki Slavjanskoj kul’tury.Google Scholar
Zaliznjak, Anna A., Irina B. Levontina & Aleksej D. Šmelev
2005 Ključevye idei russkoj jazykovoj kartiny mira. Moscow: Jazyki Slavjanskoj kul’tury.Google Scholar