Part of
New Approaches to Slavic Verbs of MotionEdited by Victoria Hasko and Renee Perelmutter
[Studies in Language Companion Series 115] 2010
► pp. 343–359
Edited by Victoria Hasko and Renee Perelmutter
[Studies in Language Companion Series 115] 2010
► pp. 343–359
Chapter 14. Metaphorical walking
Russian idti as a generalized motion verb
This article explores the metaphorical use of Russian idti ‘walk’ as a generalized motion verb in collocations like poezd idet ‘(lit.) train walks’. The study seeks to explain why idti is used in such collocations, and why this usage is restricted to examples where a goal is prominent in the context (Rakhilina 2004). It is suggested that idti is used as a generalized motion verb in metaphors because it represents prototypical motion. In metaphor, it is natural to take prototypical motion as the starting point. Unidirectionality is dominant in metaphorical usage, and this explains why idti is restricted to goal-oriented contexts. The analysis involves the notions of prototype, anthropocentricity, embodiment and metaphor and lends support to a cognitive approach to linguistic categories.
Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Khalida, Siyami Eidlak & Cayyed Mohammad Javad Yazdanmehr
2021. Comparative Analysis of the Semantic Features of the Verbs of Motion in the Russian and Persian Languages. Philology. Theory & Practice 14:10 ► pp. 3237 ff. 
Kudrnáčová, Naděžda
2019. Contrastive semantics of human locomotion verbs. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 17:1 ► pp. 53 ff.
Kudrnáčová, Naděžda
2021. Contrastive semantics of human locomotion verbs. In Corpus Approaches to Language, Thought and Communication [Benjamins Current Topics, 119], ► pp. 53 ff.
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