Case Assignment in Russian Temporal Adverbials: an Image Schematic Approach

This study offers a thorough analysis of the assignment of case in (certain) Russian temporal adverbials in terms of three image schemas, which I shall refer to as CONTAINER, POINT and MEDIUM. These image schemas, it will be argued, enable us to formulate simple generalizations, some of which have not been explicated in the scholarly literature before. An important contribution in this respect is what I refer to as " the de dicto/de re rule " , which captures the impact of phrasal syntax on case assignment in simple semantic terms. Also innovative are the proposed analyses of seasons and plural nouns as involving the MEDIUM image schema. Although the main goal of this article is to unpack the subtleties of one language, I believe the analysis is of interest for the community of cognitive linguists in general. In particular, I argue that image schemas have certain advantages over distinctive features, which have been instrumental in the development of structuralist and generative theories of case. While distinctive features may represent each relevant property in isolation adequately, they do not offer a natural account of how the properties interact in case assignment. It is argued, however, that the conspiracies of properties are neatly accommodated in an image schematic approach. Image schemas are not only cornerstones in a theory of embodied cognition; they also help the working grammarian to capture descriptive generalizations about individual languages. Also likely to be of general interest is my discussion of the relationship between time and space. Given that the proposed analysis indicates that temporal adverbials may be understood in terms of spatial image schemas, it lends further support to the standard view of time as a metaphorical extension from space. However, the analysis to be developed also shows that the relevant image schemas are realized by means of different T. Nesset Case Assignment in Russian Temporal Adverbials 2 cases in the two domains, thus suggesting some independence on the part of the temporal domain. This paper offers some speculations on the nature of this independence. This article is structured as follows. In section 1 I identify two relevant parameters, " extendedness " and " boundedness " , then in section 2 I argue that these parameters are better accounted for in terms of image schemas than distinctive features. Section 3 explores the relevance of linguistic convention. In section 4 I discuss the apparent problem for the …