Conference Program

Similar Meaning Often a number of means (including various cases) are used to express a set of similar conceptswith overlapping or contiguous meanings. For example, Russian has many ways to expressdirectionality in the domain of intention (many of which are roughly equivalent to English ‘for’),among them the prepositions v, na, pro, and za with the accusative case, do, dlja, radi with thegenitive case, as well as the bare dative case (as in Vot pis′mo emu ‘Here’s a letter for him’). Same/Similar Lexical Trigger Sometimes different case uses are triggered by the same or similar lexical items, such as verit′ ‘believe’, which can combine with both the bare dative case and the preposition v with theaccusative case. The verb napolnit′ ‘fill’ uses the instrumental case to mark the substance doingthe filling, but the related adjective polon ‘full’ can use the genitive case for the filling substance.The same/similar triggers indicate that there are some semantic points of contact between thesecase uses, again usually involving overlapping or contiguous meanings. This paper will examine these and other factors in an exploration of the interconnections amongthe Russian cases (from a database of inter-case relationships currently numbering severaldozen).