Russian verbs capable of expressing spatial displacement (among other meanings) allow the prefix po- to express two contradictory meanings: inchoation (onset of action: ‘Let’s go!’) and delimitation (temporal bounding: ‘Enough running!’). This article explores the conditions triggering this duality, focusing on the grammatical category of so-called “verbs of motion”. Within this small set, which contrasts determinate and indeterminate verbs, the former tendentially select the inchoative meaning, while the latter select the delimitative meaning. The analysis is carried out using the example of the determinate verb (po)nesti and the indeterminate (po)nosit′, with extension to non-motion uses.

The core argument is that determinate verbs – like other motion-capable verbs – rely on an unstable term a, whereas indeterminate verbs, as products of a morphological derivation process, operate on the feature that distinguishes verbs within this category: the mechanism creating this instability. In the case of nesti/nosit′, this involves a contingently defined locator (e.g., a “carrier”). Consequently, po- prefixed to determinate verbs targets the existence of a, while with indeterminate verbs, it modifies the properties of the “carrier”. For verbs outside the determinate/indeterminate opposition, the ambiguity stems directly from the verbal base’s interpretation, generating specific semantic effects.

Regular polysemy is considered more intrinsically linked to metonymy than to metaphor in both linguistic and psycholinguistic literature. Yet, on the one hand, metonymy exhibits varying degrees of regularity, and on the other hand, metaphor is also subject to polysemic regularity. This paper aims to assess the extent to which metonymy and metaphor exhibit regularity in the lexicon. Based on the analysis of lexicographic descriptions of a sample of nearly 3,000 French nouns, this study compares the regularity of polysemy patterns—defined as recurring sense alternations—within the two types of figures. While the findings confirm theoretical assumptions by identifying more regular metonymic patterns than regular metaphoric ones, they reveal, on average, no significant difference between metonymy and metaphor in terms of regularity. The resulting dataset is publicly available to allow further exploration of how regular polysemy emerges in the lexicon and its correlation with lexical figures.

Cet article explore le potentiel pédagogique du Dictionnaire actif de la langue russe dirigé par Ju.D. Apresjan, conçu dans le cadre de la lexicographie explicative et combinatoire (LEC) de Mel’čuk et de la Lexicographie active (LA) d'Apresjan. Au-delà de son usage comme ouvrage de référence, le Dictionnaire actif est envisagé comme une méthode permettant d’articuler lexique et grammaire dans l’enseignement du russe langue étrangère. Après un rappel des principes théoriques de la LEC–LA, l’article montre comment les définitions peuvent être adaptées à un usage pédagogique. Chaque cas illustre la simplification contrôlée des définitions, leur exploitation pour développer la compétence paraphrastique et la capacité à justifier les choix lexicaux en langue cible. L’approche proposée ouvre la voie à une intégration plus systématique de la méthodologie lexicographique dans la formation linguistique.

This paper deals with the Russian words for worry and anxiety. The analysis focuses on the word families of bespokoitʹ and trevoga. It is based on data from the Russian-English and English-Russian subcorpora of the Russian National Corpus. These data support the hypothesis that the words in the bespokoitʹ family involve a greater degree of intellectual assessment of the situation, whereas the words in the trevoga family point to a more intense and less uniform emotional experience. At the same time, the study helped verify certain details of earlier descriptions that had been obtained without parallel corpora.

The choice of a translation equivalent in each particular case depends not only on semantics but also on the overall translation strategy and the individual preferences of the translator. Nevertheless, certain general patterns can be observed. For example, with the word bespokoitʹsja, as with the English word worry, it is important that the subject is thinking over the situation and considering that it may take a turn for the worse. In the case of trevoga, as with anxiety, a key element is that the subject lacks important knowledge about the situation and therefore does not know what can be done to prevent negative developments. The words vstrevožitʹ and vstrevožitʹsja, like the English word alarmed, are characterized by a sudden realization that something bad might happen and that some action must be taken in response.

This paper explores how the concept of frontness is linguistically encoded in spatial constructions involving double-fronted objects, such as doors and windows, across three languages: Russian, Kazakh, and Armenian. Our analysis reveals significant cross-linguistic variation in how languages assign and interpret frontness in spatial expressions such as ‘in front of’ and ‘behind.’ Drawing on corpus data, field work with informants, and typological questionnaires, we show that the frontness of double-fronted objects such as doors and windows is not a universal feature, as one might have expected based on their experiential characteristics. Instead, spatial encoding varies across languages and appears to form different typological systems in this regard. Russian treats both doors and windows as fronted objects but only in two constructions – ‘in front of the door’ and ‘behind the window’, both referring to exterior location; Armenian assigns frontness primarily to windows; and Kazakh  partially treats windows as fronted, while doors exhibit inconsistent patterns. These findings suggest that the encoding of spatial relations involving double-fronted objects forms a typologically diverse domain.