Published: 2025-12-04

Behind the door: how Russian, Kazakh, and Armenian encode spatial relations with double-fronted objects

Valentina Apresyan Logo ORCID , Vladimir Plungian Logo ORCID , Ekaterina Rakhilina Logo ORCID

Abstract

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.

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Apresyan, V., Plungian, V., & Rakhilina, E. (2025). Behind the door: how Russian, Kazakh, and Armenian encode spatial relations with double-fronted objects. Neophilologica, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.31261/NEO.2025.37.01

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Domyślna okładka

2025
Published: 2021-10-12


ISSN: 0208-5550
eISSN: 2353-088X
Ikona DOI 10.31261/NEO

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

Licence CC Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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