Changes in the Use of the Instrumental Case in the Russian Language

Abstract

The present study focused on the main changes in the use of the instrumental case that occurred in the Russian language in XI–XXI centuries and the factors that caused these changes. The study was conducted within the cognitivelinguistic framework or, more precisely, the theory of conceptual metaphor, according to which one conceptual domain is conceptualised and expressed in terms of another, more specific, domain. The data were collected from the Main Corpus of the National Russian Corpus, which contains sources of written language, mainly from original prose from XVIII century to the present-day Russian, as well as from the Old and Middle Russian sections of the Historical Subcorpora of the National Russian Corpus. The use of the instrumental case appeared to have been affected by the decreasing role of cases and the increasing role of prepositions in the Russian language, the transformation in the semantics of words used in constructions with the instrumental case, the impact of the syntactic patterns of synonyms and near-synonyms, and the influence of the syntactic patterns of borrowed words. The study also demonstrated the role of conceptual metaphors in the development of the instrumental meaning of the Russian instrumental case, as well as the development of the instrumental meaning of the synonymous syntactic structures. The instrumental meaning of the Russian instrumental case developed on the basis of the path metaphor. The instrument-as-a-path metaphor is very productive in the Russian language, which explains why other prepositional phrases, e.g. cherez+accusative or po+dative, developed instrumental meanings and took over some of the uses of the instrumental case.