Глаголы физического контакта: модели управления и семантические сдвиги
Verbs of physical contact: argument structure and semantic shifts

Summary/Abstract: The paper is a corpus study of semantic shifts that arise with different morphosyntactic expressions of semantic arguments (possessor and part) in Russian verbs of physical contact, such as celovat’ ‘to kiss’, obnimat’ ‘to hug’, gladit’ ‘to stroke’, etc. Different syntactic patterns are possible: expression of the possessor by an accusative with optional part expression (‘kissing her (on the lips)’), ‘stroking a child (on the head)’); construction with a possessive pronoun or genitive (‘kissing her hands’, ‘kissing the hands of the wife’), as well as benefactive construction with dative (‘kissing she.DAT hands’, ‘stroking she.DAT back’). We demonstrate what semantic shifts are associated with different patterns and constructions, and how the preferred morphosyntactic expression correlates with semantics and pragmatics of different verbs.

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