La preposizione russa za e i predicati emozionali

Abstract

This paper investigates the semantics of the Russian prepositional phrase za+accusative and its polysemy in the domain of causation. In particular, the analysis focuses on the meanings that za+accusative acquires when occurring with verbs of emotion. The complex nature of emotional events motivates the different conceptualizations of their participants, in particular of the Stimulus. In order to investigate the meanings of za+accusative, verbs of emotion have been divided into four groups. The analysis of data proceeding from the Russian National Corpus shows that za+accusative can codify several semantic roles, which vary in accordance to verbal semantics and the characteristics of the Landmark.