The Russian prefix pod- from the viewpoint of lexical concepts

Abstract

The Russian prefix pod- has several meanings, both concrete ones having to do with approaching or being under or down, and a series of seemingly unrelated abstract meanings such as imitating, ingratiating, or doing in secret. This paper approaches the polysemy of pod- from the viewpoint of the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Conceptual Models (LCCM) that sees word meaning not as a permanent property of words, but as a dynamic process in which context and accessed non-linguistic knowledge representation play an important role. This approach uses the notion of lexical concepts to describe the mediating unit between concrete linguistic examples and cognitive models that these examples are connected to. The 505 verbs analyzed bring up the lexical concepts [UNDER], [VERTICAL MOVEMENT], [CLOSE], and [CONTACT]. The connection of these lexical concepts with certain metaphorical and metonymical models is also discussed. Twelve of the 505 verbs are examined more closely in different contexts with the help of twenty-nine illustrative examples from the spoken corpus of the Russian National Corpus.