Lexical typology through learner corpora: semantic domain of falling

This paper investigates the use of the Russian verb padat’ ‘to fall’ and its quasi-synonyms. Padat’ is dominant in the system of Russian predicates of falling — and therefore should be suitable for describing any type of uncontrolled downward motion. However, in a number of contexts a different means of expression is required. These contexts are not easily detected because they normally render the meanings which are peripheral in the semantic domain of falling. In this study, we attempt to find such contexts with the help of the Russian Learner Corpus, which contains texts produced by heritage speakers and learners of Russian with various dominant languages. The corpus enables search by error tags and gives valuable data for the analysis of learners’ interlanguage. Lexical and grammatical violations found in the free production of foreign learners of Russian are used to uncover cases where the dominant verb padat’ ‘to fall’ yields to its quasi-synonymous counterparts. In this paper we are aiming at detecting specific limitations in the distribution of the dominant lexeme and, based on the data coming from the Russian Learner Corpus (for this study examples from learners dominant in English and Korean are taken), we focus on the initial point of the falling motion, precipitation subframe and aspectual characteristics of the dominant verb upast’ and its quasi-synonym vypast’. The latter issue is investigated through the scope effect that the verbs of falling demonstrate in combination with the Russian proximative adverb počti ‘almost’. For each case we give a possible explanation of the learner’s error and make an attempt to establish the rules of standard Russian that make the use of the dominant lexeme unacceptable. The results of the study significantly contribute to typological analysis of dominant systems across languages and have implications for synchronic and diachronic studies of domain lexemes.