Old Russian Possessive Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach

This approach results in a much improved analysis of the data at hand: The competing possessive constructions are treated as partly synonymous constructions in the same semantic space. Changes are then seen to follow paths in this space. The constructionist perspective also allows discerning the relative contributions of the possessor nominal, the possessee nominal and properties of the constructions themselves.

The book is a contribution to Slavic historical linguistics, to the general understanding of adnominal possession and to forwarding functionalist approaches to syntactic change.