Genitive vs. dative: the case of protivu in the history of Russian

摘要

This article addresses the change in the grammatical case used with the adverbial preposition protivu. The usage of protivu was more frequent and its meaning more polysemantic in Old East Slavic than it is in Russian today. The transition of protivu from an adverb to a preposition resulted in the shift in its meaning from more concrete to more abstract: from the spatial meaning ‘towards’ to the meaning of opposition ‘against’. The change in cases used with protivu from the original dative to the genitive also occurred in the process of grammaticalization. The explanation for this development is offered in terms of Talmy’s theory of conceptual structuring. From a schematic system representing motion and relating one entity to another in space as Figure and Ground, constructions with protivu shifted to a system of force dynamics relating two force-exerting entities as Agonist and Antagonist. The confluence of processes taking place in the overall declensional system of Old East Slavic, such as the loss of the dative of destination, as well as the rise of the genitive-accusative and of the genitive of possession created favourable conditions for the change. The dative is shown to fit the directional usage of protivu while the genitive suits its new oppositional sense.