Diachronic distribution of predicate nouns in Russian

Abstract

This paper investigates two Russian constructions: the Nominative Construction (NomC) and the Instrumental Construction (InsC) with the copula byt’ ‘be’. Using the data from the Russian National Corpus, the study shows that despite some claims to the contrary, NomC is still used in modern Russian, even though InsC prevails over time. The change in the distribution of the NomC and the InsC before and after 1950 is relatively small. My material shows that NomC and InsC tend to be distributed according to the form of the verb. NomC is used exclusively with a present tense copula, while in contexts with a non-present tense copula there is a tendency to replace NomC with InsC. Different NPs in predicate position are affected by the shift to a different extent and the preference for one construction or the other is semantically governed.