The behaviour of Russian competing verbs: A computer-assisted approach

Abstract

Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). The article studies morphological variability of Russian verbs. The distributional and quantitative analyses of these verbs were performed based on the extra-large diachronic corpus Google Books Ngram. The obtained frequency data were interpreted in terms of language norm and evolution. The accurate time of the norm change was identified for each pair of verbs. It was found that distribution of the competing verbs can both coincide and be markedly different. Four main trends in the frequency behaviour of the competing pairs of verbs were revealed. The analysis of the variability type and frequency of the variants showed that usage of a particular variant form is largely context dependent and is not determined only by a speaker`s individual preferences. Each of the variant forms has its niche in the language. It was also revealed that the observed active return of unproductive forms of verbs to the Russian language indicates the general stability of the verb system of the Russian language and tendency to unification by productive type.