A Cognitive-Semantic Study of Russian Verbs Indicating Motion

Abstract

This research aims to study the categorization of Russian verbs according to the meaning related to motion, to study the prototype and the linguistic expression and to analyze the semantic system in Russian verbs indicating motion. The data used in this study were taken from the Russian National Corpus, based on the cognitive semantic approach, in which the author used the theories of categorization, prototype, polysemy and motion to analyze the concepts of the senses and investigate the motion events. The study found that 92 verbs (perfective and imperfective verbs) could be identified in the Russian verbs indicating motion and the concepts of the verbs could be categorized as: 1) Directional motion
2) Accelerated motion 3) Moving motion 4) Body movement 5) Participation
6) Evacuation 7) Letting 8) Moving to water 9) Perception 10) Communication. In addition, the findings also found that Russian verbs indicating Motion are mostly in the concept of Moving motion. The findings support the relevance of the study of meaning of Russian verbs indicating motion in the teaching of Russian as a foreign language. The research results can be applied to teach Russian verbs based on the cognitive semantic approach for Thai learners in order to understand the concepts of the senses of verbs indicating motion.