Watercourse metaphors in Polish and Russian
The case of the metaphorical classifiers rzeka, potok, strumień, struga and reka, potok, ručej, struja
Abstract
This paper examines binominal constructions in Polish and Russian of the type [N1 + N2.GEN], in which N1 belongs to the semantic domain of natural watercourses. Adopting a corpus-based approach, the study aims to identify the collocational preferences and semantic specializations of the selected N1s. Particular attention is given to the salient features metaphorically mapped from the aquatic source domain of N1 onto the target domain of N2, and to the motivations behind the choice of a given classifier in context. The study shows that, while the classifier river is used similarly in both languages, other classifiers behave differently in Polish and Russian.
Submitted: Oct. 13, 2025 | Published Forthcoming | Language: en
Keywords Polish • classifiers • metaphorical mapping • Russian • watercourse metaphors • Classifiers • Watercourse metaphors • Metaphorical mapping
Copyright © 2025 Agnieszka Latos, Erica Pinelli. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/BES/2785-3187/2025/01/003