Principal investigators: Laura A. Janda and Tore Nesset
Project title: Russian Constructicon
Summary of the project:
This on-going joint project of UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow collects and analyzes multiword grammatical constructions of Russian. The main product is the Russian Constructicon, which with over one thousand constructions (and more being continuously added), is arguably the largest openly available constructicon resource for any language. The Russian Constructicon is a free and open internet resource for both learners and researchers of Russian.
Certain kinds of constructions are represented in dictionaries and other reference works, but many types of constructions are not. This is not due to any shortcomings in such reference works, but due to the fact that their mission is fundamentally different: they are not designed to deliver a full-scale inventory of the constructions that are useful for second-language learners. the Russian Constructicon project is focused on those “missing” constructions, particularly the constructions that are most essential for learners of Russian.
Link to the project page or project result:
Project duration: 2016 – 2021/2022
Other collaborators:
- Anna Endresen (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)
- Radovan Bast (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)
- Valentina Zhukova (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)
- Ekaterina Rakhilina (Higher School of Economics in Moscow)
- Olga Lyashevskaya (Higher School of Economics in Moscow)
- Daria Mordashova (Lomonosov Moscow State University / Institute of Linguistics RAS)
- Francis M. Tyers (Indiana University)
- Marianne Lund (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)
Funding:
NCM-RU-2016/10025 from Senter for internasjonalisering av utdanning 2016-2017 for “Constructing a Russian Constructicon” and TWIRLL grant (CPRU-2017/10027) from the Direktoratet for internasjonalisering og kvalitetsutvikling av høyere utdanning (Diku: https://diku.no/) 2018-2020
Key publications:
- Janda, Laura A., Anna Endresen, Valentina Zhukova, Daria Mordashova, Ekaterina Rakhilina. From data to theory: an emergent semantic classification based on the large-scale Russian constructicon. Constructions and Frames 15(1), 1-58. https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.00066.jan
- Janda, Laura A., Valentina Zhukova, Anna Endresen. (2024). Typology of reduplication in Russian: constructions within and beyond a single clause. In Kopotev, M., Kwon, K. (Eds.) Constructions with Lexical Repetitions in East Slavic. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs series [TiLSM], Vol. 384. De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 73-98. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111165806-003
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Endresen, Anna, Valentina Zhukova, Laura A. Janda, Daria Mordashova, Ekaterina Rakhilina. (Frthc. 2025). Turning a list into a network via family-based expansion of the Russian Constructicon. In Ziem, A., Willich A., Michel S. (Eds.) Constructing constructicons: Issues, approaches and cross-linguistic perspectives. “Constructional Approaches to Language” (CAL) series of John Benjamins. Available here.
- Endresen, Anna and Valentina Zhukova. (Frthc. 2025). Constructionist approach to assessment of language proficiency in Russian as a foreign language. In: Pastushenkov, D., Zalaltdinova, L. (Eds.) Assessment of Russian as a Foreign Language: Unlocking Proficiency. Routledge Series “Russian Language Pedagogy and Research”. Routledge.
- Zhukova, Valentina and Laura A. Janda. Russian grammar as a constructicon: beyond a list. Russian Linguistics 48, 15 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-024-09298-z
- Zhukova, Valentina. How to threaten in Russian: a constructionist approach. Russian Linguistics 47, 141–166 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-023-09274-z
- Endresen, Anna, Valentina Zhukova, Elena Bjørgve, Daria Demidova, Natalia Kalanova, Zoia Butenko, George Lonshakov, and David Henrik Lavén. (2022) “Construxercise! Implementation of a construction-based approach to language pedagogy.” Russian Language Journal: Vol. 72: Iss. 1. 47-71. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rlj/vol72/iss1/4
- Nesset, Tore, Laura A. Janda. 2022. “Securing strategic input for L2 learners: Constructions with Russian motion verbs”. In H. Boas et al. (eds.) Directions for Pedagogical Construction Grammar (in series Applications of Cognitive Linguistics ISSN 1861-4078). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 161-179. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110746723-toc
- Endresen, Anna, Valentina Zhukova, Daria Mordashova, Ekaterina Rakhilina, Olga Lyashevskaya. 2020. “Russkij konstruktikon: Novyj lingvističeskij resurs, ego ustrojstvo i specifika” [= The Russian Constructicon: A new linguistic resource, its design and key characteristics]. In: Computational linguistics and Intellectual Technologies. Papers from the Annual International Conference “Dialogue 2020“. Issue 19. ISSN 2075-7182. DOI: 10.28995/2075-7182-2020-19-241-255. Pp. 226-241.
- Janda, Laura A., Anna Endresen, Valentina Zhukova, Daria Mordashova, Ekaterina Rakhilina. 2020. “How to build a constructicon in five years: The Russian Example”. In: Frank Brisard, Timothy Colleman, Astrid De Wit, Renata Enghels, Nikos Koutsoukos, Tanja Mortelmans, and María Sol Sansiñena (eds.) The Wealth and Breadth of Construction-Based Research [a thematic issue of Belgian Journal of Linguistics 34]. Pp. 162-175. https://benjamins.com/catalog/bjl.00043.jan
- Endresen, Anna and Laura A. Janda. 2020. “Taking Construction Grammar One Step Further: Families, Clusters, and Networks of Evaluative Constructions in Russian”. In Mike Putnam, Matthew Carlson, Antonio Fábregas, Eva Wittenberg (eds.) Defining Construction: Insights into the Emergence and Generation of Linguistic Representations (special issue of Frontiers in Psychology 11). pp. 1-22. ISSN 1664-1078. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.574353. pp. 1-22.
- Janda, Laura A., Mihail Kopotev and Tore Nesset. 2020. “Constructions, their families and their neighborhoods: the case of дурак дураком ‘a fool times two’”. In Russian Linguistics 44. pp. 109–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-020-09225-y
- Janda, Laura A., Olga Lyashevskaya, Tore Nesset, Ekaterina Rakhilina, Francis M. Tyers. 2018. “Chapter 6. A Constructicon for Russian: Filling in the Gaps”. In Benjamin Lyngfelt, Lars Borin, Kyoko Ohara, & Tiago Timponi Torrent (Eds.), Constructicography: Constructicon development across languages [Constructional Approaches to Language 22], 165-181. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. doi 10.1075/cal.22.06jan
