future reference

In recent years, substantial progress has been made toward a better understanding of the semantic and syntactic distribution of periphrases with future reference in Late Middle Russian (cf. Penkova 2019, 2023a). Existing studies rely on manual semantic annotation. It seems reasonable to assume that such research could be advanced through statistical methods that depend less on manual processing. These methods may help verify hypotheses obtained through annotation and offer a broader, more systematic perspective on linguistic patterns. This study explores two such statistical approaches: Principal Component Analysis and Correspondence Analysis. In both cases, the analysis is based on a collection of sentences of infinitives occurring with modal, inchoative, and future-adjacent auxiliaries. Upon closer examination, it becomes clear that Principal Component Analysis is not well-suited for the semantic investigation of constructions with future reference using the available data. In contrast, Correspondence Analysis yields graphs that explain a greater proportion of the variation and are more readily interpretable from a bird’s-eye view.

Subject: Debuts

Keywords: Late Middle Russian future reference collostructional analysis correspon­ dence analysis principal component analysis