Аrgument encoding in verbs of laughter and ridicule in Russian: linguogeography and history

The article analyses the argument encoding of verbs with the semantics of laughter and ridicule in the modern Russian and in the history of the Russian language. The data for the study was collected from the Old and Middle Russian Corpora of the Russian National Corpus, Russian dialect dictionaries and databases. The research shows that in the Old Russian period the verb smeyat’sya ‘to laugh’ most often used the Dative case for
the encoding of the object of ridicule; the data of the Middle Russian Corpora reflect a wide variation of constructions, which in the 18th century is reduced to the competition of two main variants: the Dative case and the preposition nad with the Instrumental case. The data of dialect dictionaries show the greatest variety of means for encoding the object of ridicule in West Russian dialects (Onega, Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Bryansk): prepositions vokrug, okolo, dlya, ot with the Genitive; na, za with the Accusative, etc. Some South Russian dialects (Kursk, Orel, Stary Oskol, Voronezh, Don) are characterized by the models s, iz with the Genitive. Modern North-Eastern dialects demonstrate the absolute dominance of the model nad with the Instrumental case and almost complete absence of variation. This specificity can be considered as a distinguishing feature
of Russian dialects.