Cognitive Events in the Development of the Russian Suppletive Pair God--Let 'Year'‪.‬

Abstract: The semantic development of the suppletive pair god--let 'year' was due to a specific communicative deficiency that arose among speakers of Old Russian as a result of the adoption of Christianity in Rus' and to metonymical devices that were triggered in answer to the perceived expressive want. These devices were authorized by a general constraint of compatibility on the shift of meaning from source to target. Suppletion developed as a result of the incompatibility of some aspects of the newly polysemous god [??] band numerical quantification. **********