A Corpus-Based Study of Imperative Transposition in the Russian National Corpus: Developing Search Formulas and Determining Frequency

This article examines the main types of the figurative use of imperative forms in modern Russian based on data from the Russian National Corpus (RNC): conditional, concessive, dramatic, and obligative imperatives. By figurative use of these forms is meant cases where the imperative loses its direct directive meaning and acquires other semantic and syntactic functions. The aim of the study is to present and substantiate the developed search formulas for identifying constructions with imperative transposition in the RNC, as well as to compare the frequency of use of individual types. Despite the extensive scholarly literature devoted to this topic, a comprehensive corpus‑based study of the figurative use of imperative forms in Russian on a large language dataset has not yet been conducted. The advanced annotation of word forms in the RNC, which takes into account their grammatical features, syntactic relations, and word order, makes it possible to develop search formulas and create a corresponding large database of linguistic data, which determines the relevance of the present research. The creation of such a database opens up prospects for a deeper study of the functional and lexico‑grammatical characteristics of imperative transposition in Russian. The main method of the research is corpus‑quantitative analysis, involving the development of search formulas for extracting examples of each transposition type and determining the frequency of individual types. The results show that the conditional imperative is the most frequent — 6,790 instances of its use have been found in the RNC; the concessive imperative is represented by 2,604 examples; the dramatic imperative — by 546 examples; and the obligative imperative — by only 177 examples. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that, for the first time, a methodology for developing and verifying search formulas for identifying contexts of the main types of the figurative imperative in the RNC has been substantiated. The findings can be applied in the theory of mood transposition and in the practice of teaching Russian grammar, while the developed search formulas and the methodology for their creation can be used in further studies of the functioning of the imperative in non‑directive constructions.