Phraseology and Culture in English

3.2.2.2. Predicative use of 
gorja
þ* / žark*
This usage is difficult to extrapolate from the corpus, since Russian allows 
for copular sentences, with the copula being zero. The problem is that the 
concordance programmes available are intended for word-based searches, 
and that the corpora are not tagged for helpful information such as word 
categories or syntactic functions. As a consequence, I could only do a 
“hand” search, i.e. I searched the corpus for the prototypical predicative 
forms gorja
þo and žarko, and then I scanned, though not exhaustively, the 
concordance lines for copula-free utterances. A qualitative analysis of the 
data reveals the following. 
For gorja
þo, the zero copula seems to be rare as compared with žarko.
The few hits indentfied express an intense emotion, such as: 

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154
Doris Schönefeld 
(i)
xotja menja gorja
þo...
(although I am hot (impatient)) 
(ii)
sliškom mne vse ehto gorja
þo i 
vol’no...
(that all is too hot and unbridled for me) 
In Russian, copular verbs are obligatory in the non-present tenses. The 
verbs found to co-occur with the two adjectives are byt’, est’, javljat’sja
(be), suš
þestvovat’ (exist), stat’ / stanovit’sja, delat’sja (become), ostat’sja
(remain) and kazat’sja (appear). Gorja
þ* is found to render its literal sense 
as well as the extended senses of intense emotions, danger and “close to 
goal”. This roughly compares to the English data, where the literal reading 
is found with all the copular verbs (for details, see Table 2). 
Here are some examples: 
(iii)
þaj byl gorjaþij 
(the tea was hot) 
(iv)
kofe byl gorja
þim 
(the coffee was hot) 
(v)
tema byla gorja
þaja 
(the topic was hot) 
(vi)
narod tam byl gorja
þij
(the people there was hot) 
(vii) vozdux stal suxim u gorja
þim
(the air became dry and hot) 
(viii) bitva stanovitsja gorja
þee
(the battle becomes hotter) 
(ix)
ona kazalas’ emu nedostato
þno
gorja
þej, ... 
(she appeared to him insufficiently hot 
(-headed))
The search for žark* revealed the following. Its occurrence in verb-free 
clauses is more frequent than that of gorja
þ*, expressing the literal sense of 
the word: 
(x)
v studii žarko
(It is hot in the studio)
(xi)
tebe ne žarko v takim dlinnom 
plat’e?
(Don’t you feel hot in that long dress?)
From the other copular verbs, byt’, stanovit’sja, ostat’sja and delat’sja
could be found to co-occur with žark*, expressing predominantly the literal 
meaning of žark* and, in few cases, an intense emotion: 
(xii) den’ byl žarkij
(the day was hot) 
(xiii) spor byl dolgim i žarkim
(the argument was long and hot) 
(xiv) b komnate stanovilos’ žarko
(it became hot in the room) 
(xv)
ho
þ’ju gorod ostavalsja žarkom
(in the night the town remained hot) 
(xvi) emy sdelaloc’ nevynosimo žarko
(he became unbearably hot) 

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Hot, heiß, and gorjachij
155
As the wider contexts of the expressions revealed, žark* seems to be ap-
propriate in a literal sense also when reference is made to a less high 
temperature than that designated by gorja
þ* (as in example (xi) or (xv)). 
Table 5 gives a survey of the corpus data. 
Table 5. Copular verbs associated with gorja
þ* / žark*
Verb 
Nb of occurrences 
Sense 
gorja
þ* žark* 
gorja
þ* žark* 
zero
no numbers 
no numbers emotion 
literal 
byt’ (be) 
56 
158 literal, 
emotion, 
danger
literal,
emotion 
est’ (be) 
5 
none 
literal, 
emotion 
javljat’sja (be) none 
none 
suš
þest-
vovat’
(exist) none 
none 
stat’ / 
stanovit’sja 
(become) 24 
38 
literal, 
emotion, 
success
literal
delat’sja 
(become) none
1 
literal 
ostat’sja (remain) 
none 
2 
literal 
kazat’sja
(appear)
1 
none 
emotion