Acknowledgements -- List of abbreviations -- 1 Introduction -- 1 Possession and its neighbours -- 2 The case study -- 2.1 Earlier approaches -- 2.2 The text samples -- 3 Why construction grammar? -- 4 Semantic maps -- 5 A path through the book -- 2 A map of the possessive semantic space -- 1 Where does the meaning come from? -- 2 Relational nouns and slot fillers -- 2.1 Deverbal nouns -- 2.2 Other relational nouns -- 3 Construction meaning: reference points and intrinsic relationships -- 4 The nodes -- 4.1 Identification (ID and ID(slot)): Reference points on instance level -- 4.2 TYPE: Reference points on type level -- 4.3 LABEL: Strongly conventionalised constructions -- 4.4 Elaboration of relational nouns: ELAB(slot) and ELAB(part) -- 4.5 Elaboration of non-relational nouns (ELAB) -- 5 Meaning to form or form to meaning -- 6 Semantic maps -- 6.1 What does a semantic map show us? -- 6.2 Drawing vs. generation -- 6.3 A correspondence analysis plot -- 7 The working map -- 3 The constructions in Old Russian -- 1 Denominal adjectives -- 1.1 ADJ1: "True possessives" -- 1.2 ADJ2: "Relative" adjectives -- 2 The genitive -- 3 The dative -- 4 Mixed constructions -- 5 OCS and Old Russian -- 6 Summary -- 4 ID: Reference points on instance level -- 1 OCS -- 1.1 ID -- 1.2 ID(slot) -- 2 11th-14th century Old Russian -- 2.1 ID -- 2.2 ID(slot) -- 3 Further developments in the history of Russian -- 3.1 The ADJ1 construction -- 3.2 The ADJ2 construction -- 3.3 The genitive constructions -- 3.4 The dative construction -- 3.5 Mixed constructions -- 3.6 A snapshot of the 18th century: When did the genitive start expanding? -- 5 The ELAB nodes: Intrinsic relationships -- 1 Reference points or not? -- 2 ELAB(slot) -- 2.1 OCS -- 2.2 11th-14th century Old Russian.

2.3 Further developments in the history of Russian -- 3 ELAB(part) -- 3.1 ELAB(part) in OCS and 11th-14th century Old Russian -- 3.2 Further developments in the history of Russian -- 4 ELAB -- 4.1 ELAB in OCS and 11th-14th century Old Russian -- 4.2 Further developments in the history of Russian -- 5 Conclusions -- 6 Types and conventionalised units: TYPE and LABEL -- 1 TYPE -- 1.1 TYPE in OCS and 11th-14th century Old Russian -- 1.2 Borderline cases -- 1.3 Further developments in the history of Russian -- 2 LABEL -- 2.1 OCS -- 2.2 11th-14th century Old Russian -- 2.3 Further developments in the history of Russian -- 3 Conclusions -- 7 Synchrony and diachrony -- 1 Synchrony: Division of labour vs. complementary distribution -- 1.1 Complementary distribution? -- 1.2 Division of labour -- 1.3 Map and territory -- 2 Diachrony -- 2.1 OCS vs. Old Russian -- 2.2 Development trends -- 2.3 The demise of the dative construction -- 2.4 The withdrawal of the ADJ2 construction -- 2.5 The weakening of the ADJ1 construction -- 2.6 From two genitive constructions to one? -- 2.7 A brief note on origins and causes -- 2.8 Diachronic paths -- 8 Concluding remarks -- Appendix: Corpus and method -- 1 Text selection principles -- 1.1 Fair representation of each period -- 1.2 Geography -- 1.3 Literary genres -- 1.4 Text editions and manuscripts -- 1.5 Late copies of early manuscripts -- 2 The Old Russian text samples -- 2.1 Text genres -- 2.2 Periodisation of Old Russian texts -- 3 The OCS text sample -- 4 Excerpation, data registration and citation -- 5 Text excerpts -- 5.1 Old Russian -- 5.2 OCS -- Notes -- References -- Index.