From size measurement to simultaneity: the case of Russian po mere ‘by measure’

This paper contributes to the growing body of literature on nouns of measurement and the multifaceted processes that they are susceptible to undergo. It spotlights the Russian prepositional phrase po mere, lit. ‘by measure’, which originally held a compositional meaning referring to size measurement but has shifted towards a relator function as a temporal preposition marking simultaneity. The paper unravels the grammaticalization mechanisms behind this development by tracing across three centuries the constructional change, the entrenchment of the new temporal function and its eventual dominance over the older uses, based on the Russian National Corpus data.