Behind the door: how Russian, Kazakh, and Armenian encode spatial relations with double-fronted objects

This paper explores how the concept of frontness is linguistically encoded in spatial constructions involving double-fronted objects, such as doors and windows, across three languages: Russian, Kazakh, and Armenian. Our analysis reveals significant cross-linguistic variation in how languages assign and interpret frontness in spatial expressions such as ‘in front of’ and ‘behind.’ Drawing on corpus data, field work with informants, and typological questionnaires, we show that the frontness of double-fronted objects such as doors and windows is not a universal feature, as one might have expected based on their experiential characteristics. Instead, spatial encoding varies across languages and appears to form different typological systems in this regard. Russian treats both doors and windows as fronted objects but only in two constructions – ‘in front of the door’ and ‘behind the window’, both referring to exterior location; Armenian assigns frontness primarily to windows; and Kazakh partially treats windows as fronted, while doors exhibit inconsistent patterns. These findings suggest that the encoding of spatial relations involving double-fronted objects forms a typologically diverse domain.