Torit’ ‘to pave the way’ and torit’ ‘to teach’ — homonymy or polysemy?

 There are two verbs torit’ in Russian language: ‘to pave the way’ and ‘to teach’, uncertain in their mutual relationship as either homonyms or products of polysemy. In this article, on the basis of studying dialectal data, we argue that the meaning ‘to teach’ developed from the meaning ‘repeatedly influence physically’ on the Proto-Slavic level within the semantic spectrum of the verb *terti. So, in the modern Russian language verbs torit’ 1 and torit’ 2 may be considered homogenous homonyms.