Download a PDF copy of the SLS Paper Abstracts. - Humanities ...

The Fifth Annual Meeting of the Slavic 

Linguistic Society 

Book of Abstracts 

29-30 October 2010 

University of Chicago 

For more information on the 2010 SLS Meeting, please visit: 

http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/sls2010/ 

SLS 2010 was sponsored by the following groups at the University of Chicago: the Humanities Division, 

the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, the Linguistics 

Department, the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies and the Center for International 

Studies’ Norman Wait Harris Fund. With additional support from: the Slavic Linguistic Society and the Chicago 

Linguistic Society 

CEERES 

The Center for East European and 

Russian/Eurasian Studies

Bozena Bednarikova (Palacky University, Olomouc/CZ and Universita degli Studi di Udine) 

Bozena.bednarikova@upol.cz 

Reflection of the "Natural Course of the World" or the Morphology -Syntax 

INTERFACE in inflectional languages 

I. Nominalizations seem to reflect the natural language need of a human beeing to express a dynamic symptom 

(a process) as a substance, or a dynamic symptom (a process) as a static symptom (attribute of a substance). 

Nominalization is a SYNTACTIC notion and the paper tries to find its relevant links to MORPHOLOGY (both 

lexical and inflectional). 

II. A morphological process that perfectly complies with the needs of nominalizations is 

CONVERSION. 

III. Conversion as a crucial device of PS transfer (and syntactic nominalizations) has been put much attention 

in Germanic languages but has been rather underestimated and underresearched outside this language group 

(including Czech). 

IV. Following questions are taken into consideration (and put to tables, schemes and verifying examples 

excerpted from the Czech National Corpus) in the paper: 

a) is a PS transfer (and nominalization) motivated by onomasiological, or syntactic needs? 

b) may a syntactic transposition (a nominalized "item") be re-valuated into an onomasiological transposition? 

c) is conversion as a "device" of nominalization a mere varying category membership, or a morphological 

process? 

d) what is the situation in Czech as a Slavonic language with a strong inflectional "power"? 

V. Discussion 

- Is there any CONVERSION in Czech (in a language with a strong „inflectional power―)? 

- Has CONVERSION been adopted as the means of morphological adaptations of 

loanwords (see the ESF project Morphological adaptations of loanwords)? 

VI. Schemes and tables

SLS Abstracts, University of Chicago, October 29-30, 2010 

rybařil 

rybař ≡ rybař {rybář} ▓ il ≡ il {«i» t} /PROSIT/ ¦ + á~a ¦ 

ryb ▒ ař {ář} (¦+ /MUŽ/ ¦) « i » l 

S A V 

S kapr → kapří rybář → rybařit 

A známý (člověk) → (jeden) známý modrý → modrat 

V vylovit → výlov ulovit (uloven) → ulovený 

2 

l Ø


VII. References: 

Morphologie / Morphology. Ein Internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung. An International 

Handbook on Inflection and Word-Formation. Volume 1. (eds. Booij, G. -Lehmann, Ch. -Mugdan, J. -Skopeteas, 

S.). Berlin -New York: Walter de Gruyter. 

BALTEIRO, I. (2007): The Directionality of Conversion in English. A dia-Synchronic Study. Bern Bruxelles - 

Frankfurt am Main -New York -Oxford -Wien: Peter Lang. 

BEDNAŘÍKOVÁ, B. (2009): SLOVO a jeho KONVERZE. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého 

v Olomouci. 

BEDNAŘÍKOVÁ, B. (1999): Systemic Description, or Systematic Prescription? In: Langue and 

Parole in Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective. Amsterdam: Pergamon, 

Obsah -výraz -význam II. (eds. Panevová, J. -Skoumalová, Z.). Prague: Filozofická fakulta UK. 

KAPRON-CHARZYNSKA, I. (2006): Zenskie neologizmy osobowe z formantem -ka wewspolczesnej 

polszczyznie. Jezyk polski 86, 260-269. 

KATAMBA, F. (1993): Morphology. London: The MACMILLAN PRESS LTD. 

KOMÁREK, M. (1999): Autosemantic Parts of Speech in Czech. (transl. by Boţena 

Bednaříková). In: TCLP 3, Prague, 195-210. 

MATTHEWS, P.H. (1991): Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Mluvnice češtiny I, II, III (1986, 1986, 1988). Prague: Academia. 

Český národní korpus: SYN2005, Synek, Litera, http:/ucnk.ff.cuni.cz 

3


Christina Bethin (Stony Brook University) 

Christina.bethin@sunysb.edu 

The Interaction of Phonetics and Morphology in Russian Vowel Reduction 

Reduction of unstressed non-high vowels to [ɐ ] or [ə] after non-palatalized consonants (akan'e) and to [I] after 

palatal(ized) ones (ikan'e) in Contemporary Standard Russian (CSR) is systematic, except in a set of inflectional 

suffixes where [ə] occurs instead of the expected [I] after palatalized consonants (Avanesov 1972). This has been 

traditionally seen as analogy, either to the stressed suffix vowel (Korš 1902; Panov 1957/2004; Shakhmatov 1925) 

or to akan'e in the hard stem paradigm (Avanesov 1949:116-22, 1972; Isačenko 1947; Timberlake 2004:51) or to 

both (Crosswhite 2001, 2004) . But different results are obtained under what appear to be the same conditions, cf., 

/pólj-om/ [póljəm] ~ [póljIm], 'field', neut instr sg, and /pólj-om/ [póljIm] 'we weed'. Nor is the pattern attributable 

entirely to the phonetic environment (Kuz'mina 1966, 1968; Thelin 1971; Flier 2002), as different variants occur 

under what appear to be identical phonetic conditions. And 

while orthography supports language change in that vowels spelled with ―e‖ are increasingly subject to ikan‗e 

[I] and those spelled with ―a‖ are often pronounced as [ə], there are suffixes where the same spelling is 

pronounced differently, e.g., the neut nom/acc sg adjectival suffix -ee is [Ijə] but the comparative -ee is [II], and 

several /a/-suffixes are now pronounced with [I]. 

The fundamental insight is that it is contrast within the paradigm that matters. On the basis of the noun declension, 

I argue that vowel reduction after palatal(ized) consonants is constrained by the morphology: Ikan'e is blocked in 

order to enhance critical contrasts of NUMBER and CASE within the noun paradigm; this is formalized in terms 

of Relativized Paradigm Uniformity (PU) and Contrast (CON) constraints (Rebrus and Törkenczy 2005). In most 

instances the relation within the given paradigm is asymmetrical: one of the potentially contrasting suffixes 

contains /i/ and ikan'e is blocked when it would result in homophony with the /-i/ suffix. But when there is no /-i/ 

suffix in the relevant cells and contrast could be maintained by blocking in either cell, i.e., a symmetrical relation, 

then the pattern of ikan'e blocking is the result of PU >> CON >> IKAN'E >> PU. Support for this ranking comes 

from the masculine paradigm where the relevant contrasts are maintained by morphology, and yet ikan'e is still 

blocked in certain forms of the paradigm. Data from ikan'e spread lend support to a distinction in NUMBER, as is 

to be expected, and also to one between DIRECT vs. OBLIQUE cases in both noun and adjective declensions. 

Thus a phonetic/phonological process is resisted longest where it would otherwise result in a merger of critial 

contrasts within the paradigm. The notions of paradigm uniformity and contrast provide a much more explanatory 

account of language change in CSR than do appeals to stressed vowel faithfulness, spelling pronunciation, or 

grammatical analogy to akan'e. 

References 

Avanesov, R. I. 1949. Ocherki russkoi dialektologii. Moscow: Gos. ucheb. ped. izd. Avanesov, R. I. 1972. 

Russkoe literaturnoe proiznoshenie. Moscow: Prosveshchenie. Crosswhite, Katherine. 2001. Vowel Reduction 

in Optimality Theory. New York and London: Routledge. 

Crosswhite. Katherine. 2004. Vowel reduction. In Phonetically Based Phonology, ed. Bruce Hayes, Robert 

4


Kirchner and Donca Steriade, 191-233. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Flier, Michael J. 2002. K 

voprosu o kriteriiakh foneticheskogo var‗irovaniia i grammatikalizatsii v russkom iazyke. In Avanesovskii 

sbornik, ed. N. N. Pshenichnova, 246-251. Moscow: Nauka. Korš, F. E. 1902. O russkom pravopisanii. Izvestiia 

otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti 7.1: 39-94. 

Košutić, R. 1919. Gramatika ruskog jezika, 1. Petrograd: Russkaia Akademiia Nauk. Kuz‗mina, S. M. 

1966. O fonetike zaudarnykh fleksii. In Razvitie fonetiki sovremennogo 

russkogo iazyka, ed. S. S. Vysotskii, M. V. Panov, and V. N. Sidorov, 5-24. Moscow: Nauka. 

Kuz‗mina, S. M. 1968. Chapter 4. Fonetizatsiia zaudarnogo vokalizma vo fleksiiakh. In Russkii 

iazyk i sovetskoe obshchestvo. Fonetika sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo iazyka. Narodnye 

govory, ed. M. V. Panov, 42-56. Moscow: Nauka. 

Panov, M. V. 1957/2004. O vliianii grammaticheskoi analogii na proiznositel‗nye normy v 

sovremennom russkom literaturnom iazyke. Rpt. in M. V. Panov. Trudy po obshchemu 

iazykoznaniiu i russkomu iazyku, 1, ed. E. A. Zemskaia and S. M. Kuz‗mina, 479-510. Moscow: 

Iazyki slavianskoi kul‗tury. 

Rebrus, Peter, and Miklós Törkenczy. 2005. Uniformity and contrast in the Hungarian verbal 

paradigm. In Paradigms in Phonology, ed. Laura Downing, T. Alan Hall, and Renate 

Raffelsiefen, 263-295. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Shakhmatov, A. A. 1925. Ocherk sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo iazyka. Leningrad: Gos. 

Izd. 

Thelin, Nils B. 1971. On Stress Assignment and Vowel Reduction in Contemporary Standard 

Russian. Uppsala: Striv Service AB. 

Timberlake, Alan. 2004. A Reference Grammar of Russian. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press. 

5


Irine Chachanidze (Akaki Tsereteli State University) 

ichachanidze@yahoo.com 

Note: Irine Chachanidze was unable to attend the conference. At her request, the entore paper is printed 

below. 

Diglossic Shift: A Case of Russophone Community in the City of Kutaisi, Georgia 

Sociolinguistics appeared to be the most appropriate discipline for the study of the phenomenon of language 

situation; this is, first of all, evidenced by means of some research project initiated and realized in the later half of 

the 20 th century. 

The American scholar Ch. A. Ferguson was one of the first sociolinguists to propose an adequate definition 

of language situation, and, what is most significant, this definition is still valid currently: ―The term language 

situation designates the common configuration of language use at a given period of time and at a given place, and 

comprises the data how many languages and which languages are used in a given area, how many people speak 

them, in what setting, what are the attitudes of the members of the societies in question towards those languages‖ 

(Ferguson 1971: 157). 

In the present paper, I am going to concentrate on diglossia as one of the key components of language 

situation. 

The introduction of the term diglossia (Gr. di- ‗twice‘ and glōssa ‗language‘) and the definition of the 

corresponding concept have been associated with the American scholar Charles Ferguson saying that ―diglossia is 

comparatively stable language situation, in which, together with primery dialects (either a language standard or 

regional standards) of a language, there is a very distinct, rather codified (frequently, grammatically very 

complex) variety mainly either used as a literary language or having been used at the previous period or in other 

speech community, and mostly acquired at educational institutions, and used for written and oral purposes, but not 

used by any layer of the society in everyday relations‖ (Ferguson 1959, 336). Normally, the most widespread 

instance of diglossia is the case when a standard language and a territorial dialect co-exist. 

The 1960s saw the start of the boom of such generalized sociolinguistic models for language situations 

(Kloss 1966, 1968; Rustow 1968; Stewart 1962, 1968; Ferguson 1962, 1966; Hymes 1971). 

As far Ch. Ferguson‘s aim was, based on the experience of his predecessor and colleague, to design a 

compact system of designations applicable to a language situation within a whole state, enabling a scholar to 

identify significant facts in terms of actually existing sociolinguistic relations. It was a formulaic approach 

resulting in what he referred to as National Sociolinguistic Profile Formula. At first, he identified three main 

categories of languages; 

I. Major language (Lmaj); 

II. Minor language (Lmin); 

III. The third category should include the languages relevant to a society, though they should not meet the 

provisions necessary for Lmaj and Lmin this is a special language (Lspec), used as a language of religion, for 

6


literary purposes, taught in schools as a subject, or may be a lingua franca (the author names the fourth field; it 

may be associated with an age group; in my opinion, in this case, an age factor is rather instable). The next step is 

the identification of the social functions served by languages and their varieties. The said categories, types, and 

functions are applied and integrated in order to establish a corresponding sociolinguistic profile formula. 

Several additional designations were introduced in order to clarify some specific features characteristic of 

various language situations. 

The formulaic approach was rather popular in the 1960s and later. The said situation was due to certain 

subjective and objective reasons. The subjective one was that the discussed models were proposed mainly by 

American linguists; at that period of time, they were leaders in this field. As for the objective reason, the earlier 

formulas were designed based on the study of actually existing, individual language situations. It should be also 

admitted that, time by time, formulas were made more adequate; however, it is true that sometimes these activities 

grew into over-generalizations. 

Frequently, the formulaic approach towards language situation, proposed and established by W. Stewart, 

Ch. Ferguson and others, appears to be of a rather generalized and superficial character. This can be illustrated by 

the fact that formulas do not display what are the forms of existence of each language included in a language 

situation (that is, they do not appear in a sociolinguistic profile). Another grave drawback is that there are either 

few or no indications concerning the use of an idiom in education and mass media (in my opinion, the role of 

these most powerful institutions should not be underestimated). Besides, one and the same language, present in 

different regions of a country, may be designated differently in a formula due to its different functional scales in 

the regions in question. More drawbacks can be listed here, but it would be better to test the viability of the 

formulaic approach based on individual language situations. I chose Russian-speaking groups living in Georgia as 

a case in point. The target group of my observation comprised Russian-speaking population of the City of Kutaisi 

(it should be mentioned that such groups in various regions of the country will have distinct formulas). Their 

sociolinguistic profile formula will be the following: 

1Lmaj (So, Sg, Sr) + 1Lmin (Sg, Ss) 

where L is language, maj is major, min stands for minor, S is standard, o – official use, g – colloquial, r – 

religion. Here, Lmaj stands for Georgian, aand Lmin for Russian. It is clear that the Ferguson-Stewart model 

needs some specifications. This is quite logical, as far as the universalization of the models designed for the 

description of language situations rarely results in accurate outcomes in such specific cases. Therefore, to my 

mind, we should refer to V. Avrorin‘s standpoint according to which, ―if we do not find out what are the forms 

existence with which a language is presented in a situation, and if we do not analyze languages in the framework 

of their interrelationship, if we do not establish means and domains of language use, if we do not consider the 

conditions languages are used in, we are not going to be able to have an even slightly complete view of a language 

situation‖ (Avrorin 1975: 51). 

V. Avrorin presented the system of notions and dimensions, by means of which a given language situation 

can be described, and, hence, receive an adequate model of the situation in question. It should be admitted that the 

said system is just a unity of relations, and that there are no ways of further concretization in the author‘s book 

(1975). By the way, one cannot exclude the risk that the system in question may be interpreted differently. In my 

7


opinion, the complex models proposed by E. Tumanyan (1981: 1985) may be considered to be a successful 

attempt of avoiding the said risk and of making the existing models more accurate and complete. 

Initially, special interest should be paid to the fact that the development of sociolinguistics made it 

possible to establish that a language exists provided that there are his varieties and hypostases. Such varieties can 

be a standard language, territorial dialects, forms colloquial speech, city koine, jargons and argot. In its turn, 

neither standard language can be uniform; it comprises various styles and registers. It should be borne in mind 

that, even in an ethically homogeneous, monolingual territorial-administrative unit with an autochthonous 

language, there can occur a very complex language situation within which each form of its existence has its own 

peculiar role and has its community, using this variety of language as a means of communication. Besides, as is 

known, diglossia is characteristic namely to most of the ethnically homogeneous administrative-territorial units. 

Here, E. Tumanyan introduces the notion of opposition. It should be pointed out that, to my mind, we are dealing 

with not with a linguistic opposition, as it is referred to by E. Tumanyan, but rather with sociolinguistic 

oppositions. The notion in question was proposed by Z. Kikvidze (1997). 

The approaches discussed in the second half of the present section are of a salient political character; it is 

noteworthy that they are inadequate, cannot reflect actual situations, and are not suitable for this. 

Based on the individual language situation, the present section aims at discussing the above presented 

description model. The discussion will enable us to make salient and practically consider positive and negative 

aspects of the model. 

This is how we behaved when we decided to critically analyze Ferguson‘s sociolinguistic profile formula; 

that one was the case when we chose Russian-speaking groups of population residing in Kutaisi as a sample 

speech community. Presently, the choice is the same. Firstly, some words about the motif of the choice. Even in 

the Soviet period, most of the non-Georgians living in Kutaisi had certain command of Georgian (while this was 

not quite expectable in many other parts of Georgia owing to the situation there), however, it does not imply that 

local ethnic Georgians had no connection with Russian; besides, we enjoyed the opportunity of observing the 

situation in dynamics. Below we present some results of our observations. Based on Tumanyan‘s models and 

corresponding designations, the language situation for the Russian-speaking groups living in Kutaisi some twenty 

years ago will have the following appearance: 

A (Georgian) B (Russian) 

Ø 

B1 

B2 

Ø 

A3 (partially) 

Ø 

Ø B4 

8


The given functional distribution of languages and their forms of existence, presented in the pattern, was 

facilitated by Georgia‘s status quo at that period of time: Georgia was a part of the Soviet Union; due to the said 

situation, the occurrence of the domains of usage for b1 (Standard Russian) was conditioned by the educational 

system, mass media, the so called union institutions, etc. As for the b2 (Russian colloquial speech) and b4 

(Russian social dialect), their presence was guaranteed due to the liberal linguistic attitude on the part of the native 

population. 

Currently, for the same groups not residing compactly within the confines of the city, the model of the 

language situation is as follows: 

A (Georgian) B (Russian) 

A1 

(a2) 

(a3) 

(a4) 

Ø 

B2 

Ø 

Ø 

The grid illustrates that there have been radical changes in the situation (the distribution of the forms of 

existence of the languages concerned are polarly different); this is due to the fact that, after the restoration of state 

independence, Georgian enjoyed actual political and social foundation to widen its domains of usage, and the 

language of visitors retained its function of vernacular. 

References 

Аврорин В. А. 1975. Проблемы изучения функциональной стороны языка (К вопросу о предмете 

социолингвитики). Ленинград: Наука. 

Ferguson, Ch. 1959. Diglossia. Word, 15, 4; 325-340. 

Ferguson, Ch. 1962. The language factor in national development. Study of the Role of Second Languages in Asia, 

Africa and Latin America, ed. by F. Rice. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics; 8-14. 

Ferguson, Ch. 1966. National Sociolinguistic Profile Formulas. Sociolinguistics, Proceedings of the UCLA 

Sociolinguistics Conference, 1964, ed. by W, Bright. The Hague: Mouton; 309-324. 

Ferguson, Ch. 1971. Language Structure and Language Use. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 

9


Hymes, D. H. 1972. On Communicative Competence. Sociolinguistics: Selected Readings, ed. by J. B. Pride & J. 

Holmes. Harmondsworth: Penguin; 269-293. 

Kikvidze, Z. 1997. Towards the identification of sociolinguistic oppositions. Linguistic Papers, IV. Tbilisi: 

Kartuli ena; 4-6. [in Georgian] 

Kloss, H. 1966. Types of multilingual communities. A discussion of ten variables. Sociological Inquiry, 36 (2); 

135-145. 

Kloss, H. 1968. Notes concerning a language-nation typology. Language Problems of Developing Nations, ed. by 

J. Fishman, Ch. Ferguson, & J. Das Gupta. New York: John Wiley and Sons; 69-86. 

Rustow, D. 1968. Language, modernization and nationhood – an attempt at typology. Language Problems of 

Developing Nations, ed. by J. Fishman, Ch. Ferguson, & J. Das Gupta. New York: John Wiley 

and Sons; 87-106. 

Stewart, W. 1962. An outline of linguistic typology for describing multilingualism. Study of the Role of Second 

Languages in Asia, Africa and Latin America, ed. by F. Rice. Washington, DC: Center for 

Applied Linguistics; 15-25. 

Stewart, W. 1968. A sociolinguistic typology for describing na tional bilingualism. Readings in the Sociology of 

Language, ed. by J. Fishman. The Hague: Mouton; 531-545. 

Туманян Э. Г. 1981. Типология языковых ситуации. Комплексные модели форм существования языка. В 

кн.: Теоретические проблемы социальной лингвистики. Москва: Наука; 72-89. 

Туманян Э. Г. 1985. Язык как система социолингвистических систем. Синхронно-диахроническое 

исследование. Москва: Наука. 

10


Joanna Chociej (University of Toronto) 

Joanna.chociej@utoronto.ca 

Polish Pro-Drop: English influence on heritage Polish in Toronto 

With almost half of its 5 million residents reporting a non-official mother tongue (Statcan 2006), Toronto 

is a highly multilingual city that presents many opportunities for comparative work in the field of contact 

linguistics. The present paper examines the effects of language contact by determining the extent to which the 

majority language can affect the grammar of a minority language (Heine & Kuteva 2005). The focus is on the 

influence of English on the 80,000 Toronto residents who report speaking Polish at home. 

The present study is an investigation of pro-drop in a sample of heritage Polish speakers in Toronto, and 

follows comparable studies on Russian (Hollett 2010) and Italian, Faetar, Korean, and Cantonese (LIN1152). 

Many languages distinguish themselves from English in having pro-drop as a feature of their grammar. However, 

there is a prevalence of subject ellipsis in Polish, with Polish speakers employing it in far more contexts than even 

the related Russian (McShane 2009). With pro-drop as a variable, this sociolinguistic study examines both the 

overall rate of null versus overt pronouns, as well as the linguistic and social factors affecting their use. 

Participants were selected through social networking and interviewed by a native speaker about their 

cultural background and family history, following the methods of the HLVC (website). Participants were 

distributed based on age, gender, and immigrant generation. Importantly, data on two generations of speakers were 

gathered and compared to verify any generational effects. The purpose of this comparison is to see if greater 

contact with the homeland variety (1st generation speakers) or greater contact with English (2nd generation 

speakers) were significant factors. Additionally, two Polish-speaking lifetime residents of Poland were 

interviewed and their speech was analyzed to determine the use of pro-drop in the homeland variety. 

Tokens of null and overt pronouns were extracted from the interviews of 8 heritage speakers, and coded 

and analyzed using Goldvarb. The linguistic factors studied, which are predicted to correlate to different rates of 

pro-drop, include: switch reference; person, number, and gender marking; tense; lexical items; collocations; and 

pronoun modification. Some of these factors were found to contribute to potential ambiguity of the referent and 

to predict categorical use of overt pronouns in Polish (McShane 2009). 

Preliminary results indicate a greater rate of overt pronouns in 2nd generation speakers. Furthermore, 

while homeland speakers exhibit categorical use of overt pronouns following certain conjunctions, some 2nd 

generation speakers have extended this rule to include additional conjunction contexts. In general, 2nd 

generation speakers were closer to Toronto English in their use of null pronouns, while 1st generation speakers 

were closer to their counterparts in Poland. Additionally, some degree of change towards English was also 

observed in 1st generation speakers, showing that majority languages influence the speech of not only 

individuals growing up in that environment, but also the speech of individuals who grew up elsewhere. 

The results of this study are more broadly discussed as evidence of the susceptibility of grammatical 

features, such as pro-drop, to change in contact situations. 

11


Steven Clancy (University of Chicago) and Dagmar S. Divjak (University of Sheffield) 

sclancy@uchicago.edu, D.Divjak@sheffield.ac.uk 

WORKSHOP ON SLAVIC LINGUISTICS & THE WIDER CURRICULUM 

Cognitive Linguistics and Empirical Methods in Slavic Linguistics 

Slavic Linguistics in the West has traditionally been highly structuralist and in more recent decades even 

formalist in its theoretical orientation. Slavic Linguists in the Slavic world, however, were never forced to 

adopt autonomous theories of language, but rather maintained focus on the fundamentally symbolic nature of 

language, the form-meaning relationship, and how it is embedded in the larger reality of human experience. 

The analyses they present focus on precisely those issues of interest to Cognitive Linguists, fostering a natural 

mutual interest (Divjak et al. 2007). Cognitive Linguistics has played a strong role among those active in Slavic 

Linguistics for more than two decades and the founding of the Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association 

(SCLA) in 2000 established a gateway through which an increasing number of Slavic Linguists could engage 

the cognitive pursuit. Cognitive Linguistics and the empirical methods it increasingly endorses (Gonzalez- 

Marquez et al. 2007) have much to offer our students as well, providing opportunities to learn about 

contemporary research methods (experimental methods, data collection, corpus methods, and statistical 

analysis), participate in research and receive hands-on training in those methods by working with Slavic 

Linguists. Our presentation discusses how the cognitive approach coupled with corpus and experimental 

methods can be used to make Slavic Linguistics attractive to a broader audience and generate courses with 

mass appeal. 

As a consequence of the paradigm shift towards more empirical rigor in linguistic analysis, today‗s linguists are 

increasingly called upon to master research techniques for which they do not usually receive training in their 

graduate programs. SCLA has therefore supported a number of masterclasses and workshops since 2008 with 

more in the planning phases. All of this activity has taken place within and for the benefit of the Slavic Linguistics 

community in the US and throughout Europe. As proof of concept for the appeal that Slavic Empirical and 

Cognitive Linguistics can have for a general audience, we will present the course designs we have successfully 

employed at US and UK universities. These courses draw heavily on the research of Slavic Linguists and data 

from Slavic languages mixed in with data and problem sets from English and other languages with readings all in 

English, culminating in independent research projects for each student on languages which they study or know. 

These courses have built up successful word of mouth interest in our departments and our disciplines and continue 

to grow, receiving high marks in course evaluations and enrolling maximum numbers of students. 

Slavic Cognitive Linguistics has made significant contributions to language pedagogy and has much to offer 

to the general linguistics community as well, most notably the opportunity to become firmly rooted in the 

data of multiple Slavic languages, featuring both unity and diversity with more linguistic conundrums than 

one can unravel throughout one‗s career. These topics and methods can provide a foundation for further 

attractive course offerings for undergraduates both within Slavic departments and across the disciplines as 

they explore the faculty of human language primarily or partially through the lens of Slavic language data. 

References 

Divjak, Dagmar, Agata Kochanska, and Laura A. Janda. 2007. Why Cognitive Linguists Should Care About the 

Slavic Languages and Vice Versa. In Cognitive Paths into the Slavic Domain (=Cognitive Linguistics Research 

[CLR] 38), Dagmar Divjak and Agata Kochanska (eds.). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1-19. Gonzalez- 

Marquez, Monica, Irene Mittelberg, Seana Coulson and Michael J. Spivey (eds.). 2007. Methods in Cognitive 

Linguistics (=Human Cognitive Processing 18). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co. 

12


Daniel E. Collins (The Ohio State University) 

collins.232@osu.edu 

Written and Unwritten Messages: 

Linguistic (Im)politeness in the Novgorod Birchbark Letters 

To date, there has been little work on the linguistic expression of (im)politeness in the Old Novgorodian dialect. 

While a few studies of greetings and other stereotyped expressions in the birchbark letters have appeared (Worth 

1983; Zaliznjak 1987, 2004: 36–37; Gippius 2009), they have not discussed the formulae in the light of general 

theories of politeness (e.g., Leech 1983; Brown and Levinson 1987; Watts 2003).In particular, the existing 

scholarship has not undertaken to answer a question that is highly interesting from a theoretical standpoint: 

whether the use of the formulae is strategic in specific contexts, as opposed to merely socially constrained or 

institutionalized—in other words, whether it is polite or merely politic and expectable for the kinds of interactions 

in which the formulae appear (cf. Watts 2003: 18–20). In addition, the negative pole of impoliteness, though 

reasonably well attested in birchbark letters, has yet to be studied in any depth (cf. Culpeper 1996). 

The proposed paper, focusing on usage in the early period (eleventh–early thirteenth centuries), is drawn 

from a larger historical-pragmatic investigation of (im)politeness in the Old Novgorodian dialect during the entire 

period of birchbark literacy (eleventh–the mid-fifteenth centuries). My main goal is to try to identify the norms of 

politic language—language "perceived to be appropriate to the social constraints of the ongoing interaction" 

(Watts 2003: 19), including not only the stereotyped formulae discussed in the previous literature, but also the 

ways in which speech acts were typically expressed. Once I establish this baseline, I discuss the kinds of 

expressions that, judging from the available evidence, went beyond the politic (expectable) and hence can be 

considered either polite or impolite. As a second goal, I examine which broad categories of information—e.g., 

instructions, welfare wishes, personal news—were normally conveyed in particular genres of birchbark letters 

and/or in particular kinds of relationships, and which were typically avoided, on the working assumption that at 

least some of the characteristic laconicity of birchbark letters was strategic. As I argue, what was written and what 

was left unwritten can be explained, in part, by the nature of birchbark communications, in particular the special 

role of the messenger (see Gippius 2004). 1 In accordance with these goals, my study of linguistic politeness in the 

birchbark letters involves looking at messages holistically rather than treating formulae or constructions in 

isolation from their contexts. My main methodology is to make function-to-form correlations, linking specific 

speech acts to the forms in which they are generally expressed. I examine the evidence in synchronic slices and I 

also do micro-case studies of groups of birchbarks written by single authors ("blocs," in the terminology of 

Zaliznjak 2004). Like any historical-pragmatic study, my investigation has to confront the "Data Problem" of the 

discipline: premodern texts rarely contain much explicit information about their situational context, which often 

1 There have been few studies of the history of politeness in Russian in general, apart from some pioneering works on 

pronouns of address, e.g., Unbegaun 1939, Friedrich 1966/1972, Popov 1985. 

13


has to be reconstructed; in addition, conclusions about language usage and conventions have to be drawn obliquely 

from written documents rather than from direct, verifiable observations (see Jacobs and Jucker 1995: 6–10; 

Taavitsainen and Fitzmaurice 2007: 11). Particularly challenging for the study of (im)politeness in the birchbark 

letters is the fact that the texts provide little evidence of what Watts (2003) calls the "evaluative moment" (the 

central issue in his approach to politeness)—how the writers and readers themselves classified the linguistic 

behavior in a given interaction. Nevertheless, the use of function-to-form correlations allows one to uncover 

approximative evidence of the politic behavior of the writers and, ultimately, at least part of the linguistic habitus 

of Novgorodian society as a whole. 

References 

Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press. 

Culpeper, Jonathan. 1996. Towards an Anatomy of Impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 25: 349–67. 

Friedrich, Paul. 1966/1972. Social context and semantic feature: The Russian pronominal usage. 

In Directions in sociolinguistics, ed. John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes, 270–300. New 

York. 

Gippius, A. A. 2004. K pragmatike i kommunikativnoj organizacii berestjanyx gramot. In 

Novgorodskie gramoty na bereste: Iz raskopok 1997–2000 gg., ed. V. L. Janin, A. A. 

Zaliznjak, and A. A. Gippius, 183–232. Moscow: Russkie slovari. 

–––––. 2009. Nabljudenija nad ètiketnymi formulami berestjanyx pisem. In Stereotipy v jazyke, 

kommunikacii i kul'ture: Sbornik statej, ed. L. L. Fedorova, 279–300. Moscow: 

Izdatel'skij centr RGGU. 

Jacobs, Andreas, and Andreas H. Jucker. 1995. The Historical Perspective in Pragmatics. Historical Pragmatics: 

Pragmatic Developments in the History of English, ed. Andreas 

H. Jucker, 3–33. Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. 

Popov, Paul. 1985. On the origin of Russian vy as a form of polite address. SEEJ 29: 330–37. 

Taavitsainen, Irma, and Susan Fitzmaurice. 2007. Historical Pragmatics: What It Is and How to Do It. In Methods in 

Historical Pragmatics, ed. Susan Fitzmaurice and Irma Taavitsainen, 11–36. Topics in English Linguistics 52. 

Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Unbegaun, Boris O. 1939. Un point d'histoire de la politesse russe: tutoiement et vousoiement. In Mélanges en l'honneur 

de Jules Legras, ed. Paul Boyer, 269–74. Travaux publiés par l'Institut d'études slaves 17. Paris. 

Watts, Richard J. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Worth, Dean S. 1983. Incipits in the Novgorod Birchbark Letters. In Semiosis: Semiotics and the History of Culture: In 

Honorem Georgii Lotman, ed. Morris Halle et al., 320–32. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. 

Zaliznjak, A. A. 1987. Tekstovaja struktura drevenovgorodskix pisem na bereste. In Issledovanija po strukture 

teksta, ed. T. V. Civ'jan, 147–82. Moscow: Nauka. 

–––––. 2004. Drevnenovgorodskij dialekt. 2nd ed. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul‗tury. 

14


Bill Darden (University of Chicago) 

bdarden@uchicago.edu 

The Function of the /“Preždebuduščee”/ in Early East Slavic (and OCS) 

In Old East Slavic, the synthetic verb-form formed by the future of the verb /byti/ plus the lparticiple 

is best characterized as a potential resultative. The one form I found in OCS fits into 

one of the categories of use in East Slavic. 

It is most often used in real conditional sentences. The conditionals may be general hypothetical 

statements, as in laws or treaties; they may refer to the future, or to potentially real events in the 

past. When past events are involved, the reference is to what will turn out to be true of the past, 

when the evidence is in. In direct statements, the form can be used to assert what will prove to 

be true about the past. In subordinate modifications of positive statements it can be introduced 

by /razvě /‗except‗, or /eda/ ‗lest‗--again with the implication that the truth value of the 

qualifications is not yet known. 

Examples are: 

1) Hypothetical resultative: 

PVL 86 (in a treaty, discussing theft in which the thief is caught) 

/da v‖zmet‗ svoe, iţe budet‗ pogubil‖ e./ 

PVL 88 (same treaty) if a Rusin with a will dies among the Greeks: 

/Komu budet‗ pisal‖ naslěditi iměnie ego, da naslědit‗ e/ 

2) Future resultative: 

PVL 226: /Ašče po moem‗ otšestvii světa sego, ašče budu Bogu ugodil‖ i prijal‖ mja bydet‗ 

Bog‖, to po moem‗ otšestvii manastyr‗ sja načnet‗ stroiti i pribyvati v nem‗/ 

Kiev Chr. 474: (advice to a prince after the prince in Kiev dies): 

/Poědi lěple v Kiev‖ ţe s ljudmi utverdisja, da ače stryi pridet‗ na tja Djurgi poně, ty sja s 

ljudmi utverdil‖ budeši./ 

3) Potentially real past events whose results are relevant in the present (potential 

present perfects) Kiev 542 (people have lied to David and Rjurik, saying that 

Mstislav intends to capture them. They demand that he swear that he is not opposed 

to them, M. turns to his druţina, asking: ―what have I done wrong?‖ 

15


/Da budut‗ zlii čelověci, zavidjače tvoei ljubvi juţe k‖ brat‗ě iměeši, vloţili budut‗ zlo slovo./ 

Supr 239 from the sermon on the Annunciation, by Zlatoust 

/I Marija v‖ sebě si razmyšljaše: povědě li se Iosifu ili pače s‖kryj//ǫ tainoje se, eda b//ǫdet‖ prixodivyi 

s‖l‖gal‖./ ―in case the visitor (angel) turns out to have lied.‖ (Greek has aorist) 

4) Both events and results in the past (only example found). 

Josephus‗ Jewish Wars M 208 P 106: /i po vsěm branem nepoběţen‖ byst‗, razvě ašče voevody ego ne poslušali 

budut‗ i ustrašili sja./ 

Greek has aorist of ‗become‗ + ―betrayal or rashness.‖ 

The development of atemporal modal meaning provides a partial typological parallel to what may have 

happened in the prehistory of forms with /by(x)/ plus l-participle, whose auxiliary probably comes from 

the older future of /byti /attested in the future participle /byšašč-/byšušč-./ 

16


Daniel Davidson (OSU) 

Davidson.349@buckeyemail.osu.edu 

Paradigm Inconsistencies in Czech Motion Verbs 

Morphology marks aspect in the vast majority of the verbal system of Czech. Biaspectual verbs do exist in the 

language, but constitute a fraction of the verbal inventory. Aspectual distinctions in the language are typically 

marked by the presence or absence of a prefix in the stem of the verb. These prefixes operate in both tenses, past 

and non-past. The future tense of verbs is realized both analytically (imperfective aspect) and synthetically 

(perfective aspect). In contrast, the basic verbs of motion in Czech, jít – ‗to go by foot‗, jet-‗to go by vehicle‗, 

letět‗to fly,‗ adhere to none of the above characterizations. This paper describes the irregularities in 

detail, and then offers an explanation for them. 

First, as mentioned above, prefixes are normally aspect markers, appearing in all tenses, e.g. díval jsem se ‗I 

watched [past.ipv] vs. podíval jsem se ‗I watched‗ [past.pf]; dívam se [non-past.ipf] vs. podívam se ‗I watch‗ 

[non-past.pf]. In motion verbs, the prefix po-looks superficially like an aspect marker, but it cannot be used in the 

past tense. This suggests that it marks tense, but crucially, not aspect, e.g. *pojel ‗he drove‗ (grammatical: jel); 

pojede ‗he will drive‗ (future only, present form – jede). This gives the curious result of verbs with different 

biaspectual forms in the future (only with po-) and the past (no prefix allowed). 

Second, elsewhere in the verbal system of Czech, aspect and tense interact in that the auxiliary být is used to form 

imperfective future, e.g. budu čekat ‗I will wait‗ [fut.ipf] and perfective future is realized synthetically, e.g. 

počkám ‗I will wait‗ [fut.pf]. In Czech motion verbs, however, analytic formation of future with the auxiliary být 

is blocked entirely, e.g. *budu jet ‗I will drive.‗ [fut.ipf]. The only way to express future with these verbs is by 

prefixation, e.g pojedu ‗I will drive.‗ [fut.ipf.; fut.pf.]). 

Third, the three basic motion verbs treated in the paper include a second imperative, prefixed with po-, which 

conveys a separate semantic meaning without appearing aspectually different: 

e.g. jet has imperatives jedˇ! jedˇme! jedˇte!, [MOTION AWAY FROM THE SPEAKER], and pojedˇ! pojedˇme! 

pojedˇte!, [MOTION TOWARD THE SPEAKER]. Dickey (2000) posits an east-west split in the Slavic 

Languages in terms of treatment of aspect in 

the past tense. Czech belongs to the ‗west‗ half, because it uses the imperfective in the past tense 

when speaking of sequences of actions. Motion verbs often happen in sequences of actions, which would 

encourage use of the imperfective. Since the domain of the imperfective is so much larger than that of the 

perfective, the meanings of perfective (totality, completedness) can be assumed in contexts where no sequence is 

entailed. Lack of morphological distinction of aspect suggests not two, but one future form. po-is thus 

reanalyzed as the only [future] for these verbs. According to complementarity and semantics criteria, the powhich 

appears in the future tense and that in the secondary imperative of each of these verbs belong to separate 

verbal paradigms. 

17


Andrew Dombrowski (University of Chicago) 

adombrow@uchicago.edu 

Slavic Influence on Turkic Vowel Harmony 

Some Turkic languages spoken in close proximity to Slavic have undergone significant structural changes due to 

contact with Slavic. In particular, the Trakai dialect of Karaim spoken in Lithuania and the West Rumelian dialect 

of Turkish (WRT) spoken primarily in modern Macedonia and Kosovo have frequently drawn the attention of 

researchers (Musaev 1964, Nevins and Vaux 2004 on Karaim, Friedman 2003 and references therein on WRT). In 

this paper, I demonstrate the different outcomes of vowel harmony breakdown in WRT and Karaim and argue that 

they reflect different pathways of vowel harmony loss – a novel finding insofar as the diachronic process of vowel 

harmony loss is not well understood (Harrison et al. 2002). 

In the case of WRT, I argue that vowel harmony was lost as the result of grammatical interference from speakers 

of Indo-European (primarily Slavic and Albanian) that accompanied language shift into Turkish during the 

Ottoman period. Ohrid Turkish, as described in Kakuk 1972, is used as the primary basis for a close examination 

of WRT, although data from Gostivar Turkish (Tufan 2007) and Prizren Turkish (Jusuf 1987) is also integrated. 

Disharmony in WRT is manifested both through sound changes that militate against harmony and extreme 

allomorphy. A quantitative analysis demonstrates (1) that antiharmonic sound changes, known invariant 

morphemes, and loanwords are not sufficient to account for WRT disharmony, but (2) that harmony is present in 

the lexicon to a statistically significant extent. This indicates that the accretion of lexical disharmony is unlikely to 

be the cause of WRT harmony breakdown. It is instead proposed that vowel harmony in WRT was lost as a 

grammatical process due to Slavic and Albanian imposition. 

In contrast, the restructuring of harmony in Karaim took place under conditions of sustained multilingualism not 

accompanied by language shift from Russian into Karaim. The basic outline of harmony restructuring in Karaim is 

as follows: first, consonants were automatically palatalized 

before (and after) front vowels due to Russian influence. Subsequently, /ö/ and /ü/ were backed to 

[o] and [u] respectively. As a result, Karaim displays consonant harmony; either all consonants in a word are nonpalatalized, 

or all consonants are palatalized. 

The following table illustrates the contrasts that may be observed between Karaim and WRT, pertaining to the 

sociolinguistics of the contact scenario and the grammatical outcome of contact with Slavic on vowel harmony. 

18


Karaim WRT 

Sociolinguistics Long-term multilingualism, no 

language shift; ―borrowing‖ 

Grammatical 

outcome 

Harmony preserved in the grammar 

19 

Language shift; ―imposition‖ or 

―interference‖ 

Harmony lost in the grammar 

These outcomes broadly correspond to a well-known contrast in the literature on phonological contact 

phenomena (phrased as borrowing vs. interference by Thomason and Kaufman 1988 and borrowing vs. 

imposition by van Coetsem 1988, 2000). In the case of Karaim, harmony was restructured through the interplay 

of independent sound changes, while in WRT harmony was lost as a grammatical process. I will discuss the 

ramifications of this contrast for both diachronic and synchronic accounts of vowel harmony. 

Bibliography 

Friedman, Victor A. 2003. Turkish in Macedonia and beyond: studies in contact, typology, and other phenomena 

in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden. 

Harrison, K. David, Mark Dras and Berk Kapioglu. 2002. Agent-based modeling of the evolution of vowel 

harmony. NELS 32. 

Jusuf, Sureja. 1987. Prizrenski turski govor. Prishtina: Jedinstvo. 

Kakuk, Suzanne. 1972. ―Le dialecte turc d'Ohrid.‖ Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientarium 

Hungaricae 26: 227-282. 

Musaev, K. M. 1964. Grammatika karaimskogo jazyka: fonetika i morfologija. Moscow: Nauka. 

Nevins, Andrew and Bert Vaux. 2004. ―Consonant Harmony in Karaim.‖ The Proceedings of the 

Workshop on Altaic in Formal Linguistics, ed. Aniko Csirmaz, Youngjoo Lee, and MaryAnn Walter, MIT 

Working Papers in Linguistics 46: 175--194 

Thomason, Sarah G. & Kaufman, Terrence. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. 

University of California Press: Berkeley. 

Tufan, Şirin. 2007. Language Convergence in Gostivar Turkish. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of 

Manchester. 

Van Coetsem, Frans. 1988. Loan phonology and the two transfer types in language contact. Dordrecht: Foris. 

Van Coetsem, Frans. 2000. A general and unified theory of the transmission process in language 

contact. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, C. Winter.


Quinn Dombrowski (University of Chicago) 

quinnd@uchicago.edu 

Modernizing Research through Collaborative Reference Tools: The 

Medieval Slavic Linguistics Wiki 

The rise in scholarly materials accessible through Internet (JSTOR, SpringerLink, and/or PDFspublished by 

individuals) has facilitated the research process for scholars worldwide. For Slavic linguists, however, many of 

the major reference works were published over 50 years ago, and are unavailable electronically. The success of 

Wikipedia as a general reference source for laypeople illustrates the potential of wikis as a way of organizing 

information from diverse sources. This paper aims to make the case for developing a separate wiki as a shared 

reference resource for Slavic linguists. 

While online publication of materials lowers one barrier to access, the research process itself has largely 

remained the same. It is often necessary for scholars to seek out information from areas where they are less 

familiar with the literature. This can involve consulting a reference work and tracking the topic through 

bibliographies. The amount of time necessary to look up facts takes away from the time the scholar can devote to 

the intellectual content of their research. 

A common approach to solving this problem is scanning materials. However, a tremendous amount of tedious 

work is involved in this process, and copyright is a nontrivial concern. A specialized wiki, compiled by Slavic 

linguists and Slavic linguistics graduate students, would reduce both tedium and copyright concerns, as the 

facts and conjectures contained within monographs and articles are not themselves subject to copyright. 

A test case is currently being developed, limited to topics relevant to medieval Slavic linguistics. The wiki 

contains two kinds of content: article/monograph summaries that lay out the major claims of a particular work, and 

topicbased pages that bring together both undisputed facts and various conflicting scholarly claims on the topic, 

drawn from articles and monographs. Both kinds of wiki pages include copious, specific footnotes referencing the 

source material both to enable fact checking and to allow the scholar to cite the original material rather than the 

wiki if desired. 

Mediawiki, the wiki software developed for Wikipedia also used for this test case, includes a number of features 

aimed to both encourage contribution and prevent abuse. Each user account comes with a page linking to that 

user's contributions on each of the pages where they have added (or removed) something. Even scholars without 

any specialized technology skills can contribute to the wiki, and include the link to their contributions on their CV 

to show their involvement in a digital humanities project. Every change made to a page is tracked in the database, 

and can be viewed, discussed, and/or reverted in cases of blatant abuse. The common graduate student assignment 

of writing article summaries could be redirected slightly towards writing summaries for articles not currently on 

the wiki, and breaking the information in those articles down into specific claims that can be added to topical 

pages encourages students to develop their analytic skills. In addition to arguing for the benefits such a wiki could 

provide the Slavic linguistics scholarly community, this paper will present a live demonstration of the Medieval 

Slavic linguistics wiki. 

20


Dominika Dziubala-Szrejbrowska (Poznan University) 

dziubala@poczta.fm 

Pięć kobiet czy pięciu mężczyzn? -Towards the solution of a numeral puzzle in Slavic 

languages. 

Numerically quantified noun phrases in Slavic languages for a long time have been a subject of research due to 

their unusual properties related to the internal case distribution and patterns of agreement with verbal predicates 

when occurring in the subject position. The quandary becomes even bigger when we consider different Slavic 

languages, e.g. Polish, Russian or Serbo-Croatian, as after careful examination of linguistic data, it turns out that 

providing a uniform solution applicable to these languages becomes quite a challenge. 

Discussion of numerically quantified noun phrases begins when we look at phrases with lower (1-4) and 

higher numerals (5 and above) declined by cases and occurring in various positions in a sentence. The pattern that 

emerges is that there is a noticeable difference between phrases occurring in positions in which Nominative and 

Accusative or Genitive, Dative, Locative and Instrumental are assigned. Case distribution within the phrase, 

however, differs depending, not only on its position in a sentence, but also on the numeral that quantifies the noun. 

The well-known distinction is that in noun phrases with numerals five and above in the Nominative and Accusative 

case positions the noun is assigned Genitive by the numeral, presenting the heterogeneous patter of case 

distribution. In the oblique case positions, the numeral and the noun agree in the value of case provided by the 

lexical item, i.e. a verb or a preposition selecting for an argument with a specific case value. NPs with lower 

numerals, on the other hand, seem to constitute the homogeneous pattern as the noun and the numeral agree in case 

irrespective of the context. This regularity, however, is disturbed when we take under scrutiny examples from 

Polish in which virile nouns take Genitive forms in structural case positions not only with higher but also with 

lower numerals. Moreover, the case of numerals assuming virile gender, instead of being Nominative or 

Accusative, is syncretic with Genitive (cf. table 1 and table 2). In Russian, in phrases with lower numerals, instead 

of case agreement between the noun and the numeral, the noun occurs in Genitive singular, e.g. (1a), (1b). Finally, 

in Serbo-Croatian, a noun in quantified phrases is marked as Genitive in the whole declensional paradigm, e.g. 

(2a), (2b). 

Although the problem of numerically quantified phrases has been extensively discussed in literature, e.g. 

by Pesetsky (1982), Babby (1987), Franks (1994, 1995, 2002), Rappaport (2003) or Bailyn (2004), constant 

developments in the minimalist theories require reconsidering certain issues in the spirit of the latest generative 

approaches. Moreover, the complexity of case distribution in different languages and the relevance of gender and 

number in determining case of a noun accompanied by a numeral provide grounds for seeking analyses taking 

these aspects into account. Therefore, I propose that the model to grammar advocated by Starke (2009), Caha 

(2009) based on the idea that the smallest building block in the syntactic computation is not morpheme or a word 

but a feature together with the assumption that syntax does not feed on the lexicon, becomes a feasible avenue to 

explore. By means of decomposition into features, combination of cyclic and roll-up movements, rules 

constraining matching the syntactic structure with the phrase marker in the lexicon, as well as the timing and type 

of spell-out, we can capture problematic morphosyntactic aspects of quantified noun phrases in an elegant fashion. 

21


Table 1. The declensional paradigm of noun phrases with numeral five (pięć) in Polish. 

KobietyFEM.PL (NON- ChłopcyMASC.PL (VIRILE) KrzesłaNEUTER.PL (NON- 

VIRILE) Women Boys 

VIRILE) Chairs 

Nom pięćNOM/ACC 

kobietGEN 

pięciuGEN 

chłopcówGEN 

pięćNOM/ACC krzesełGEN 

Acc 

pięćNOM/ACC 

kobietGEN 

pięciuGEN 

chłopcówGEN 

pięćNOM/ACC krzesełGEN 

Gen pięciuGEN kobietGEN 

pięciuGEN 

chłopcówGEN 

pięciuGEN krzesełGEN 

* Pięd kobiet czy pięciu mężczyzn 

Dat 

pięciuDAT 

kobietomDAT 

Loc 

pięciuLOC 

kobietachLOC 

Inst pięciomaINST 

kobietamiINST 

five-NOM/ACC women-GEN or fiveNOM?/ACC?/GEN men-GEN 

pięciuDAT chłopcomDAT pięciuDAT krzesłomDAT 

pięciuLOC chłopcachLOC pięciuLOC krzesłachLOC 

pięciomaINST 

chłopcamiINST 

22 

pięciomaINST krzesłamiINST 

Table 2. The declensional paradigm of noun phrases with numeral two (dwa) in Polish. 

KobietyFEM.PL/NON- ChłopcyMASC.PL/VIRILE KrzesłaNEUTER.PL/NON- 

VIRILE Women Boys 

VIRILE Chairs 

Nom dwie kobietyNOM/ACC 

dwu/dwóchGEN 

chłopcówGEN 

dwaNOM krzesłaNOM 

Acc dwie kobietyNOM/ACC 

dwu/dwóchGEN 

chłopcówGEN 

dwaNOM krzesłaNOM 

Gen 

dwu/dwóchGEN 

kobietGEN 

dwu/dwóchGEN 

chłopcówGEN 

dwu/dwóchGEN krzesełGEN 

Dat dwu/dwumDAT dwu/dwómDAT 

dwu/dwumDAT krzesłomDAT 

kobietomDAT 

chłopcomDAT 

Loc dwu/dwóchLOC dwu/dwóchLOC 

dwu/dwóchLOC krzesłachLOC 

kobietachLOC 

chłopcachLOC 

Inst 

dwiemaINST 

kobietamiINST 

dwomaINST chłopcamiINST dwomaINST krzesłamiINST 

(1) a. čitat' pjat' interesnyx knig 

to-read five ACC interesting-GEN.PL books-GEN.PL 

‗to read five interesting books‘ (Franks 1995:95) 

b. najti dva nadednyx săetăika 

to-find two-PAUC reliable-GEN.PL meters-GEN.SG 

‗to find two reliable meters‘ (Rappaport 2002: 338) 

(2) a. Kupili smo pet knjiga 

bought-MASC.PL AUX-1.PL five books-GEN.PL 

‗We bought five books.‘ (Franks 1995: 97)


b. 

References: 

sa 

pet devojaka 

with five girls-GEN.PL 

‗With five girls‘ (Franks 1995: 97) 

Bailyn, J. 2004. ―The case of Q‖, Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics, The Ottawa Meeting 2003, 1-36. 

Babby, L. 1987. ―Case, prequantifiers, and discontinuous agreement in Russian‖, Natural Language and 

Linguistic Theory 5. 

Bittner, M. – K. Hale. 1996. ―The structural determination of Case and Agreement‖, Linguistic Inquiry 27, 1–68. 

Blake, B. 1994. Case. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 

Boškovič. Ţ. 2006. ―Case and Agreement with Genitive of Quantification in Russian‖, in: Boeckx, C. (ed). 

Agreement systems. John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam. 

Caha, P. 2009. Nanosyntax of Case. Doctoral dissertation. University of Tromsø. 

Cinque, G. 2005. ―Deriving Greenberg‘s universal 20 and its exceptions‖, Linguistic Inquiry 36: 315 – 332. 

Franks, S. 1994. ―Parametric Properties of Numeral Phrases in Slavic‖, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 12: 

4, 597-674. 

Franks, S. 1995. Parameters of Slavic morphosyntax. OUP. 

Franks, S. 2002. ―A Jakobsonian Feature based analysis of the Slavic Numeric Quantifier Genitive‖, Journal of 

Slavic Linguistics 10: 145-184. 

Kayne, R. 1995. The antisymmetry of syntax. The MIT Press. 

Pesetsky, D. 1982. Paths and Categories. Doctoral dissertation. MIT. 

Przepiórkowki, A. 1999. Case assignment and the complement/adjunct dichotomy: A non-configurational 

constraint-based approach. PhD Dissertation. Universität Tübingen. 

Rappaport, G. 2002. “Numeral Phrases in Russian: A Minimalist approach‖, Journal of Slavic Linguistics 10: 329– 

342. 

Rappaport, G. 2003. ―Case syncretism, features, and the morphosyntax of Polish numeral phrases‖, in: Barański, P 

– A. Przepiórkowski (eds.). Generative Linguistics in Poland 5, 123-137. 

Starke, M. 2009. ―Nanosyntax: A short primer to a new approach to language‖, Nordlyd 36. 1-6. Taraldsen, K. T. 

2009. ―Lexicalizing number and gender in Lunigiana‖, Nordlyd 36. 113-127. 

23


Kat Dziwirek (University of Washington) 

dziwirek@u.washington.edu 

Escape from etymology? A corpus study of Polish adjectival intensifiers 

This paper looks at the phenomenon of adjectival intensification from two directions. I examined 31 Polish 

intensifiers and their frequencies (concordances) and collocations (which adjectives they occur with most 

frequently) to determine the degree of their semantic specificity and combinatorial freedom. I also studied the 

adjectives found with the modifiers to ascertain which adjectives tend to be intensified most often in Polish. My 

data come from the National Corpus of Polish (NKJP). 

Intensification of adjectives implies two things: i) inherent gradablity of the feature modified by the intensifier, 

and ii) the speaker‗s evaluation and attitude. Intensifiers suggest that some feature is present in the speakers‗ midst 

to an unexpected degree. Janus (1981:9) claims that there is a connection between the comparative ‗bigger/more‗ 

and the meaning of bardzo ‗very‗ and that intensification implies a comparison with a more ―normal‖, expected 

state. Of the two ingredients involved in intensification of adjectives, it is the speaker‗s perception which seems to 

be more important since the presence of the comparative as a grammatical form is not necessary for 

intensification. In Polish, the adjective chory ‗ill, sick‗ does not have a morphological comparative form (like ill 

in English) yet it can be modified by intensifiers (e.g. bardzo chory 

‗very ill‗). 

It turns out that in Polish, the choice of intensifier is rarely random, it is often driven by the type of feeling the 

unexpected situation provokes. Intensifiers express speakers‗ judgments, attitudes and emotions. I demonstrate 

that most of the intensifiers considered to be near synonyms of 

bardzo ‗very‗, have not escaped their etymology: their residual core meanings correlate with 

specific speaker attitudes and affect their choice of adjectives. 

Other than the register-neutral ―exceptional‖ group (e.g. wyjątkowo ‗exceptionally‗), most intensifiers I studied 

show distinct preferences for specific types of adjectives and imply attitudes ranging from awe, approbation and 

(sometimes grudging) admiration to indignation, 

condemnation and contempt. Those which correspond to English ‗terribly/awfully‗ tend to collocate with 

negative adjectives. Negated intensifiers, e.g. niezmiernie ‗immeasurably‗, imply crossing a limit or a line, but 

are found mostly with adjectives with positive meanings. Three of the four mad-based adverbs are very 

selective, as are intensifiers in the ―earth, heaven and hell‖ group. 

23 of the 31 intensifiers considered derive from roots that are essentially negative in meaning 

(e.g. strasznie ‗terribly, awfully‗), 5 clearly derive from positively valued terms (e.g. anielsko ‗angelically‗), 

and 3 are attitudinally neutral (e.g. wyjątkowo ‗exceptionally‗). I discuss some 

possible explanations for the propensity of intensifiers with negative etymology to occur cross-linguistically. 

24


Looking at intensification from the adjectives‗ side, this corpus based study has brought a new 

result. It turns out that Poles like to stress the difficulty of the tasks or problems they encounter by with intensifiers 

and the adjective trudny ‗difficult‗ is by far the most often modified adjective in NKJP. The next most frequent 

are adjectives ważny ‗important‗ and istotny ‗essential/important‗. This is not surprising given human nature: if 

something is important to us we are likely to say that it is very important. Based on corpus data, it turns out that 

the most often modified adjectives refer not to measurable qualities as suggested by Grzegorczykowa (1975) and 

Janus (1981), but to judgments, and especially difficulty and importance. 

Grzegorczykowa, Renata, 1975. Funkcje semantycznie i składniowe polskich przysłówków. 

Wrocław: Ossolineum. 

Janus, Elżbieta. 1981. Wykładniki intensywności cechy (na material polskim i rosyjskim). 

Wrocław: Ossolineum. 

National Corpus of Polish (www.nkjp.pl) (has over one billion words and segments at present); results obtained by 

PELCRA engine for NKJP www.nkjp.uni.lodz.pl. 

25


Ronald Feldstein (Indiana University) 

feldstei@indiana.edu 

On the Relation of Stress and Syncretism in the Mobile Noun Paradigms of 

Russian 

1. Syncretism and Russian stress mobility. 

This paper examines various instances of syncretism which occur in Russian nominal paradigms 

known as ―type C,‖ in which two possible surface stress types occur: initial or desinential. 

Examples of such nouns include volk, god, zérkalo, grud‟, golová. Previously, I have attempted to establish rules, 

by which the nominative case desinences can predict the stress mobility in the number subparadigms for this type. 

All type C nouns share end-stressed desinences in the oblique plural and second locative (L2) of the singular, but 

the direct cases are variable, as are singular oblique cases other than L2. In direct cases, only the –a ending is 

stressed, regardless of number or gender (golová, slová); –a in the nominative predicts end-stressed oblique cases, 

while non-a predicts initial stress in the oblique cases. These rules are rather complex and lead to a subsystem with 

many instances of syncretism. This paper focuses on the difference between segmental syncretisms, which agree 

as to segmental phoneme, but differ in stress, as contrasted to syncretisms which are identical both segmentally 

and prosodically. Syncretic oppositions can also differ the grammatical opposition between pairs, as follows: 

1 Within the same subparadigm, opposing only case. (dative and locative golové with identical stress, or 

dative gódu vs. L2 godú, with differing stress). 

2 Syncretism across different subparadigms: (genitive vólka, zérkala, with identical stress; but locative 

vólke, golové, with differing stress). 

3 Syncretism across different numbers and declensional patterns: (nominative singular golová, plural 

zerkalá, with identical stress). 

2. Syncretic and non-syncretic stress oppositions. Dative (or gen.-dat.) vs. L2 syncretism is the only type within 

the same subparadigm and opposed by stress. Syncretic instances in the nom.-acc. (zérkalo), loc.-dat. (golové), and 

gen.-loc.-dat. (nóči) do not oppose stress, as contrasted to all L2 instances. There is a larger pattern, related to the 

groupings such as direct cases and the two locatives. Syncretic nom.-acc. are identical prosodically, but 

nonsyncretic nom.-acc. must be opposed by stress in the mobile paradigm (golová, gólovu). Likewise, when L1 vs. 

L2 is syncretic (i.e. when no special L2 occurs), both are identical. However, when this pair is opposed, it must 

involve stress (góde vs. godú), just like the non-syncretic nom.-acc. opposition. As noted , there are two cases of 

syncretism across paradigms and opposed by stress, making the stress a redundant feature of declension class 

(vólke, golové and nóči, golový). Interestingly, in each such opposition, one locative is non-syncretic in its 

declension class, while the other is syncretic with the dative. Since the rare instance of L2 syncretism also 

specifies a similar prosodic opposition of syncretisms (gódu vs. godú) and it also is syncretic to the dative, we see 

that syncretic stress opposition is closely tied to whether it involves direct case syncretism, dative case syncretism, 

or other instances, to be specified in more detail. 

26


Ewelina Frackowiak (University of Ottawa) 

efrac006@uottawa.ca 

When Epistemic Modals Need Imperfective Aspect. 

Polish (and Russian) imperfective constructions (1B) support the idea that the imperfective is a semantically 

vacuous morpheme whose presence is guaranteed by specific conditions that rule out the perfective. The paper 

enriches the recent discussions concerned with the puzzle of how to account for various readings of the 

imperfective (Cipria & Roberts 2000, Hacquard 2006) by providing a semantic analysis of an interpretation not 

attested in languages discussed so far (Romance). 

The construction in (1B), Existential Factual Imperfective (EFI), (Grønn 2003), entails the existence of a past 

event but also makes a claim about ―a current state of affairs‖ (Grønn 2003: 26). Consider that (1B) requires a 

discourse topic (question (1A)) to be interpreted. Given (1A), (1B) states that in view of what is known Piotr is the 

best candidate to advice Tomek. The perfective, (2), is infelicitous as an answer to the question in (1A). The 

puzzle: what property of the imperfective is responsible for the reading in (1). 

I propose that EFIs carry a silent epistemic modal (see (3)). I follow Hacquard (2006, forthcoming), in assuming 

that modals are relative to an event of evaluation and that a modal operator has an event variable that must be 

bound locally. The modal is restricted by a modal base that is relativized to the speaker and the speech time. This 

is captured in (3) where the variable e0 from the modal base is coindexed with a speech event represented 

syntactically (Hacquard, forthcoming). The CON(e0) picks out a set of propositions that are beliefs of the agent of 

e0 at the time of e0. In EFI this accessibility relation is further modified by a proposition denoted by a TP with 

imperfective AspP in its scope (TP1 in (3)). To the set of beliefs the proposition ―Piotr broke up with a girlfriend‖ 

is added. In the nuclear scope of the Modal I locate the proposition that answers the question from the discourse 

topic: ‗Piotr be the best to advice Tomek‘. 

[|Mod|] w,e,fepistemic 

=λfλe0λPλQ.if P(w0)∈f(e0) then∀w‘.w‘∈f(e0).Q(w‘)=1 

where f(e0)=CON(e0) 

Mod = if P belongs to the CONTENT of the speech event, then in all the worlds w` that are compatible with the 

CONTENT of the speech event, Q is true. 

My analysis predicts that a perfective TP cannot replace the imperfective TP1 in (3). CON(e) is defined when e 

has a propositional content; hence, it must be modified by a proposition (type ). Any perfective construction 

is of type since its proposition is bound by a topic situation. 

(1) A. Tomek jest załamany, bo rzucił dziewczynę. Kto mu coś doradzi? 

‗Tomek is depressed since he broke up with his girlfriend. Who‘ll offer him advice?` 

B. Piotr rzucał Ipf 

dziewczynę. 

‗Piotr broke up Ipf 

with a girlfriend.‘ 

Pf 

(2) # Piotr rzucił dziewczynę. 

Pf 

‗Piotr broke up with his girlfriend.‘ 

27


(3) 

28 

[|Ipf|]=λP.λs.∃s1. [P(s1) and s1 = s]


Steven Franks (Indiana University) 

franks@indiana.edu 

Copy Puzzles: Clitics vs. Intermediate WH and Heads vs. Phrases 

This talk addresses a set of puzzles associated with the pronunciation and interpretation of 

hypothetical lower copies of moved constituents. The patterns are robust, but have not been fully 

appreciated in the literature. 

Since Franks (1998) and Bošković (2001), a standard account of ―clitic third‖ in Wackernagel type 

clitic languages such as BCS is that, when the head of a clitic chain fails to be prosodically supported, 

the next lower viable copy is pronounced. Thus (1a), from Franks (1998), has a structure as in (1b): 

(1) a. pro Stalno mi je kupovao knjige. constantly me.dat 

aux.3sg bought books 

„(He) was constantly buying me books.‟ 

b. [pro mi je [stalno mi je [kupovao [mi je [kupovao knjige]]]]] 

Curiously, as Franks (2010: 118) observes, whenever a wh–phrase cannot be pronounced, it is the tail 

rather than any intermediate copy that is pronounced. In Bg (2), Billings and Rudin‟ s (1996) constraint 

against adjacent homophonous wh–phrases prevents the highest copy of kakvo from being pronounced 

(although Slavic languages normally have multiple wh–movement): 

(2) Kakvo (*kakvo) misli (*kakvo) Ivan (*kakvo) če (??kakvo) obuslavja (kakvo)? 

„What does Ivan think conditions what?‟ The pattern in (2) is particularly striking for two 

reasons. First, as Bošković has demonstrated, although absent in PF, such higher wh–phrases are present 

in LF. Second, as discussed in Nunes (2004: 38–43), some languages (such as varieties of German) 

allow pronunciation of wh–words in intermediate positions (3a), but this is never possible for the tail 

(3b) or for clear wh–phrases (3c): 

(3) a. Wen denkst du wen sie meint wen Harald liebt? 

Who do you think that she believes that Harald loves?‟ 

b. *Wen glaubt Hans wen Jakob wen gesehen hat? 

[intended] „Who does Hans believe that Jakob saw?‟ 

c. *Wessen Buch glaubst du wessen Buch Hans liest? 

[intended] „Whose book do you think that Hans is reading?‟ 

All but the lowest copy of the wh–word is pronounced, although no such option is available for 

phrases. The positions accessible for pronunciation in (2) and (3) thus seem to be in complementary 

distribution, with (3) patterning more like the clitics in (1). 

A generalization which I argue underlies these phenomena is that heads can be pronounced in head 

positions and phrases in phrase positions. That is, attempts to pronounce the intermediate wh–phrases in 

(2) and (3c) encounter purely morphological problems. I develop an account in terms of 

29


Multiattachment rather than literal (successsive cyclic) movement, and take Chain Formation to be a 

repair operation prerequisite to the mapping from syntax to PF. Movement aka Remerge is actually the 

establishment of an additional dominance relation. For wh–phrases, such as kakvo in (2) or wessen Buch 

in (3c), the [+wh] matrix CP triggers ―movement‖ to the matrix clause. The chain is formed 

subsequently, by searching down the tree, and since the intermediate CPs have no specifiers (unlike in 

traditional successive cyclic approaches), the wh–phrase can 

0 

only be dominated by C. The result is morphological ineffability; no such problem arises for clitics as 

in (1), since these are themselves heads. A further generalization (demonstrated using English, 

Chinese, and Spanish data) is that only overtly moved wh–phrases display LF reconstruction effects, 

a fact that will be shown to follow from a model in which chains are created after rather than by 

movement. 

References 

Billings, Loren and Catherine Rudin (1996). Optimality and Superiority: A new approach to 

multiple–wh ordering. In Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: the College Park 

Meeting, 1994, Jindřich Toman (ed.), 35–60. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications. 

Bošković, Ţeljko (2001). On the Nature of the Syntax–Phonology Interface. Amsterdam: 

Elsevier. 

Franks, Steven (1998). Clitics in Slavic. Position paper presented at the Comparative Slavic 

Morphosyntax Workshop, Spencer, Indiana, June 1998. [Revised version available on-line at 

< http://www.seelrc.org/glossos/issues/10/>.] 

Franks, Steven (2010). On the Mechanics of Spell–Out. In The Sound Patterns of Syntax, ed. by 

N. Erteschik-Shir & L. Rochman. Oxford University Press, 110–139. 

Nunes, Jairo (2004). Linearization of Chains and Sideward Movement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 

30


Frank Gladney (UIUC) 

gladney@illinois.edu 

On the Morphology and Syntax of Russian Verbal Aspect 

This is about the line between the morphology of verbal aspect and its syntax. The morphology is the form a 

verb assumes in various aspectual environments; the syntax is those environments. The form is chiefly what 

separates the verb from the ending (for verbal aspect the ending is irrelevant). With few exceptions, the verb is 

separated from the ending by phonemes called themes. They are introduced into the verb form by readjustment 

rules called thematizations, which are governed by the lexical features of the verb and the aspectual feature of the 

sentence. Following Dostal 1954, I label the aspectual feature [+ITER]; the lexical features are [-ITER]. Here 

are some [-ITER] features of verbs: /pas/ „graze‟ takes thematic /e/ ~ /o/ in [-PAST] forms and Ø in [+PAST] 

forms (pas-ë-t, pas-lá); /pis/ „write‟ takes /a/ in [+PAST] only, entailing thematic /j/ and /e/ ~ /o/ in [-PAST] 

(pis-á-la, píš-e-t); /kop/ „dig‟ takes /a/ in both [+PAST] and [-PAST], entailing /j/ and /e/ ~ /o/ in [-PAST] (kop- 

á-la, kop-á-j-e-t); /top/ „sink, drown‟ takes /n/, entailing /u/ in [+PAST] and /e/ ~ /o/ in [-PAST] (to-n-ú-la, tó- 

n-e-t); /pros/ „request‟ takes /i/ (pros-í-la, prós-i-t). For [+ITER] thematization the most general rule is that 

verbs which do not have /a/ for [-ITER] have it for [+ITER]. This applies to most /e/ ~ /o/ verbs, e.g., [-ITER] - 

pas-ë-t, [+ITER] -pas-á-j-e-t. (For a handful of /e/ ~ /o/ verbs like /nes/, [+ITER] conditions o-ablaut and 

thematic /i/: [-ITER] -nes-ë-t. [+ITER] -nós-i-t.) Conversely, verbs which have /a/ for [-ITER] in [+ITER] have 

/¥/ followed by hiatus-filling /v/ and /a/: [-ITER] -pis-á-la, [+ITER] -pís-y-v-a-la, [-ITER] -kop-á-j-e-t, [+ITER] - 

káp-y-v-a-j-e-t. Some /i/-verbs have [+ITER] /a/, e.g., -mét-i-t, -meč-á-j-e-t; others have [+ITER] /¥/, e.g., [- 

ITER] -prós-i-t, [+ITER] -práš-i-v-a-j-e-t, the distribution determined in part stylistically. This is extent of 

verbal aspect morphology. 

The syntax of verbal aspect is the environments which assign the feature [+ITER]. For the main one, the 

so-called secondary imperfective, the sentence predicate is specified [-PFV] and the verbal contituent (V) 

includes a prefix (P). The sublexical phrase-structure rule V • P V yields [V P V ] and lexical rules like P • /za/ 

and V • /pis/ result in [V [P /za/ ] [V /pis/] ]. [+ITER] is assigned to the V, thus zapísyvaet. The verbal 

constituent must have the articulate structure [V P V ] because otherwise the grammar will not distinguish 

aspectually regular /pros/, which gets [+ITER] only in the presence of a prefix, from irregular /bros/ „throw‟ , 

which gets [+ITER] also in the absence of a prefix. The prefix is thus part of the syntactic environment for aspect 

morphology, not the result of prefixation (just as strings of themes and hiatus fillers are not the result of 

suffixation). V can be specified [+ITER] also independently of a [-PFV] predicate, as in zabégaet. This [+PFV] 

Aktionsart form differs from [-PFV] zabegáet (besides by having a different za-) syntactically, by where in the 

sentence [+ITER] is assigned. 

31


Lydia Grebenyova (Baylor University) 

Lydia_grebenyova@baylor.edu 

On the Nature of Clausal and DP-internal Agreement 

The work on DP-internal agreement demonstrated in (1a), often referred to as concord, has been 

focused on unifying it with clausal agreement demonstrated in (1b), and specifically extending the 

operation Agree of Chomsky (2000) from clausal agreement to DP agreement (e.g., Carstens (2001) and 

Becker (2009)). This paper explores whether clausal and DP agreement actually share crucial empirical 

properties in order to determine just how uniform the treatment of those phenomena should be. I 

demonstrate that there are a number of asymmetries between the behavior of clausal and DP agreement. 

To distinguish DP agreement from clausal agreement formally, I propose an analysis where Probes can 

function as Goals to higher Probes. Unification of clausal and DP agreement relies on Multiple Agree, 

where a Probe is allowed to Agree with multiple Goals (Becker, 2009) or multiple Probes are allowed to 

Agree with one Goal (Carstens, 2001). However, while Multiple Agree phenomena in the clausal 

domain exhibit optionality, as in Japanese multiple ECM phenomenon (Hiraiwa, 2001) shown in (2), 

optionality is not present in the DP domain in Slavic. Agreement between the elements of the Russian 

DP is not optional, (3). 

Moreover, DP agreement survives even in the contexts where clausal agreement is absent, as 

demonstrated in (4), where there is no agreement on the verb and Instrumental (inherent) Case is on the 

DP, indicating that Agree does not take place between T and any of the overt arguments in this 

sentence. However, the DP agreement is unaffected by this. Finally, it has been observed that DPinternal 

agreement licenses phenomena like Left Branch Extraction (LBE) (Bošković, 2005) and pure 

NP ellipsis (as opposed to one-substitution) (Merchant, 2001) in languages that exhibit DP agreement. 

These generalizations would be lost if DP agreement was collapsed with clausal agreement. Languages 

that do not exhibit LBE, NP ellipsis, or DP agreement tend to still exhibit clausal agreement, as shown 

in (5a)-(5d). I develop an analysis that uses Agree of Chomsky (2000) yet distinguishes DP agreement 

from clausal agreement. I propose that DP agreement does not depend on any Probe outside the DP, 

contrary to Becker (2009). I also propose that Probes can be Goals to higher Probes: in a structure as in 

(6), A0 with uninterpretable φ-features probes N0 and then D0 probes A0. This raises an issue of a 

possible violation of the Activity Condition that states that a head is rendered inactive once its features 

are valued. I argue that deactivation of a Probe is delayed until the phase level. Phase Impenetrability 

Condition (PIC) of Chomsky (2000, 2001) makes this quite plausible without any extra stipulations. 

That is, all the heads are active until PIC makes them inaccessible to syntactic computation (c.f., Nevins 

(2005). Proposed analysis has correct predictions about the existence of multiple phases inside a DP, as 

suggested by Matushansky (2003) and Marusic (2005), as well as the cross-linguistic variation with 

clausal and DP agreement, as would be shown in the talk. 

32


Christine Grillborzer (University of Regensburg) 

Christine.Grillborzer@sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de 

On the agreement of predicate nominals in Old Russian Infinitive 

Constructions 

The purpose of the study is to describe the subject properties of constructions of the type dative 

case subject + (byt„) + infinitive in the Old Russian texts using the criteria of priority that have 

been developed in order to identify the subject in Modern Russian. 

The main focus of the paper is on the governing qualities of the agreement in predicate nominals. 

Dative case subjects in Modern Russian, just like canonical subjects, govern the gender and the 

number of the predicative complement in the instrumental case, cf. 

On ne projdjet nezamechennym. 

HE:MASC.NOM.SG. UNNOTICED:MASC.INST.SG. 

‚He will not pass unnoticed.„ 

Emu ne projti nezamechennym. 

HE:MASC.DAT.SG. UNNOTICED:MASC.INST.SG. 

‚He cannot pass unnoticed.„ 

In Old Russian, on the contrary, we find a compulsory agreement between the subject and the 

predicative complement in infinitive constructions, the so-called ―second‖ dative, which is precisely 

as compulsory as an agreement in the nominative case: 

jako byti namъ rabomъ. 

WE:DAT.PL. SLAVE:MASC.DAT.PL. 

‚that we will be slaves.„ 

jakozhe obratitisja emu ot puti svoego i zhivu byti. 

HE:MASC.DAT.SG. ALIVE:MASC.DAT.SG. 

„he should turn away from his way and stay alive.‟ 

The concordant dative forms are found as late as the 19th century. They still occur in some 

isolated cases even in Modern Russian, cf.: 

Emu by ostat‟ sja odnomu / *odnim. 

HE:MASC.DAT.SG. ALONE:MASC.DAT.SG. / *ALONE:MASC.INST.SG 

‚He would like to be left alone.„ 

As to the instrumental forms, they first appear in the 16th century. These forms are extremely 

rare in the Old Russian texts. Whenever they occur, the context is invariably Church Slavonic. 

Thus, Russkaja Pravda does not contain a single quotation with the instrumental case being used 

in the predicate. 

Even though there are a few studies concerning the „second‟ dative in Modern Russian, the 

diachronic perspective on the topic has been neglected considerably up to now. 

33


Christian Hilchey (University of Chicago) 

hilchey@uchicago.edu 

Czech Aspect, Verbs of Motion, and the Cluster Model 

Verbs of motion are often seen as special cases, more elaborate exceptions to the basic system of aspectual pairs. 

The distinction between indeterminate and determinate verbs of motion, e.g. – Czech chodit/jít „go by foot‟ , 

běhat/běžet „run‟ etc., is frequently viewed as an additional distinction not present in other aspectual pairs in 

languages like Czech or Russian. 

While the traditional notion of the aspectual pair still dominates, more recent research (Dickey 2006, Janda 2007) 

suggests that often several verbs can be considered the perfective partner of a particular imperfective verb 

depending on which sense of the imperfective verb is assumed, i.e. – написать „to write‟ and пописать „to 

write for a while‟ can both be viewed as perfective partners to писать „to write‟ , depending on whether a 

potentially telic interpretation (i.e. completability vs. non-completability) of imperfective писать is assumed. 

Janda (2007, 2008) argues that these and other prefixed and unprefixed forms of verbs should be viewed as part of 

an aspectual cluster, with a more elaborate web of forms as opposed to the traditional aspectual pair model. In 

Janda‟ s model, the imperfective verb писать ―to write‖ has a natural perfective написать ―to write‖, specialized 

perfective переписать ―to rewrite‖, and complex act пописать ―to write for a while‖. Janda (2008, 2010) 

demonstrates the similarity between clusters of verbs such as писать 

above and the clusters of Russian verbs of motion. The question remains whether such an analysis might 

work for Czech as well. 

Despite their superficial similarities, the systems of verbs of motion in Czech and Russian do differ in significant 

ways. Czech indeterminate verbs of motion jít, běžet are actually biaspectual, including such pure future forms 

such as půjdu, poběžím. Czech indeterminate verbs of motion do not have the return trip meaning in the past tense 

that Russian verbs do. Additionally, prefixed imperfective verbs of motion are not formed using the 

indeterminate verbs chodit, běhat as in Russian (cf. Ru уходить, убегать), but rather derived forms –cházet, – 

bíhat (cf. odcházet, odbíhat). Finally, Czech shows a much more developed system of perfective verbs, often with 

a distributive meaning, which are derived from indeterminate verbs, e.g. – vychodit, vyběhat, etc. 

This paper will address how various facets of the Czech system of verbs of motion are reflected in other parts of 

its verbal system. Specifically, Czech verbs of motion are compared to another class of verbs that have simplex 

pairs of the type trhat/trhnout „to tear‟ , and which produce doublets of perfective verbs such as roztrhat p 

„to 

tear into many pieces‟ and roztrhnout p 

„to tear in half‟ . These are then contrasted with the Russian cluster 

model proposed by Janda. Finally, these differences are then discussed in the broader context of aspectual 

development in both Czech and Russian. 

34


References: 

Dickey (2006). ―Aspectual Pairs, Goal Orientation and PO-Delimitatives in Russian‖. Glossos 

7. 

Janda, Laura (2007). "Aspectual clusters of Russian verbs", Studies in Language 31:3 (2007), 607-648. 

Janda, Laura (2010). "Prefixed Perfectives from Non-determined Motion Verbs in Russian", In: Viktoria 

Driagina-Hasko and Renee Perelmutter, eds. New Approaches to Slavic verbs of motion. 

Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. pp. 125-140. 

Janda, Laura (2008). "Semantic Motivations for Aspectual Clusters of Russian Verbs", In Christina Y. Bethin, 

ed. American Contributions to the 14th International Congress of Slavists, Ohrid, September 2008. 

Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers. pp. 181-196. 

35


Tanya Ivanova-Sullivan (University of New Mexico) 

tivanova@unm.edu 

COMPEHENSION OF INDEFINITE DETERMINERS BY RUSSIAN 

HERITAGE SPEAKERS 

The semantics of definite and indefinite determiners has been an object of intensive research in second language 

acquisition in the past couple of decades. Results of experimental work in this area have shown the effects of 

definiteness, specificity, and partitivity in the use of such determiners (see Ko at el 2008 for a review of the 

literature). One field that has been underrepresented in this line of research is the field of heritage languages. The 

goal of this study is to look at the specific content and use of indefinite determiners in the language of Russian 

heritage speakers. The paper presents the results from an experimental study on the comprehension of anaphoric 

objects and the various interpretations that they receive in these positions (examples 1-3). The overt object 

pronoun ikh in (1) and the null anaphoric object in (2) get definite (maximal) interpretation, while the partitive 

determiner neskol‟ko in (3) receives indefinite interpretation: 

1) Kupite tsvetnye podushki i polozhite ikh na divan. 

2) Kupite tsvetnye podushki i polozhite Ø na divan. 

3) Kupite tsvetnye podushki i polozhite neskol‟ko na divan. 

4) Ja kupil neskol‟ko knig vchera. 

Contrary to the initial hypothesis of the study, a main effect of partitivity was recorded for reaction times 

(Fig. 1) and accuracy (Fig. 2). In a classical picture-matching task where the participants had to match an oral 

prompt with a picture, they gave slower and less accurate answers to the sentence in (3) than to the sentences in 

(1) and (2). 

I analyze these results as comprehension problems stemming from the semantic ambiguity of the partitive 

determiner neskol‟ko in its weak and strong readings (cf. Diesing 1992 on similar problems with the English 

„some‟ ). The interpretation of neskol‟ko in (3) presupposes a set of particular elements (pillows), part of the 

domain of discourse. I argue that the participants in the study had problems with the interpretation of neskol‟ko 

due to a failure to establish a presupposition of existence, a presupposition that the weak non-partitive neskol‟ko 

lacks (cf. 4). Thus, the „missing‟ presuppositional property yields a weak reading of neskol‟ko in heritage 

Russian, contrary to the expected partitive and quantificational reading of neskol‟ko. 

Works: Diesing. Indefinites (1992); Ionin, Zubizarreta, and Philippov. Acquisition of Article Semantics by Child and 

Adult L2-English Learners (2009); Ko, Perovic, Ionin and Wexler. Semantic Universal and Variation in L2 Article 

Choice (2008) 

36


Figure 2 Cross-group accuracy 

Figure 1 Cross-group RT 

37


Snejana Iovtcheva (Syracuse University) 

spiovtch@syr.edu 

WH-questions in Bulgarian: Evidence for [focus] movement in a Feature 

Based Syntactic Theory 

This paper analyzes the multiple wh-fronting (MWF) structure of Bulgarian under the Move- 

F(eature) approach to syntactic displacement (Chomsky 1995, 2004) and provides a more unified account 

of the Bulgarian clausal structure than previous attempts. The new analysis challenges Boškovič‟ s 

(1998) and Lambova‟ s (2001) move-to-SpecCP analyses by proposing that wh-phrases don‟ t target 

SpecCP in Bulgarian. Instead the wh-phrases move to a preverbal focus position, which is the SpecTP in 

line with Motapanyane‟ s (1997) proposal that [focus] is generated in T in Romanian. The new clausal 

structure allows us to: 1. propose a unified [focus]driven movement with a systematic feature distribution, 

2. capture the distribution of focalized constituents not only in interrogative, but also in declarative clauses 

and yes/no questions in both root and embedded contexts, and 3. explain the different behavior of relative 

pronouns and wh phrases in Bulgarian. 

By combining the empirical and theoretical insights of other [focus]-related studies, the current 

paper also explains various structural phenomena that have been discussed previously in Slavic studies: 

V2-order, limited Superiority effects, and obligatory Pair-list interpretation (PL). The current paper 

analyzes them in terms of language-specific principles and parameters for 

Bulgarians unique MWF structure and sets Bulgarian apart from other Slavic languages: 

(i) Subject-verb inversion in Bulgarian wh-questions is analyzed not as traditional T-to-C verb 

movement, but in terms of VP-internal subjects that do not need to move to SpecTP in order to check 

Case in Bulgarian. Instead, the subject in Bulgarian checks the [Nom] Case in its original VP-internal 

position. Adverb placement and adverb interpretation (Izvorski 1995), as well as structures with 

complementary distribution between fronted wh-elements and fronted subjects support this argument. 

(ii) The selective Superiority effects are analyzed as resulting from the information structure, in which 

one wh-phrase moves up to a Topic position above the rest of the fronted wh-phrases but below CP 

(Jaeger 2004). By analyzing the fixed linear order in terms of Jaeger‘s Topic-First-Hypothesis we 

include a wide variety of language-specific data that have been left out in previous analyses. 

(iii) The exclusive PL interpretation is analyzed as resulting from [Q] generated in T rather than C (in 

analogy to Grebenyova‘s (2003) analysis of the PL reading in Russian). Following Hagstrom‘s 

(1998) original idea, this paper shows that if [Q] merges lower than the landing site of the fronted 

wh-phrases it no longer has scope over the wh-phrases in SpecTP and therefore blocks the SP 

reading. 

In summary, this paper proposes that cross-linguistic variation among MWF languages shouldn‘t be 

exclusively linked to lexical movement to SpecCP, but be analyzed as resulting from the distribution 

of language-specific options, such as: 1. the structural position of [Q], 2. the option of VP-internal 

subjects, 3. the availability and the structural position of fronted Topics, and 4. choice of the 

functional heads can host the [focus] feature. 

38


Katarzyna Janic (Universite Lumiere Lyon 2) 

Katarzyna.janic@univ-lyon2.fr 

The three morphosyntactic patterns of the antipassive in Slavonic languages 

The antipassive, traditionally claimed to correlate with ergativity (Dixon 1994), is commonly defined as a 

derived intransitive construction with a two-place predicate the object argument of which is either 

omitted or realized as an oblique (Polinsky 2005). To derive antipassive constructions many ergative 

languages, in particular the Australian ones, use an antipassive marker diachronically associated with the 

reflexive/middle function. The same polysemy also exists in accusative languages, in particular in Slavonic 

languages. 

This paper argues in favour of the recognition of antipassives in accusative languages with double 

objective. It first aims at showing that Slavonic languages possess a type of construction that is similar 

regarding the morphosyntactic derivation of the antipassive in Australian languages. Secondly, it 

establishes a typological pattern of antipassive marking and its impact on the semantic transitive of the 

clause. 

The present study is based on data taken from a corpus of utterances elicited from native speakers, 

and expanded by examples from the literature. Ex. (1b) - (3b) illustrate three types of antipassive 

construction derived from the transitive ones (1a) - (3a) respectively: 

(1) a. On-Ø vypil piv-o. Russian 

he-NOM drink.PST.3SG.M beer-ACC 

‘He drank the beer.’ (the whole available amount) 

b. On-Ø vypil piv-a. 

he-NOM drink.PST.3SG.M beer-GEN 

‘He drank some beer.’ (Shibatani 2009:330) 

(2) a. Chłopiec-Ø jadł truskawki. Polish 

boy-NOM.SG.M eat.PST.3SG.M strawberry.ACC.PL.F 

‘The boy was eating the strawberries.’ 

b. Chłopiec-Ø ob-jadł się truskawkami. 

boy-NOM.SG.M OB-eat.PST.3SG.M SIĘ strawberry.INS.PL.F 

‘The boy gorged himself on the strawberries.’ 

39


(3) a. Janek-Ø pcha dzieci na przerwach. Polish 

Janek-NOM push.PRS.3SG children.ACC on breaks 

‘Janek pushes children on school breaks.’ 

b. Janek-Ø pcha się na przerwach. 

Janek-NOM push.PRS.3SG SIĘ on breaks 

‘Janek is in a habit to push [people/ other children+ on school breaks.’ 

Building on Shibatani’s analysis on case and voice (2009), I propose that Slavonic languages have three 

typological patterns of antipassive marking that is realized in nominal arguments and/or in a verbal form. 

The first is signalled by the difference in case form of the object, (1b). A distinction between accusative 

and partitive genitive serves to encode a semantic distinction between total and partial affectedness of 

the object. The second pattern results in the nominative-oblique (instrumental) case-frame and a change 

in the morphological shape of a verb, (2b). The active-antipassive alternation modifies the semantic 

properties of the subject that is now fully affected by its own action. Due to the affected-agent 

semantics, the antipassive puts the semantically transitive event in a different pragmatic perspective i.e.: 

the focus is now on the effect the action produces on the agent rather than on the patient. The last 

morphosyntactic pattern of the antipassive is identified in terms of the verbal marker only, the presence 

of which blocks the overt realisation of the object, (3b). The omission of the object affects its semantic 

properties i.e.: it is interpreted as a non-referential, generic argument. 

Abbreviations: 

ACC: accusative F: feminine GEN: genitive INS: instrumental M: masculine NOM: nominative 

PL : plural PRS: present PST: past SG: singular 

References: 

COOREMAN, Ann. ‗A Functional Typology of Antipassive‘. In: Fox, B., Hopper, P.J. (eds.): Voice: Form and 

Function. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1993. Pages 49-87. 

DIXON, R.M.W. Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 

NEDJALKOV, Vladimir P. ‗Polysemy of reciprocal markers‘. In Nedjalkov, Vladimir P. (ed.): Reciprocal 

Constructions. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007. Pages 231-334. 

POLINSKY, Maria. ‗Antipassive Constructions‘. In Haspelmath Martin, Dryer Martin S., Gill David and Comrie 

Bernard (eds.): The World Atlas Of Language Structure. Oxford University Press, 2005. Pages 438-439. 

SHIBATANI, Masayoshi. ‗Case and voice: case in derived constructions.‘ In Malchukov Andrej and Andrew Specer 

(eds.): The Oxford handbook of case. Oxford University Press, 2009. Pages 322-338. 

TERRILL, Angela. ‗The Development of Antipassive Constructions in Australian Languages‘. In Australian Journal 

of Linguistics. Australia, 1997. Pages 71-88. 

TSUNODA, Tasaku. ‗Reflexive and middle constructions of Warrungu (Australia)‘. In Tsunoda Tasaku and Taro 

Kageyama (eds.): Voice and Grammatical Relations. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing 

Company, 2006. Pages 299-333. 

TSUNODA, Tasaku. ‗Antipassives in Warrungu and other Australian languages'. In Shibatani, Masayoshi (ed.): 

Passive and Voice. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1988. Pages 595-649. 

40


Sylwester Jaworski (Szczecin University) 

Sylwester.jaworski@univ.szczecin.pl 

Recent changes in the phonology and morphology of Polish 

Culture contact leads inevitably to language contact and language contact, in turn, is very likely 

to result in more or less profound language change. Since English is one of the world‟ s most 

important linguae francae, it is obvious that it exerts an enormous influence on other languages. 

Nowadays speakers of many languages not only borrow hundreds of words from English, but 

they also start employing morphological processes characteristic of English to modify the 

internal structure of native words. 

The present paper recent changes in Polish which appear to have been influenced by the 

English language. These changes affect not only the lexicon that currently contains almost two 

thousand English borrowings (cf. Willim – Wohlfeld-Mańczak 1993), but also the phonetics and, 

in particular, the morphology of Polish. As far as phonetics is concerned, one can observe that 

the rhotic sound of Polish, which is classified as a trill (cf. Wierzchowska 1980, Sobkowiak 

2001), undergoes weakening and is normally realised as either a tap or an approximant whose 

acoustic features are very similar to those of the English „r-sound‟ . Needless to say, teenagers 

produce approximant rhotics more frequently than adults. Given that in the speech of the 

teenagers who took part in the experiment conducted for the purposes of the presentation more 

than a half of the rhotics were realised as approximants, the results can be seen as a sign of a 

sound change taking place. Moreover, one often gets the impression, confirmed by the result of 

recent studies, e.g. Jaworski 2009, that some unaccented Polish vowels undergo significant 

phonetic reduction in casual or fast speech. Interestingly, in the case of /e/ and /ɨ / the reduction is 

so profound that it results in neutralisation of the phonological contrast between the two vowel 

sounds. As a consequence, many pairs of words, especially those beginning with the prefixes 

przy-and prze-, are pronounced the same, e.g. przyjechałem „I arrived‟ and przejechałem „I ran 

over‟ , both realised as [pʃ ɘjexaem]. 

The most striking changes, however, seem to have taken place in morphology. The young who 

learn at school how English words are clipped, how blends are formed and how two lexical items can be 

put together to produce a new word of different meaning, experiment with native words by applying the 

41


same processes. As a result, their repertoire includes many items that are usually perceived by the older 

generations as totally unacceptable forms of existing words, e.g. szacun that is derived from szacunek 

„respect‟ by removing the pseudo-suffix –ek, or manifa that is a clipped form of manifestacja 

„manifestation‟ . 

REFERENCES: 

Jaworski, Sylwester.2009. ―Inertial and non-inertial phonological processes‖. Poznań Studies in 

Contemporary Lingustics 45 (1), pp. 103-129. 

Sobkowiak, Włodzimierz. 2001. English phonetics for Poles. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie. 

Wierzchowska, Bożena. 1980. Fonetyka i fonologia języka polskiego [The phonetics and phonology of the 

Polish language]. Wrocław, Warszawa, Kraków, Poznań: 

Ossolineum. Willim, Ewa – Wohlfeld-Mańczak, Elżbieta. 1993. A contrastive approach to problems with 

English. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. 

42


Brian Joseph (The Ohio State University) 

bjoseph@ling.ohio-state.edu 

The Rise of the Bulgarian Definite Article and Grammaticalization Theory 

Heine and Kuteva (2008) discuss the rise of the definite article in Bulgarian and characterize it as 

showing ―the explanatory value of grammaticalization‖. Moreover, it is a prime example of the power of 

what they call ―integrative grammaticalization theory‖, i.e., ―a theory of grammaticalization taking into 

account both contact-related and non-contact-related situations‖ (p. 229). They rightly recognize the 

historical links the definite article has to demonstratives, and develop an account within 

grammaticalization theory resolving the ―apparent contradiction‖ of a postpositive article compared to 

other positioning for the demonstrative. They argue that the Middle Bulgarian demonstrative was not 

fixed in its present-day pre-nominal position and that the article placement reflects an earlier – and 

attested --postpositive demonstrative possibility. Moreover, they invoke language contact as having ―at 

least an accelerating and/or reinforcing role‖ in the Bulgarian developments, so that Bulgarian becomes 

a paradigm case of contactrelated grammaticalization (―a grammaticalization process … due to the 

influence of one language on another‖ (p. 218)). Their main reasons for bringing in language contact are 

that the Balkans are known as a contact-rich area and that similar developments are found in Rumanian, 

which they call ―the only [sic] Romance language … spoken in the Balkans‖ (p. 222). 

In this paper, I offer a critique of Heine & Kuteva‟ s account, based on three considerations: 

a. First, from a conceptual standpoint, I question the very notion of ―contact-induced 

grammaticalization‖. If grammaticalization is a process, as Heine & Kuteva state, it is hard to imagine a 

process, which is, after all, a rather abstract entity, passing from one language into another, especially 

since the material involved in borrowing is typically fairly concrete (words, sounds, constructions, etc.). 

On the other hand, grammaticalization as a result (see Newmeyer 1998, Janda 2001 on this view) would 

offer something concrete in one language that could be a model for a formation in another language, via 

what is traditionally called ―calquing‖; the steps, then, leading to a grammaticalization are carried out on a 

language-internal basis and the involvement of language contact becomes rather incidental. 

b. Second, from an empirical standpoint, they fail to recognize that the article is not merely 

postposed onto the noun but is rather enclitic within the noun phrase, e.g.: 

kniga „book‟ / kniga-ta „the book‟ 

stara kniga „old book‟ 

stara-ta kniga / *stara kniga-ta „the old book‟ and that this characteristic does not derive in any 

way from the positional properties of apparent source demonstratives. 

c. Finally, while invoking language contact here is reasonable, the directionality need not be as 

they say; they omit Albanian altogether, even though the source of the postposed article in the Balkans 

needs to take that language, as well as ancient links between Albanian and Romanian, into account (Hamp 

1982). Paying attention to the other Balkan representative of Romance, namely Judezmo, is instructive 

here, since it came to the Balkans only after the 15th century, too late to take part in the formative 

processes Hamp sees as crucial to postpositive article formation. 

43


Kateryna Kent (University of Minnesota) 

Kent0082@umn.edu 

Prepositional Phrases of Motion Verbs in Surzhyk, a Russian-Ukrainian mixed 

language 

Centuries of colonization by the Russian Empire created favorable conditions for Russian-Ukrainian 

language contact in Ukraine. Surzhyk is the product of such contact, a linguistic variety consisting of 

Ukrainian grammar with admixture of Russian lexical morphemes. Current public discourse associates 

Surzhyk with parochialism, lack of education, and a low culture (Bilaniuk, 2004). Current linguistic 

discourse identifies Surzhyk as a mixed language (Flier, 2008; Gasparov, 2006), interference (Stavyts‟ ka 

& Trub, 2007; Vakhtin et al, 2003), or as a group of separate linguistic varieties ranging from 

codeswitching to language mixing to fused lects (Bilaniuk, 2004). The purpose of this research is to 

examine prepositional phrases of the motion verbs in Surzhyk. I argue that preposition choice is due to the 

structural changes in the class of motion verbs induced by the Russian Grammar rather than codeswitching 

between Russian and Ukrainian. 

The analysis of the morphosyntactic structure of Surzhyk‟ s spoken data within Myers-Scotton‟ s 

Matrix Frame Model (MLF) reveals that Surzhyk results from composite codeswitching with Ukrainian (U 

hereinafter) being the Matrix Language and Russian (R hereinafter) being the Embedded Language. 

Consider (1) below (U morphemes are in plain text, R morphemes are in italic): 

(1) tak vsɛ na aɦ arod.i bulɔ 

and everything on kitchen-garden.Loc be.3sg.neut.Past 

„There was everything in the kitchen-garden.‟ 

In (1) the lexical morpheme „aɦ arod‟ comes from R but it is embedded in a U PP and receives U 

Locative Case marking –i. In MLF terms the agreement marker –i is a late system morpheme because it is 

not activated until the smaller constituents are assembled. Some structural changes in the class of U 

motion verbs, namely, their governing of Russian prepositions, indicate that Surzhyk is a mixed language. 

Consider (2), where the U verb „jizdyla‟ governs R preposition v: 

(2) na rabotu jizdyla v Kyiv. 

to work.Acc go.1sg.fem.Past to Kyiv.Acc 

„I went to work to Kyiv‟ . 

In Ukrainian, motion verbs indicating movement towards a place require the preposition do followed by 

an NP in the Genitive case, as in (3) 

(3) lɛ lɛ ka prylitaje do sɛ la 

stork fly.3sg.Pres to village.Gen 

„The stork flies to the village‟ 

In Russian, the same relationship is conveyed by the preposition v followed by an NP in the Accusative 

case. Surzhyk data shows that its speakers use Ukrainian motion verbs with Russian preposition v 

governing the Accusative case, as in (4) 

44


(4) Ja pojihala v Leninhrad, u Moskvu 

I go.3sg.Past to Leningrad.Acc to Moscow.Acc 

„I wanted to go to Leningrad, to Moscow‟ 

Note the interchangeable use of prepositions v/u pertinent to Ukrainian. The consistency of the use of 

v+Acc by Surzhyk speakers across the territory of Ukraine and the fact that Surzhyk speakers do not 

demonstrate or report active command of both U and R indicates that Surzhyk functions as a single code. 

This classification can accurately account for both grammatical structure and sociolinguistic Surzhyk data. 

Selected References 

Auer, P. (1999). From codeswitching via language mixing to fused lects: Toward a 

dynamic typology of bilingual speech. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 

3(4), 309-332. 

Bilaniuk, L. (2004). A typology of Surzhyk: Mixed Ukrainian-Russian language. 

International Journal of Bilingualism, 8(4), 409-425. 

Bilaniuk, L. (2005). Contested tongues: Language politics and cultural correction in 

Ukraine. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 

Flier, M. (1998). Surzhyk: The rules of engagement. Harvard Ukrainian Studies, (22), 

113-136. 

Flier, M. (2008). Surzhyk or Surzhyks?. In G. Hentschel, & S. Zaprudski (Eds.), 

Belarusian trasjanka and ukrainian surzhyk: Structural and social aspects of their 

description and categorization. (pp. 39-56). Oldenburg: BIS-Verlag der Carl von 

Ossietzky Universitaet Oldenburg. 

Masenko, L. (2004). Mova i suspilstvo. Kyiv: Akademiia. 

Masenko, L. (2008). Surzhyk: Istoriia formuvanniia, suchasnyj stan, perspektyvy funktionuvannia. In 

G. Hentschel, & S. Zaprudski (Eds.), Belarusian trasjanka and Ukrainian surzhyk: Structural 

and social aspects of their description and categorization. 

(pp. 1-37). Oldenburg: BIS-Verlag der Carl von Ossietzky Universitaet 

Oldenburg. Myers-Scotton, C. (2002). Contact linguistics: Bilingual encounters 

and grammatical outcomes. New York: Oxford University Press. Myers- 

Scotton, C. (2003). What lies beneath: Split (mixed languages) as contact 

phenomena. In 

Y. Matras, & P. Bakker (Eds.), The mixed language debate. (pp. 73-106). Berlin: Mouton de 

Gruyter. Serbenska, O. (1994). Antysurzhyk. Lviv: Svit. Stavytska, L., & Trub, V. (2007). Surzhyk: 

Mif, mova, komunikatsia. In L. Stavytska (Ed.), 

Ukrainsko-rosijska dvomovnist' (pp. 31-121). Kyiv: Pulsary. 

Thomason, S. G. (2003). Social factors and linguistic processes in the emergence of stable mixed 

languages. In Y. Matras, & P. Bakker (Eds.), The mixed language debate. (pp. 21-40). Berlin: 

Mouton de Gruyter. 

Thomason, S. G., & Kauffman, T. (1988). Language contact, creolization, and genetic 

linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Vakhtin, N., Zhironkina, O., Romanova, E. & Liskovets, I. (2003). Opredelenie Surzhyka v 

sotsiolingvisticheskom aspekte. Retrieved November 15, 2007, from 

http://www.eu.spb.ru/ethno/projects/project3/ukraine/007/009.htm 

45


Christina Kramer, Joseph Schallert, and Julia Mikhailova (University of Toronto) 

ce.kramer@utoronto.ca 

Two Roads Diverge: Slavic Linguistics for Undergraduates 

We have long known that many students interested in languages avoid the language major 

because they are not interested in upper level literature courses. At the University of Toronto we 

have gradually introduced a major in Slavic languages and linguistics that taps into the Slavic 

linguistic expertise of the faculty. Students are also encouraged to take courses in general 

linguistics. These courses provide the basis for a language and Slavic linguistics focused 

undergraduate major or minor and tap into a different student cohort. There are courses from the 

first to fourth year levels which can be taken alongside intensive work in one or more Slavic 

languages. The linguistic courses include: 

1st yr: Seminar Indo-European Languages and Culture: From Gibraltar to the Ganges (In 

Search of Linguistic Origins) 

2nd year: Slavic Languages: Unity and Diversity Introduction to the exploration of 

linguistic relations among Slavic languages and dialects, as well as language contacts between 

Slavic and its neighbours. 

3rd year: Old Church Slavonic 

Language, Politics, and Identity (focus on languages of Southeastern Europe and the former 

Soviet Union) 

4th Year: Structure of Russian: Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology 

46


Ivona Kucerova & Grazyna Drzazga (McMaster University) 

ivona @alum.mit.edu,drzazggm@mcmaster.ca 

How many phases are in passives: -no/-to constructions revisited 

The theoretical interest in Polish/Ukrainian -no/-to constructions (NT) (Borsley 1988, 

Nedashikivska Adams 1998, Blevins 2003, Kibort 2008, Lavine & Freidin 2002, Lavine 2005, 

2010) stems from the fact that NT lacks an external argument and yet the internal argument (IA) 

gets Accusative (Acc) in a violation of Burzio‟ s generalization (Burzio 1986). The lack of 

Nominative (Nom) and the fact that the main verb shows default agreement have led some 

researchers (Lavine & Freidin 2002, Lavine 2005, 2010) to analyze NT as a passive construction 

with defective T(ense). We argue that this analysis fails to account for structural and semantic 

properties of NT and for differences between Polish and Ukrainian. We argue that Polish NT 

only contains the vP phase (Chomsky 2001, 2005, 2008). In contrast, Ukrainian has two distinct 

structures: one corresponds to vP and one to CP. In the latter structure, Acc results from the IA 

being spelled-out before the Nom feature gets introduced to the derivation. 

Puzzle: Polish NT differs from regular passives in that: (i) IA is realized as Acc instead of Nom, 

(1). (ii) There is no overt Tense marking, (2). (iii) There is a Tense restriction: NT must be 

interpreted as Past, (3) v. (4). (iv) NT IA must be interpreted as focus, while the passive IA may 

be interpreted as given. The contrast can roughly be captured by the corresponding English 

articles: while NT IA may be translated as indefinite, the IA of regular passives usually 

corresponds to an English definite DP, (5). In Ukrainian, as in Polish, NT may appear without an 

overt auxiliary, but then it is obligatorily interpreted as Past. If an auxiliary is present, NT can 

mean Past or Future, (6). Lavine & Freidin‟ s proposal that T in NT is defective successfully 

accounts for (i), nevertheless it fails to account for (ii)–(iv) and for the two types of NT in 

Ukrainian and their distinct properties. 

Proposal: 

We argue that auxiliary-less NT is formed by the vP phase (with no C/T). Consequently, Nom 

remains unassigned, (i). Since there is no T, a finite auxiliary cannot be merged either, (ii). 

Furthermore, the lack of T yields the Past interpretation as the default interpretation for tense-less 

languages (Bohnemeyer & Swift 2004, Jóhannsdóttir & Matthewson 2008), (iii). In contrast, 

Ukrainian NT with an auxiliary is a two-phase structure. Crucially, Nom still fails to be assigned: 

since the IA is interpreted as focus, it does not raise to the edge of vP and therefore it cannot enter 

a feature-checking relation with C/T without violating the PIC. NT thus contrasts with regular 

passives in which v is not a phase head and the IA is free to enter a checking relation with C/T. 

Interestingly, the IA optionally surfaces preverbally. We argue that this follows from the 

semantics of NT: fronting of the IA is an instance of left-periphery focus, (iv), and as such it only 

arises at PF (Fanselow & Lenertová to appear), with no effect on feature valuation. 

47


Vladimir Kulikov (University of Iowa) 

vladimir-kulikov@uiowa.edu 

Voicing assimilation in fast speech in Russian 

Sonorant transparency in Russian (Jakobson 1978) is one of the most unusual phenomena that 

have been reported in studies of voicing assimilation in the world‟ s languages. It violates a 

common property of obstruents to preserve voicing specification before a sonorant (Trubetzkoy 1969). 

Hayes (1984) argues that voicing propagates through a sonorant at a proclitic boundary in fast speech, so 

that an obstruent assimilates to a following obstruent when a sonorant consonant 

haze‟ ). Not every linguist agrees about the existence of sonorant transparency. It is argued to be a 

gradient phenomenon (Cho 1990, Padgett 2002), conditionally limited to the environment before devoiced 

sonorants (Shevoroshkin 1971), or even unattested in Standard Russian (Es‟ kova 1971, Kavitskaya 

1999). Robblee and Burton (1997) found no evidence of assimilation in closure duration or voicing for the 

first obstruent (C1) in an obstruent-sonorant-obstruent cluster in normal speech. In spite of these doubts, 

claims about voicing assimilation through a sonorant are usually included in phonological analyses of 

Russian to support important theoretical claims (Kiparsky 1985, Steriade 1997, Petrova 2003, Rubach 

2008). 

In order to determine whether sonorant transparency actually occurs in fast speech in Russian, eight 

native speakers (four female and four male) were tested in Tambov, Russia. Two voicing processes 

which are claimed to occur in fast speech were studied: voicing assimilation in an obstruent-obstruent 

cluster across a word boundary and sonorant transparency to assimilation. 

In Experiment 1, the speakers produced 24 test phrases with obstruent-obstruent clusters across a word 

boundary in isolation, and in a carrier phrase in normal and fast speech (N=576). The results show that 

voicing assimilation in obstruent clusters across a word boundary in fast speech is a categorical 

phonological process. No significant difference in closure duration between underlying voiced (58 ms) 

and voiceless (58.5 ms) C1 obstruents was found (p > 0.1). Difference between voiced and voiceless C1 

obstruents in voicing during closure was not significant either (p > 0.1). C1 obstruents were pronounced as 

voiced before a voiced obstruent, and as voiceless before a voiceless obstruent. 

In Experiment 2, the speakers produced 30 test phrases with obstruent-sonorant-obstruent clusters across 

a clitic boundary in isolation in normal speech and in a carrier phrase in fast speech (N=464). 

Assimilation before an intervening sonorant in fast speech is not categorical. Voiceless and voiced 

obstruents preserve statistically significant differences in closure duration (91 ms vs. 68 ms) [F(1,462) = 

34.58, p < 0.001], and in voicing during closure (22% vs. 86%). Some optional and gradient 

assimilation in voicing was found: 19% of C1 obstruents were partially devoiced before a voiceless C2 

across a sonorant and only 6% of C1 obstruents were partially voiced before a voiced C2 across a 

sonorant. The fact that there was no complete assimilation across sonorants and that only a few speakers 

exhibited even partial assimilation strongly suggest that „sonorant transparency‟ is not phonological in 

modern Russian. Rather, it is a phonetic process attested only in fast speech. 

48


Julia Kuznetsova and Svetlana Sokolova (University of Tromso) 

julia.kuznetsova@uit.no, svetlana.sokolova@uit.no 

Aspectual triplets in Russian: semantic predictability and regularity 

The core notion of research on Russian aspect is an aspectual pair, which consists of imperfective and 

perfective verb (Vinogradov 1947, Švedova 1980). The assumption that two verbs form an aspectual pair 

is based on several diagnostic criteria, such as Maslov’s criterion (1984) or imperative with negation 

criterion (Zaliznjak&Šmelev 2000). The pairs can be formed via perfectivization (pisat’-napisat’ ‘write’) or 

imperfectivization (perepisat’-perepisyvat’ ‘rewrite’). The majority of Russian perfective verbs have one 

imperfective counterpart. However, some aspectual pairs formed by perfectivization also have a second 

imperfective correlate formed by imperfectivization (goret’-sgoret’-sgorat’ ‘burn’), which phenomenon is 

referred to as an aspectual triplet consisting of primary imperfective (IPFV1), perfective and secondary 

imperfective (IPFV2) (Veyrenc 1980, Apresjan 1995, Petruxina 2000, Zalizniak&Mikaelian 2010). Studies 

of aspectual triplets usually are concerned with typology of triplets, where triplets with marginal use of 

IPFV2 and triplets with marginal use of IPFV1 are studied. 

Our research is based on the Exploring Emptiness (EE) database developed at the University of 

Tromsø, which lists all aspectual pairs in Russian formed by perfectivization (Janda&Lyashevskaya 

forthcoming). The data for the IPFV2 is extracted from the RNC 2 and Google search engine. For 1981 

pairs in the EE database 733 IPFV2 are attested in the RNC (37%) and 1536 IPFV2 are attested in Google 

(77%). These figures are noticeably larger than the number of triplets considered in the literature, which 

shows that the productivity of the phenomenon is significantly underestimated. Even verbs that are 

usually claimed not to allow secondary imperfectivization, occasionally produce IPFV2 (Table 1), as 

example (1) illustrates. 

Given that this phenomenon appears to be regular and productive, we can conclude that 

secondary imperfectivization is characterized by regular semantics. Following Veyrenc (1980: 176), we 

propose a unified semantics for the formation of an IPFV2. While “IPFV1 denotes a process regarded 

without consideration of its result, IPFV2 denotes a process regarded with a consideration of its result”. 

Yet, as our analysis shows, the semantics of the prefix and the semantics of the verbal stem need also to 

be taken into account. For instance, prefix po, which usually denotes ‘boundedness in time’ does not 

coincide with the semantics of result. In the EE database, 21% of all verbs are formed with the prefix po 

(Table 2) but only 12% of all IPFV2 use prefix po, which shows that this prefix is repulsed from IPFV2. 

Furthermore, comparing two po-prefixed verbs concerned with weight - poxudet’ ‘lose weight’ and 

popolnet’ ‘gain weight’ - we see that the former has IPFV2 (Table 3) while the latter does not because 

losing weight is considered to be a more desirable result. 

2 The Russian National Corpus (www.ruscorpora.ru) 

49


The interaction of these three factors helps us to explain contextual asymmetries, preferences 

towards grammatical contexts and certain constructions that an IPFV2 has. Moreover, it enables us to 

account for the differences in the typology of triplets. The marginality of IPFV2 or IPFV1 depends on how 

well the semantics of its prefix and the semantics of its verbal stem coincide with the meaning of result. 

verb Occurences in Google 

napisyvat’ ‘write-ipfv2’ 3 820 

postraivat’ ‘build-ipfv2’ 893 

sdelyvat’ ‘do-ipfv2’ 195 

Table 1. Occurrences of the secondary imperfectives considered to be marginal 

(1) Êti ljudi postroili svoi postrojki tam, gde ix postraivat’ nel’zja. Tam dolžny otdyxat’ 

ljudi i sobački. 

’These people build their houses at the place, where it is prohibited to build. People and dogs should 

be resting there.’ 

www.echo.msk.ru/programs/razvorot/650834-echo/comments.html 

all po % 

aspectual pairs (EE) 1981 417 21 

secondary imperfectives in the RNC 733 94 12 

Table 2. Number of the verbs with prefix po 

verb glos occurences in Google 

poxudevat’ lose weight 5 

popolnevat’ gain weight 0 

Table 3. IPFV2 of poxudet’ ‘lose weight’ and popolnet’ ‘gain weight’ 

References 

Apresjan, Ju.D. (1995) Traktovka izbytočnyx aspektual’nyx paradigm v tolkovom slovare. Izbrannye trudy. V.2. 

Integral’noe opisanie jazyka. 

Janda, L. & Lyashevskaya, O. (forthcoming) Grammatical profiles and the interaction of the lexicon with aspect, 

tense and mood in Russian // Cognitive Linguistics. 

Maslov Ju. S. (1984) Vid I leksičeskoe značenie glagola v russkom jazyke. In Maslov. Očerki po aspektualogii. 

Leningrad. 

Petruxina E.V. (2000) Aspektual’nye kategorii glagola v russkom jazyke v sopostavlenii s češskim, pol’skim i 

bolgarskim jazykami. Moskva. 

Švedova, N. Ju. et al. (1980). Russkaja grammatika. Moskva. 

Veyrenc, Jacques (1980) Un problème de formes concurrentes dans l’économie de l’aspect en russe: imperfectifs 

premiers et imperfectifs seconds. In Études sur les verbe russe. Paris. Institut d’etudes slaves. 

Vinogradov, V. V. (1947) Russkij jazyk: grammatičeskoe uenie o slove. Moscow: Učpedgiz. 

Zaliznjak Anna A. & Šmelev A.D. (2000) Vvedenie v russkuju aspektologiju. Moskva: Jazyki russkoj kultury. 

Zaliznjak, Anna A. & Mikaeljan I.L. (2010) O meste vidovyx troek v aspektual’noj sisteme russkogo jazyka. Dialog 

2010. Moskva. 

50


Julia Kuznetsova (University of Tromso) 

Julia.kuznetsova@uit.no 

Gestures through grammatical gender: evidence from Russian 

Gender is an important parameter in human communication. For example, it has been shown that men and 

women have preference towards certain words and expressions (for example see a study of a spoken 

corpus by Schmid (2003)). In addition to the verbal communication people also communicate nonverbally 

and gender plays an important role in non-verbal communication as well. For example, outfit and 

appearance usually signal gender. This study investigates gender preferences in another non-verbal area of 

communication – gestures. Men and women can prefer certain gestures. This study offers a design that 

facilitates objective measurement of preferences towards masculine or feminine use in a way similar to the 

preference for certain expressions found in a spoken corpus. 

We cannot measure gestures in a written corpus, but we can measure how gestures are talked 

about and which subjects use them. Russian gives us a unique opportunity to study such gender 

preferences, since its past tense contains a gender marker. In this study I use as a measurement the 

fem:masc ratio, which the ratio of occurrences of feminine past tense forms to masculine past tense forms 

in the RNC 3 . This ratio is rounded to one decimal number. The typical ratio for a Russian verb is 0.3 

which means that usually there are three masculine past tense forms for one feminine past tense form. 

Expressions that have a ratio less than 0.2 are considered to have preference for masculine use. 

Expressions that have a ratio more than 0.4 are considered to have preference for feminine use. 

Gestural expressions are collected from the dictionary of Russian gestures (Grigorieva, Grigoriev, 

Krejdlin 2001). The dictionary lists fifty-nine gestures, however some gestural expressions are excluded 

from this study. First, non-verbal gestures such as vozdušnyj poceluj ‗a blown kiss‘ are excluded since it is 

not possible to measure their preference towards masculine or feminine past tense. Second, expressions 

which do not refer unambiguously to a gesture such as golosovat‟ ‗vote/hitch a ride‘ are excluded. 

Gestural expressions that consist of several words such as postučat‟ sebja po lbu ‗knock at one‘s forehead‘ 

are searched with a distance from one to three words between adjacent elements. For instance, example (1) 

is collected as a representative of this expression. Among the fifty-one evaluated in this study, fifteen have 

strong preference for feminine use and ten have strong preference for masculine use, see Table 1. 

Women usually use gestures to signal strong negative emotions such as despair or resentment or to 

express the desire to stop communication (four out of fifteen gestures). Men prefer different kinds of 

gestures. They communicate pleasure, fury or thoughtfulness. To sum up, measuring gender preferences 

within the semantic area of gestural expressions shows how men and women are seen in Russian culture 

3 The Russian National Corpus (www.ruscorpora.ru) 

51


and what kind of messages they usually communicate non-verbally, which helps us to uncover hidden 

stereotypes about gender. 

(1) Moxammed postučal kostjaškami pal‘cev sebja po lbu. [Dmitrij Lipskerov. Sorok let Chanchzhoe 

(1996)] 

Mohammed knocked at his forehead with the knuckles. 

gesture expression gloss fem masc 

52 

fem: 

masc 

ratio type 

vsplesnut' rukami throw up one's hands (surprise) 499 254 2 fem 

zakryt' lico rukami cover one's face by hands (avoidance) 188 156 1,2 fem 

nadut' guby pout one's lips (resentment) 26 24 1,1 fem 

lomat' ruki wring one's hands (despair) 33 42 0,8 fem 

otšatnut'sja shrink back (shock) 257 395 0,7 fem 

zaxlopat' glazami blink repeatedly (surprise) 16 28 0,6 fem 

priloţit' palec k gubam 

put one's finger to one's lips (request for 

silence) 46 80 0,6 fem 

topnut' nogoj stamp one's foot (unwillingness) 72 125 0,6 fem 

ščelknut' po nosu give smb a flick on the nose (disrespect) 

7 12 0,6 fem 

zatknut' uši cover one's ears (avoidance) 18 37 0,5 fem 

otvernut'sja turn away (avoidance) 1069 2217 0,5 fem 

otprjanut' recoil (avoidance) 150 284 0,5 fem 

podbočenitsja put one's arms akimbo (challenge) 28 59 0,5 fem 

pokrutit' pal'cem u viska 

give the screw-loose sign (addressee is 

crazy) 10 19 0,5 fem 

smotret' v odnu točku look fixedly (being self-absorbed) 17 37 0,5 fem 

bit' sebja v grud' beat oneself in the chest (swear) 6 77 0,1 masc


obnaţit' golovu bare one's head (respect) 1 12 0,1 masc 

poglaţivat' borodu stroke one's beard (pensiveness) 1 17 0,1 masc 

podmignut' wink (solidarity) 158 1467 0,1 masc 

razvesti rukami lift one's hands (helplessness) 166 1244 0,1 masc 

potirat' ruki rub one's hands (pleasure) 5 185 0 masc 

poxlopat' sebja po ţivotu pat one's stomach (satiety) 0 5 0 masc 

počesat' v zatylke scratch one's head (thoughtfulness) 1 126 0 masc 

udarit' kulakom po stolu strike hand on table (fury) 3 85 0 masc 

udarit' sebja po lbu strike one's forehead (vexation) 1 42 0 masc 

References 

Grigorieva, S.A,, N.V. Grigoriev & G.E. Krejdlin (2001) Slovar‘ jazyka russkix ţestov. (Dictionary of 

Russian gestures) Moskva-Vena: Jazyki russkoj kul‘tury; Venskij slavističeskij al‘manax. 

Schmid, H.-J. (2003) ‗Do women and men really live in different cultures? Evidence from the BNC.‘ In 

Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. and Melia, P. J. (eds). Lodz Studies in Language 8: Corpus Linguistics 

by the Lune. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp. 185-221. 

53


Bradley Larson (University of Maryland) 

bradl@umd.edu 

Bare Phrase Comitative Constructions in Slavic 

Aim: This talk unifies theories of coordination (Goodall, 1987; Munn, 1993) and adjunction 

(Chametzky, 2000; Pietroski, 2005; Hornstein 2008) in service of reducing comitative constructions in 

Slavic to coordinate structures. Similarities have long been noted between comitatives and coordination 

and attempts have been made to explain one in terms of the other. But these attempts have only applied to 

certain types of comitatives: ―quasi-comitative‖ (Dyła, 1988) or ―comitative coordination‖ (McNally 

1993) [1] and ―plural pronoun comitatives‖(Citko, 2004) [2]. This talk will take this unification further 

and argue that all flavors of comitative constructions should be seen as coordination, even comitatives 

with singular agreement [3]. 

Background: Comitatives have often been analyzed as adjuncts (Ionin and Matushansky 2002; 

Skrabalova 2003; Vassilieva and Larson 2005) yet Hornstein (2008) shows that X‘-theoretic adjunction 

is untenable under Bare Phrase Structure (Chomsky, 1995). He proposes instead a process of adjunction 

by which adjuncts are concatenated, but not labeled [4]. The concatenated adjuncts can optionally be 

labeled and be acted upon as a constituent [5], creating the potential of structural ambiguity. This approach 

to adjunction has been shown to apply straightforwardly to coordination [6], in particular in Polish 

(Larson, 2010) which Citko (2004) suggests is also subject to structural ambiguity. The task of this talk 

will extend the analysis to comitative constructions in Slavic. 

New Analysis: Zhang (2007) investigates two types of comitatives in English: symmetrical and 

asymmetrical comitatives, which she analyzes as involving adjunction (falling prey to the same problems 

that Hornstein points out) and complementation, respectively [7]. This should bear resemblance to the 

structurally ambiguous coordination in [6]. What I propose here is that so-called comitative coordination is 

best analyzed like labeled coordination [8] and that regular comitatives should be analyzed as unlabeled 

coordination [9]. Labeled comitatives, by means of projecting a compound head, will produce plural 

agreement [1] and split antecedents [10] and other phenomena. Unlabeled comitatives, through Merge 

with only on conjunct will produce singular agreement [3], freer word order [11], and extraction 

possibilities [12]. More than just a re-coding of the facts, this approach collapses the distinctions between 

coordination and comitatives while maintaining a handle on the empirical evidence. Furthermore, this 

approach makes clear predictions about what should be targetable qua a syntactic object. For example, 

only labeled comitatives are able to control PRO (unlabeled ones do not form a constituent). And this is 

what we find in subject control cases [13]. The structural ambiguity approach also extends to issues of 

plural pronoun comitatives discussed in Vassilieva and Larson 2005. They argue that such comitatives (as 

opposed to others) are derived via complementation. This approach suggests that they are essentially 

correct (they undergo concatenate and label), but instead of the other types of comitatives being derived in 

entirely independent fashions they are simple derived via concatentate, without label. In sum, this 

approach has does not fall prey to previous adjunction problems and accounts for the varieties of 

comitatives in a unified fashion without losing empirical ground. 

[1] Anna s Petej napisali pis'mo : A.-NOM with P.-INSTR wrote-PL letter : Anna and Peter wrote a letter. 

(McNally, 1993) 

54


[2] My s Jankiem tańczyliśmy : we with Jan-Instr danced-pl : We (=I and Jan) danced (Citko, 2004) 

[3] Janek z Ewą poszedł na spacer : nom. Janek with instr. Eve went-3sg. for walk : Janek and Anna went 

for a walk (Dyła, 1988) 

[4] [VP [V O]] ^ [adjunct] (Concatenate) [5] [VP [V O] [adjunct]] (Concatenate and Label) 

[6] [VP [see John]] ^ [and Mary] ] [VP [see John] [and Mary]] 

[7] 

Symmetric Asymmetric 

[8] [DP [Anna] [s Petej]] napisali pis'mo (see [1]) agreement with both conjuncts via head 

[9] [Janek] ^ [z Ewą] poszedł na spacer (see [3]) agreement with only one conjunct 

[10] Anna s Natasej videli sebja v zerkale. : A.-NOM with N.-INSTR saw-PL self in mirror : Anna and 

Natasha saw themselves in the mirror (McNally, 1993) 

[11] Anna segodnja s Petej ugla. : A.-NOM today with P.-INSTR left-F : Anna left today with Peter 

(McNally, 1993) 

[12] S kem usla Anna? : with who-INSTR left-FSG Anna? : With whom did Anna leave? (McNally, 1993) 

[13]a. Prorobotav celyj den', Anna s Petej poţli domoj: Having-worked whole day, A.-NOM with P.- 

INSTR went-PL home : [Having worked all day]ij, Annai and Peterj went home 

b. Prorabotav celyj den', Anna posla domoj s Petej : Having-worked whole day, A.-NOM went-FSG 

home with P.-INSTR : [Having worked all day]i, Annai, went home with Peterj (McNally, 1993) 

Goodall, G. 1987 Parallel Structures in Syntax: Coordination, Causatives and Restructuring. CUP. 

Cambridge 

Munn, Alan. 1993. Topics in the Syntax and Semantics of Coordination. Doctoral dissertation, University 

of Maryland, College Park 

Chametzky, R. 2000. Phrase structure. Oxford: Blackwell. 

Pietroski, P. 2005. Events and semantic interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Hornstein, N. 2008. A theory of syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Dyła, Stefan: 1988, 'Quasi-Comitative Coordination in Polish', Linguistics 26, 383-414. 

McNally, L. 1993. Comitative Coordination: A Case Study in Group Formation. Natural Language and 

Linguistics Theory 11, 347–379. 

Citko, B. 2004. ‗Agreement asymmetries in Coordinate structures‘. FASL Proceedings 12 

Ionin, T. and Ora Matushansky. 2002. DPs with a twist: a Unified Analysis of Russian Comitatives. 

Available from http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~ionin/MyDownloads 

Skrabalova, H. 2003. Comitative Constructions in Czech. Available from http://www.cavi.univparis3.fr/ilpga/ed/student/stas/FDSL4.pdf 

Vassilieva, M. and Richard K. Larson. 2005. The semantics of the plural pronoun construction. Natural 

Language Semantics 13: 101-124. 

Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 

Zhang, N. 2007. The Syntax of English Comitative Constructions. Folia Linguistica 

55


Jouko Lindstedt (University of Helsinki) 

jouko.lindstedt@helsinki.fi 

Contact, drift, and selection in the Balkan linguistic area 

Language contact often leads to some simplification, but not all convergent features of the Balkan 

linguistic area are structurally simple. What characterizes most morphosyntactic Balkanisms is explicit 

analytism, i.e., explicit marking with free morphemes, as opposed to both synthetism (grammatical 

marking with bound morphemes) and isolating structures (grammatical marking with word order only). 

The rise of such a morphosyntactic structure in the Balkans cannot be explained with any simple model of 

unidirectional borrowing of features. In my paper I will examine the notions of drift and selection as 

possible explanatory tools in a multidirectional contact situation. In addition to being key concepts of 

population genetics, these terms have had various uses in linguistics—―drift‖ by Sapir and Anttila, among 

others, and ―selection‖ by Croft and Mufwene, but in somewhat different senses. 

As ―drift‖ normally refers to an internally motivated change within one language, for the Balkan linguistic 

area I will introduce the concept of shared drift. In a shared drift several languages of an area undergo 

parallel changes that are not simple transfers from a single substrate or from one of the languages 

themselves. It is even possible to see the Balkan shared drift as a special case of the general SAE drift and 

thus explicate the notion that Bulgarian and Macedonian look like Slavic languages with a Romance 

structure. If drift is the result of structural imbalances within a language (Thomason & Kaufman), even the 

abandoned theory of a Balkan substrate can partly be revived by postulating delayed substrate effects 

stemming from old shared imbalances. But the explanatory value of the concept of drift, or even shared 

drift, is rather limited unless we accept teleology in our theory of linguistic change. 

One problem with evolutionary models of linguistic change is that the role of selection remains vaguer 

than in evolutionary biology: linguistic selection pressures seem to be rather weak and general, and not 

specific to particular environments. But I now propose that the Balkans of the past were a selective (and 

perhaps exceptional) linguistic environment favoring the spread, in each language, of those constructions 

that were transferable to other languages and thus enabled extensive grammatical convergence, described 

with such notions as isogrammatism (Gołąb) or intertranslatability (Gumperz & Wilson). This was the 

source of the explicit analytism described above. Notice that particularly in the grammar of the verb, 

convergence was reached without significant simplification, because the verb systems of the most Indo- 

European languages of the Balkans were quite similar to begin with, and they were also able to adopt even 

the Turkish evidential distinctions without extensive reorganization. 

The environment most favoring the propagation of isogrammatisms seems to have been a language variety 

with a high proportion both of L2 speakers and of such L1 speakers that regularly used other languages. A 

high proportion of one of these groups only (as in Greek and Romani, respectively), did not lead to such a 

high degree of Balkanization as in Balkan Slavic, in which both groups can be assumed to have been 

significant in the Ottoman times. 

As two examples of the interplay of different factors, I will examine the marking of the direct object with 

a preposition, which is a minor Balkanism, and the enclitic definite article, which is one of the classical 

Balkanisms, although my definition of it will be somewhat different. 

56


Stela Manova (University of Vienna) 

Stela.manova@univie.ac.at 

Suffix order and the structure of the Slavic word 

This paper discusses the structure of the Slavic word (with data from Bulgarian, Russian and 

Polish) in the light of recent advancements in affix order research (Manova & Aronoff 2010). The 

analysis is based on suffix order peculiarities typical of the different word domains. 

It will be shown that the Slavic word has three domains, two derivational, non-evaluative 

and evaluative, and one inflectional. (The term ‗evaluative‘ is used here in the sense of Scalise 

1984.) Each domain can accommodate more than one suffix and exhibits suffix order 

peculiarities of its own (cf. Manova 2010). 

The non-evaluative derivational domain allows for suffix permutations of the type XY 

and YX (illustrated in (1)) and in this domain a suffix can be used recursively on non-adjacent 

cycles, i.e. XYX (see (2)). In the evaluative derivational domain, a suffix may, depending on the 

language (e.g. in Bulgarian), participate in mirror image combinations of XY and YX type (3), 

i.e. like in the non-evaluative domain. However, evaluative suffixes, unlike the non-evaluative 

ones, can be used recursively on adjacent cycles only, i.e. the combination XX is fine in 

evaluative derivations (4). In Bulgarian, even XXX is attested in diminutives (5). Intriguingly, not 

all diminutive suffixes can be used to derive second- and third-grade diminutives. Of the 

relatively large set of diminutive suffixes that a Slavic language possesses, only up to three 

suffixes occur in recursive diminutives. Thus, the combinations of two (or more) evaluative 

suffixes are fixed (Manova 2009), which is not the case in non-evalutive derivations. All suffix 

order peculiarities in derivation are explicable as due to layered morphological organization, i.e. 

governed by semantic scope, which means step by step derivation of morphological structure 

whereby the suffix scopes semantically over the structure it attaches to (Rice 2000). The instances 

of recursive suffixation on adjacent and non-adjacent cycles and the mirror image combinations 

make the structure of the Slavic word rather strange. Plag & Baayen (2009), for example, found 

only one instance of mirror image combination in a study of 31 English suffixes and their 

combinations. Additionally, in the literature so far suffix permutations have been seen as typical 

only of lesser-known languages (Amerindian, Australian, African), see the discussion in 

Caballero (2010). Thus, Slavic derivational morphology contributes examples of suffix 

permutations from well-known languages to morphological theory. 

As regards inflectional suffixes, they neither participate in mirror image combinations nor 

can be repeated. The Slavic inflectional morphology is templatic, in the sense that the 

combinations of inflectional suffixes are fixed, i.e. resemble the combinations of diminutive 

suffixes. Inflection is also semantically governed, though scopal relations between inflectional 

suffixes do not always hold. 

Finally, all three word domains have closing suffixes of their own (Manova 2008). 

Closing suffixes are suffixes that close the word to the addition of other suffixes of the same type 

(Aronoff & Fuhrhop 2002). 

57


Examples 

(1) XY & YX order of -(l)iv & -ost 

a. săn-liv ‚sleepy’ săn-liv-ost ‚sleepiness’ (Bulgarian) 

b. mil-ost ‚mercy’ mil-ost-iv ‚merciful’ 

(2) XYX order 

revn-iv-yj ‚jealous‘ revn-ost‟ ‚jealousy‘ revn-ost-n-yj ‚devoted‘ revn-ost-n-ost‟ ‚ 

devotedness‘) (Russian) 

(3) XY & YX order of -ica & -ka 

a. răč-ica ‚small hand’ răč-ič-ka ‘very small hand’ (Bulgarian) 

b kniž-ka ‚small book‘ kniž-č-ica ‗very small book‘ 

(4) XX order 

dom ‘house’ DIM1 dom-ek (Polish) 

(5) XXX order 

DIM2 dom-ecz-ek 

dete ‘child’ DIM1 det-ence (Bulgarian) 

DIM2 det-enc-ence 

DIM3 det-enc-enc-ence 

References 

Aronoff, M. & N. Fuhrhop (2002). Restricting Suffix Combinations in German and English: Closing 

Suffixes and the Monosuffix Constraint. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 20(3), 451-490. 

Caballero, G. (2010). Scope, phonology and morphology in an agglutinating language: Choguita Rarámuri 

(Tarahumara) variable suffix ordering. Morphology 20(1), 165-204. 

Manova, S. (2008). Closing suffixes and the structure of the Slavic word: Movierung. Austrian 

Contributions to the 14 th International Congress of Slavists, Ohrid, Macedonia, September 2008, 

Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch 54, 91-104. 

Manova, S. (2009). Restrictions on recursive diminutivization in Slavic. Paper presented at the Workshop 

on recursiveness in word-formation. 42 Annual Meeting of the Societas Lingusitica Europaea, 

Lisbon, Portugal, September 9-12, 2009. 

Manova, S. (2010). Suffix Combinations in Bulgarian: Parsability and Hierarchy-Based Ordering. 

Morphology 20(1), 267-296. 

Manova, S. & M. Aronoff (2010). Affix Combinations. Morphology 20(1). Special Issue. 

Plag, I. & H. Baayen (2009). Suffix ordering and morphological processing. Language, 85(1), 109-152. 

Rice, K. (2000). Morpheme Order and Semantic Scope. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Scalise, S. (1984). Generative Morphology. Dordrecht: Foris. 

58


Krzysztof Migdalski (Wroclaw University) 

Krzysz75@yahoo.com 

Clitic positions and the richness of tense 

This talk will address diachronic changes in the cliticization patterns in Slavic and will relate them 

to the impoverishment of tense distinctions. As shown in (1), in Old Church Slavonic (OCS) pronominal 

clitics were predominantly verb adjacent, whereas clitics expressing Illocutionary Force (li, że, by, and 

ethical datives) targeted the second position (2P). In contemporary Bulgarian and Macedonian pronominal 

clitics are still verb adjacent, but in some other languages (Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene) they shifted to 

2P. The shift began around the 15 th century (see Radanović-Kocić 1988 for Serbian), and strikingly, 

coincided with the decline of tense distinctions: OCS had two simple past tenses, aorist and imperfect, 

which in addition were marked for aspect (cf. 2). Compound tenses consisted of the non-tensed l-participle 

and the auxiliary ‗be‘ marked for imperfective/perfective aspect in the present perfect/future tenses, 

respectively. With the exception of Bg and Mac, aorist and imperfect were lost in Slavic by the 14 th -15 th c. 

(Stieber 1973, Lindstedt 1994), and compound forms constructed with the l-participle or the infinitive and 

various aspectual forms of the auxiliary ‗be‘ were adopted to describe past and future events. 

Consequently, currently in the Slavic languages with 2P clitics temporal interpretations are derived from 

aspectual markings. 

I suggest that the impoverishment of tense distinctions be analyzed as the weakening of the TP 

layer (see Bošković (2010), who claims on independent grounds languages without articles do not project 

TP). Once TP is lost, clitics may no longer adjoin to the verb T and instead move to Specifiers of different 

projections, giving rise to the 2P effect. This in turn leads to a number of unrelated syntactic differences 

between 2P and verb-adjacent clitic languages, including incorporation of negation into verbs, rather than 

pronominal clitics (cf. OCS/Bg vs. S-C in 3), the possibility of partial deletion of pronominal clitics under 

identity in S-C, but not in Bg/Mac (see Stjepanović (1998) and Bošković (2002) for data) and the 

weakening in of the Person Case Constraint in languages with 2P clitics, but not in Bg/Mac, where it 

always leads to strong ungrammaticality (see Migdalski 2006). 

(1) Elisaveti že isplъni sę vrĕmę roditi ei. 

Elizabeth CL.FOC fulfilled REFL time give-birth herCL.DAT 

―When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby.‖ (OCS, Pancheva et al 2007) 

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(2) TENSE/ASPECT IMPERFECTIVE PERFECTIVE 

3SG PRESENT nesetъ ponesetъ 

3SG AORIST nese ponese 

3SG IMPERFECT nesĕaše ponesĕaše 

3SG PERFECT neslъ jestъ poneslъ jestъ 

3SG FUTURE II bõdetъ neslъ bõdetъ poneslъ 

(the verb nesti ‗to carry‘ in different tenses in OCS, Van Schooneveld 1951: 97) 

(3) a. I ne pokloniõ sę imъ bъxma 

and NEG bowed REFL themCL.DAT at all 

―And they did not bow to them at all‖ (OCS, Pavlov 2000: 76) 

b. Ne mi se struva, če ... /*Ne struva mi se, če... 

NEG meCL.DAT REFL seem3SG that ―It doesn‘t seem to me that…‖ (Bg) 

c. Ne cini mi se da... /*Ne mi se cini da... 

NEG seem3SG meCL.DAT REFL that… ―It doesn‘t seem to me that…‖ (S-C) 

References 

Bošković, Ţ. 2002. Clitics as Non-branching Elements. Linguistic Inquiry 33:329-340. 

Bošković, Ţ. 2010. On NPs and Clauses. Ms, University of Connecticut, Storrs. 

Lindstedt, J. 1994. On the Development of the South Slavonic Perfect. Three Papers on the Perfect. EUROTYP 

Working Papers, Series VI, July 1994 5:32-53. 

Migdalski, K. 2006. The Syntax of Compound Tenses in Slavic. Utrecht: LOT Publications. 

Pancheva R. et al 2007. Codex Marianus. In USC Parsed Corpus of Old South Slavic. 

Pavlov, I. 2000. The Non-Argument Field of Bulgarian Clause Structure. Ph.D. dissertation, University of 

Trondheim. 

Radanović-Kocić, V. 1988. The Grammar of Serbo-Croatian Clitics: A Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective. 

Ph.D. dissertation. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. 

Schooneveld, C.H. van 1951. The Aspectual System of the Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian verbum finitum 

byti. Word 7:93-103. 

Stieber, Z. 1973. Zarys gramatyki porównawczej języków słowiańskich. Fleksja werbalna. Warszawa: PWN. 

Stjepanović, S. 1998. On the Placement of Serbo-Croatian Clitics. Linguistic Inquiry 29:527-537. 

60


Anna Mikhaylova (University of South Carolina) 

annam@sc.edu 

The Burden of Morphology in L2 and Heritage Russian Processing 

It has been argued that second language (L2) acquirers are vulnerable in production of functional 

morphology, but not necessarily in comprehension (Slabakova 2001 among others) and that the 

underlying syntactic and semantic contrasts may be acquired before target-like morphology. High 

processing costs have been argued as potential explanation for the lag of target-like use of morphology. 

Although in the Russian language classroom heritage speakers of Russian are often considered to be 

native speakers, shift to English as the dominant language (HL) acquisition before puberty, similarly to 

outcomes of second/foreign language (L2) acquisition after puberty, can be characterized as systematic, 

yet potentially incomplete/interrupted (Polinsky 2008, Montrul 2009). Aspect is used for teasing apart 

the potential advantage early (HL) acquirers have over late (L2) acquirers, because complex aspectual 

morphology and semantics pose observable difficulty for both types of bilinguals. 

In this study, proficiency-matched college level L2 and HL learners of Russian are compared with 

monolingual L1 controls in their ability to interpret Russian aspectual contrasts based on verbal 

morphology. More specifically, the experimental tasks tease apart the interpretation and grammaticality 

judgment of contrasts based on telicity, a feature of lexical aspect, and those based on boundedness, a 

feature crucial for grammatical aspect. According to Slabakova (2001, 2005), in Russian, both aspectual 

features are overtly marked on the verb, but by different morphemes: telicity is always encoded in 

prefixes and boundedness in suffixes, with some verbs carrying neither affix, some either a prefix or 

suffix, and others carrying both. In English, only boundedness is marked by verbal morphology, and 

telicity is marked on the object, which could potentially lead to transfer based errors in telicity. For 

successful acquisition of aspectual contrasts it is crucial to know that telicity is calculated before 

boundedness and that Russian unbounded forms subsume habitual and ongoing interpretations. In 

addition, there is a lexical task of learning multiple polysemantic prefixes and selectional restrictions 

imposed by telicity. Finally, verbs with similar morphological composition may have different underlying 

structure and semantic interpretation: i.e. in (1) verbs čital and zakazal lack overt aspectual morphology 

and are morphologically similar (unaffixed stems), but they differ both in their semantics and underlying 

syntactic structure (Slabakova 2001, 2005). 

(1) a. Pavel čital gazetu, kogda ja prišel. 

Pavel read.PAST.MASC newspaper when I come.PAST.MASC 

Pavel was reading a newspaper when I came. 

b. Pavel zakazal gazetu, kogda ja prišel. 

Pavel order.PAST.MASC newspaper when I come.PAST.MASC 

Pavel ordered a newspaper when/after I came. 

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The results show, as expected, that, on average, heritage speakers outperform L2 learners and 

lag behind L1 controls in accuracy. Native-like performance in the proficiency task is not correlated with 

high proficiency in the target tasks. Looking into specific contrasts and verb forms shows that telicity and 

boundedness contrasts are not acquired to the same degree, with some semantic contrasts and 

morphological mechanisms posing a greater difficulty than others, and with heritage speakers sometimes 

converging with L2 learners and sometimes with L1 controls in their behavior. 

Selected references: 

Montrul, Silvina. 2009. Reexamining the fundamental difference hypothesis: What can early bilinguals 

tell us? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 31, 225 – 257. 

Polinsky, Maria. 2008. “Without Aspect.” In Corbett, Greville and Michael Noonan (eds.), Case and 

Grammatical Relations (pp. 263–282). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

Slabakova, R. 2001. Telicity in the second language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

62


Salikoko S. Mufwene (University of Chicago and Fellow, Collegium de Lyon) 

s-mufwene@uchicago.edu 

Linguistic Convergence in the Balkans: Some Ecological Perspectives 

The Balkan is probably the archetype of linguistic convergence in historical and contact 

linguistics. This process appears to be the opposite of the speciation that produced the different 

Indo-European languages. However, there has been more emphasis on the outcome than on how 

it all evolved. Little has been said about when the populations came to share the same 

geographical spaces, how the migrant populations have interacted with each other, and whether 

their social relations have remained constant since the initial contacts. In other words, many of us 

need to learn (more) about the specifics of population movements and the ensuing population 

structures under particular economic world orders, as well as to periodize the most important 

events in this complex convergent language evolution. We must note that the convergence has not 

produced a single, unified vernacular for the region, while recent history also makes us aware of 

language differentiation driven by politics and ideology. Perhaps the Balkan also demonstrates 

that language evolution does not follow a rectilinear trajectory, aside from not being unilinear. 

The Balkan offers us an opportunity to articulate some the ecological factors that trigger or 

influence (the direction of) language change and how competition and selection operate in such 

contact settings without driving (most of) the relevant languages to extinction, unlike in European 

settlement colonies since the 17 th century. 

63


Johanna Nichols (UC Berkeley) 

johanna@berkeley.edu 

Slavic suppletive causatives 

Suppletion can be useful to historical linguistics when the morphological structureof the 

word recruited to function as suppletive member of a paradigm reveals thegrammatical 

properties of otherwise opaque non-suppletive stems. 

Gołąb 1968 showed that Proto-Slavic verbs were often organized into pairs of noncausative 

and causative, and in late Proto-Slavic the non-causative member of the pair began to 

be supplanted by a reflexive verb derived from the causative member: 

vykn–oti : učiti >učiti sę : učiti 'learn' : 'teach' 

But there are also a number of such pairs that are partly or entirely suppletive, e.g.: 

smějati sę : směšiti 'laugh' : 'make laugh' 

bojati sę : strašiti 'fear' : 'frighten' 

I survey a standard wordlist of causative alternation pairs (the 18 pairs of Nichols, Peterson, 

Barnes 2004) in OCS and the modern Slavic languages to determine thefrequency and stability 

of suppletive pairs and the extent of morphological causativization across the lexicon. 

The suppletive denominal transitives směšiti and strašiti are paired with original Balto- 

Slavic intransitives that were already reflexive in Proto-Slavic. The reflexive morphology of 

those intransitives was not the usual derived intransitivity where *sę detransitivizes a transitive 

verb, but secondary formal marking of those intransitive verbsthat were prime candidates for 

middle voice marking (according to the lexical hierarchy of Kemmer 1993). Perhaps because 

they were unpaired reflexives and perhaps because of their stem-final *-j, they did not easily form 

regular morphological causatives (with o-grade root and -i- suffix), and denominal transitives 

(factitives) were recruited to fill the gap in the paradigm. 

A similar but non-suppletive set of verbs is gněvati sę : gněviti 'get angry' : 'make angry', 

where non-causative gněvati sę is denominal and middle voice. gněviti is factitive, not 

causative, in view of its acute accent (admittedly not a watertight criterion). 

For 'kill' OCS has both (u)moriti (regular morphological causative corresponding to 

intransitive (u)mrěti) and (u)biti (suppletive as a partner to (u)mrěti). Daughter languages in East 

and South Slavic reflect *ubiti and West Slavic *zabiti. Of the modern languages only Upper 

Sorbian preserves a *moriti reflex as its basic verb 'kill'. However, several languages have a 

*moriti reflex in a specialized, secondary, or figurative sense of 'kill'. The solution is to 

reconstruct only *moriti for Proto-Slavic; lexical renewal à la Kurylowicz has replaced *moriti in 

its central sense 'kill' with a prefixed form of *-biti, leaving *moriti in its extended senses (which 

may be historically oldest, as *moriti is a likely factitive from *-morъ 'plague; massacre'). 

Since most suppletive and some non-suppletive "causatives" are actually factitives, we 

can assume the non-suppletive "causatives" in such pairs (saditi, variti, etc.) are actually factitives 

as well. There may have been no causatives proper formed in Proto-Slavic, but only factitives; 

true causatives, if any, were an older inheritance. Pace nearly all structuralist and typological 

work, the Proto-Slavic verbal lexicon was not transitivizing but noun-based and detransitivizing: 

in productive derivation the simplest verb in the word family was denominal and transitive. 

64


References and bibliography 

Gołąb, Zbigniew. 1968. The grammar of Slavic causatives. In Henry Kučera, ed., American 

Contributions to the Sixth International Congress of Slavists, 71-94. The Hague: Mouton. 

Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The Middle Voice. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: Benjamins. Kurylowicz, Jerzy. 

1947. La nature des procès dits analogiques. Acta Linguistica 5.17-34. ----. 1964. The Inflectional 

Categories of Indo-European. Heidelberg: Winter.Nichols, Johanna, David A. Peterson and Jonathan 

Barnes. 2004. Transitivizing and 

detransitivizing languages. Linguistic Typology 8:2.149-211. Schenker, Alexander M. 1988. 

Slavic reflexive and Indo-European middle: A typological study. 

A. M. Schenker, ed., American Contributions to the 10 th 

International Congress of Slavists, 363- 

384. Columbus: Slavica. 

Table 1. The 18-pair list in Late Proto-Slavic and one modern language, Russian. 

(Russian verbs are cited in the perfective where the imperfective is suffixed.) 

Verb pair LPS Russian 

'laugh', 'make laugh' smějati sę směšiti смеяться смешить 'die', 'kill' -merti -moriti 

умереть убить 'sit', 'seat' sěsti saditi сесть садить 'eat', 'feed' jěsti kъrmiti ? есть 

кормить 'learn', 'teach' vykn–oti učiti учиться учить 'see', 'show' viděti -kazati 

видеть показать 'get angry', 'anger' gněvati sę gněviti сердиться; сердить; 

злиться злить 'fear', 

'frighten' bojati sę strašiti бояться пугать 'hide' tajiti sę; tajiti; прятаться прятать 

kryti sę kryti 'boil' vьrěti variti кипеть кипятить 'burn' gorěti paliti, 

zheg-ti гореть жечь 'break' lomiti sę lomiti ломаться ломать 'open' otъverz-ti sę, otъ-verz-ti, 

открыться открыть 

otъver-ti sę otъ-verti; 

ot(ъ)voriti 'dry' sъxn–oti sušiti высохнуть сушить 

'straighten' ? * orvьniti выпрямиться выпрямить 'hang' visěti (po-)věsiti висеть (по)весить 

'turn (over)' -vьrtěti -vratiti -вернуться -вернуть 'fall', 'drop' pad-ti, padati pustiti упасть; 

уронить 

свалиться 

* Probably originally phrasal: byti/stati orvьn- or other adjective (though ÈSSJa 

reconstructs *orvьniti sę). 

65


Jens Nørgård Sørensen(University of Copenhagen) 

jns@hum.ku.dk 

False friends in grammar: A contrastive view on Modern Russian number 

semantics 

The semantics of the apparently simple number distinction singular-plural is seldom considered in 

any detail. More or less tacitly it is taken for granted that the plural is used to refer to a plurality of 

individual items while the singular is used in all other cases, including reference to a single item as 

well as to a non-individual, cf. abstract nouns (ljubov’ ‘love’) and mass nouns (saxar ‘sugar’) which 

are singularia tantum. 

However, even a fairly superficial comparison of Russian texts with parallel texts, including 

translations, in English and other Germanic languages reveals substantial differences in the use of 

number forms. In general, the plural is more frequent in Russian than in English. 

Proceeding from this contrastive observation the presentation aims at specifying the semantics 

of the Modern Russian number category. I shall claim that the traditional idea of the plural as being 

triggered by reference to a plurality is actually true for Russian. This will be documented by analysis 

of different contexts and constructions. Of crucial interest are contexts allowing for a distributive 

reading of the number form, cf. from the Academy Grammar (Švedova 1989,I: 472): 

(1) Sobaki bežali, podnjav xvost / xvosty 

dogs ran, having-raised tail.SG / tail.PL 

‘The dogs ran away, having raised their tail’ 

A distributive use of a number form is the one found in a context where one set of items (in (1) the 

set of dogs) is being related to another set of items (in (1) the set of tails) such that the two sets 

include an identical number of items, and there is a fixed relation from each item of the former set to 

a specific item of the latter. As the example shows, this is a context where the default use of the 

plural by reference to pluralities can be overruled by the so-called distributive singular. However, as I 

shall show, a “distributive” context is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition for employing the 

singular. 

In addition to the distributive use I shall analyse certain constructions and show that they 

confirm the proposed semantic description of number. The constructions analysed include copulative 

phrases (anglijskij.SG i russkij.SG jazyki.PL ‘the English and the Russian language’) and 

reclassifications of uncountable nouns as countables (individuated), cf. 

(2) *…+ v Noril’ske nikogda ne otmečalis‘ zimnie temperatury niže -60° C *...+ 

in Norilsk never not registered winter.PL temperature.PL under -60° C 

‘… in Norilsk the winter air temperature was never registered lower than -60° C ...’ 

66


- as well as constructions of the type: ‘specifier.GEN + roda’ as in: 

(3) a. raznogo roda reaktory.PL (*reactor.SG) 

‘different kinds of reactor’ 

b. podobnogo roda reaktory.PL / reactor.SG 

‘a similar kind of reactor’ 

The focus of the presentation will be on Russian, but occasionally with a contrastive view on English, 

demonstrating that in spite of striking structural similarities the Russian and English number 

categories are what we could call false friends in grammar. 

Reference 

Švedova, Natalija Ju. (ed.) 1980. Russkaja grammatika I-II. Moscow: Nauka 

67


Emilia Bikbulatova Oswalt (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) 

oswalteb@uwec.edu 

Language Interaction and Phonetic Peculiarities of the Russian Speech of 

Russian-English Bilinguals in the USA. 

In the modern world, characterized by frequent people migration, language contact and 

developing bilingualism is becoming the norm rather than the exception (McMahon, 1994). 

It is bilingual speakers who actually bring languages into contact while interacting with 

monolingual representatives of these languages. Exploring bilinguals‘ speech in the process 

of their second language acquisition can help to reveal mechanisms of language interaction 

and peculiarities of developing bilingualism, which in long-term societal bilingualism can 

affect the structure of contacting languages. 

Language interaction affects bilinguals‘ speech when the system of the first language in 

sequence of acquisition (L1) interferes with that of the second language (L2) resulting in 

transfer and an accent in L2, which may affect communication between bilinguals and 

monolinguals. 

Experience shows that in the process of developing bilingualism a reverse process may 

commence. At a certain level of second language acquisition, skills in L2 can interfere with 

those in L1. In other words, a bilingual speaker will transfer certain features of the L2 

system to L1, which can result in errors in wording, word or sentence structure and 

pronunciation, causing an accent in L1 speech. 

The present report discusses the study of phonetic peculiarities of the Russian speech of 

Russian-English bilinguals, who have lived in the USA for varying length of time. The aim 

of the study is to determine: 1) at what level of L2 acquisition bilinguals‘ L2 skills might 

interfere with L1 skills causing an accent in the speech of their first language; 2) in which 

aspect of the language system their L2 skills are most overtly transferred to L1; 3) what is 

the impact of this transfer on understanding and communication between monolinguals and 

bilinguals of the two languages. 

This study is based on the following premises: a) language contact occurs in the speech of 

bilinguals as languages are interacting in bilinguals‘ mind and speech (Sherba, 1974; 

Bondarko, Verbitskaya, 1987); b) language interaction manifests itself as an accent in 

bilinguals‘ speech caused by language interference (Bondarko, Verbitskaya, 1987; 

Vishnevskaya, 1997); (c) bilingualism is not static and can change over time depending on 

the intensity and time of use of both L1 and L2, being a ―spectrum or continuum that runs 

68


from the relatively monolingual learner to highly proficient bilingual speaker‖ (Garland, 

2007). 

The author collected the data by recording the Russian speech of Russian-English 

bilinguals who had been living in different parts of the USA for two to fifty six years. The 

recordings were later analyzed by skilled phoneticians at St Petersburg State University in 

Russia. 

The result of the study shows that ―reverse language transfer‖ does occur in bilinguals‘ 

speech and depends mostly, but not always, on speakers‘ linguistic competence in both 

languages. ―Reverse language transfer‖ manifests itself on both the segmental and suprasegmental 

levels; the prosodic level being the most vulnerable from the perspective of 

pronunciation and perception (Bikbulatova, 2001; Bikbulatova, 2003). 

References 

1. Bikbulatova, Emilia R. 2001. Foneticheskaya interferentsiya pri rechevoj kommunikatsii 

v usloviyakh nerodnogo yazyka. In Liya V. Bondarko (ed.), Materialy mezhdunarodnoj 

konferentsii 100 let eksperimental‟noj fonetike v Rossii, 22-26. S.- Peterburg: SPbGU 2003. 

2. Bikbulatova, Emilia R. On bilingualism and communication. In Venera M. Kalimullina 

(ed.), Kommunikativno-funktsional‟noe opisanie yazyka, 21-27. Ufa: BashGU 

3. Bondarko, Liya V. & Verbitskaya, Lyudmila A. (eds.) 1987. Interferentsiya zvukovykh 

sistem. Leningrad: LGU 

4. Vishnevskaya, Galina M. 1997. Bilingvizm i yego aspekty. Ivanovo: IvGU 

5. Garland, Stanley. 2007. The Bilingual Spectrum. Orlando: Guirnalda Publishing. 

6. McMahon, April M.S. 1994. Understanding language change. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press 

7. Sherba, Lev V. 1974. Yazykovaya sistema i rechevaya deyatel‟nost‟. Leningrad: Nauka 

69


Denis Paperno (UCLA) 

paperno@ucla.edu 

Compositional Interpretation of Negative Concord Items: Evidence from 

Coordination 

In the paper I present new arguments for treating ni-words in Russian as denoting universal 

quantifiers ‗all‘, ‗every‘, etc., based on the interaction of these words with coordination. 

There are three major approaches to compositional interpretation of words like nikogo and 

particle ne in sentences like following: 

(1) Nikogo ne bylo. 

ni-who not was 

‗Nobody was there‘ 

nikogo means ‗nobody,‘ and negation ne is semantically vacuous, perhaps a marker 

of syntactic concord (NO-hypothesis); 

nikogo denotes an existential quantifier interpreted in the scope of negation (SOMEhypothesis): 

‗it‘s not the case that someone was there‘; 

nikogo denotes a universal quantifier interpreted above the scope of negation (ALLhypothesis): 

‗everyone failed to be there‘. 

Each of these interpretations has had advocates for some expressions in some language. 

Interaction with logical operators like conjunction i ‗and‘ and disjunction ili ‗or‘ shows that 

the ALL-hypothesis makes the best predictions with regard to the meaning of these 

constructions. Thus, ni-expressions are conjoined rather than disjoined: 

(2) Ya ne vizhu v etom nikakogo grekha i / *ili nikakogo pozora. I don‘t see in it ni-what 

sin and / *or ni-what shame ‗I don‘t consider it any sin or any shame=I consider it no 

sin and no shame‘ 

Logically, the conjunction ‗and‘ in this context would lead to an incorrect interpretation 

(weaker than observed) under SOME-hypothesis, resulting for 

(2) in ‗I don‘t see in it any sin or I don‘t see in it any shame,‘ or ‗it‘s not the case that I see 

both a sin and a shame in it‘, which is weaker than the actual reading. 

The NO-hypothesis and the ALL-hypothesis both predict the correct interpretation 

equivalent to ‗For every (kind of) sin, I don‘t cosider this that kind of sin, and for every 

(kind of) shame, I don‘t cosider this that kind of shame.‘ 

70


Note that doubtlessly existential indefinite pronouns -libo are connected with a disjunction 

rather than a conjunction in the very same context: 

(3) Ya ne vizhu v etom kakogo-libo grekha ??i / ili kakogo-libo pozora. I don‘t see in it 

what-libo sin and / *or what-libo shame ‗I don‘t consider it any sin or any shame=I 

consider it no sin and no shame‘ 

Sentences with conjoined negated predicates supply additional evidence, excluding the NOhypothesis: 

(4) Nikto ne priezˇzal i ne zvonil. 

ni-who not came and not called 

‗Nobody came or called‘ [NCRL] 

Since under the NO-hypothesis ne must be analyzed as semantically empty, this predicts 

too weak an interpretation ‗no person both came and called‘. The actual meaning of (4) is 

compatible with the ALL-hyupothesis and (under semantic type lift) with the SOMEhypothesis. 

Combinations of ni-words with a disjunction of verbs are much more rare, but they point to 

the same conclusions. 

Thus, treating ni-words as universal quantifiers makes correct predictions for their 

interpretation in contexts with coordination, and the other two approaches fail in at least 

some cases. 

71


Jeffrey Parker, Lauren Ressue, Michael Phelan, & Robert Reynolds (OSU) 

Parker.642@osu.edu, ressue.1@osu.edu, phelan.30@osu.edu, Reynolds.531@osu.edu 

The complexity of processing simple words: The morphological processing 

of infrequent base words 

Research into processing of morphologically complex words has focused on two opposing 

factors: storage and parsing. Most morphological theories assume that morphologically simple 

bases like gosudar’ ‘sir’ and geroj ‘hero’ are stored, as are derivational affixes like -stvo and -izm. 

Derivationally complex words such as gosudarstvo ‘government’ and geroizm ‘heroism’ are 

believed to be parsed by stripping affix(es) from the base and computing the semantics based on 

morphemes (Taft and Forster 1975). However, Hay (2001) argued that this story is incomplete, 

since words can differ greatly in the relative frequency of their morphologically simple bases and 

complex derived forms (see Table 1). Using English, Hay showed that when morphologically 

complex words like gosudarstvo are more frequent than their bases, the complex forms bias 

toward storage and whole word access, rather than being accessed via base and affix morphemes. 

Conversely, complex forms that are less frequent than their bases bias towards parsing. 

Infrequent complex words are therefore dependent upon their bases in a way that frequent 

complex words are not. Various studies have validated and extended this hypothesis (Hay and 

Baayen 2002, Taft 2004). 

While this proposal makes predictions for how we process high frequency complex words, 

it is silent about any effects that storage of complex words might have on access of their 

morphologically simpler but less frequent bases. In particular, previous work neglects to consider 

whether less frequent bases should become dependent on their more frequent derivatives for 

access. We might expect this to be the case, based on the prominent role frequency plays in 

processing. 

This study investigates how simple words are processed when their derived forms are 

more frequent. We see two possibilities: either (1) both gosudar’ and gosudarstvo are stored 

separately, or (2) less frequent bases are accessed through their derivatives, i.e. via an ‘affixstripping’ 

process. Subtractive morphology is not a new idea; for example, the French feminine 

adjective blanche ‘white’ is widely accepted as the base of its masculine counterpart blanc 

(Haspelmath 2002). Words like gosudar’ could be explained similarly, but subtraction as a 

processing mechanism has not been explored. 

We used a lexical decision task to determine the processing of complex Russian words. 

We tested four priming conditions; see Table 2 for a representation of our materials. Preliminary 

results show significant priming effects across categories, though the difference between priming 

effects per category is not significant. Such results suggest that 1) both types of complex words 

72


(geroizm and gosudarstvo) are connected to their bases during processing and 2) whether or not 

the two types of complex words are processed similarly, the processing time is equivalent. 

This result suggests that either such words are processed similarly (gosudarstvo accesses 

gosudar’ during processing, contra Hay (2001) and others), or an ‘affix-stripping’ process occurs 

which is facilitated by priming to the same extent as ‘adding’. This ‘affix-stripping’ process has 

foundations in subtractive morphology, but leads us to question the traditional definitions of 

‘base’ and ‘derivation’. 

Base / Complex Frequency Counts 

(Per million) 

73 

Relative frequency (base 

frequency/complex) 

gosudar’ / gosudarstvo 162.0 / 298.3 .543 

geroj / geroizm 178.5 / 6.8 26.25 

Table 1: Frequency counts based on Russian National Corpus 

Prime Target 

geroj geroizm 

gosudar‟ gosudarstvo 

geroizm geroj 

gosudarstvo gosudar‟ 

Table 2: Representation of Priming Categories 

References: 

Haspelmath, Martin. 2002. Understanding Morphology. London: Arnold. 

Hay, Jennifer. 2001. Lexical frequency in morphology: Is everything relative? Linguistics 39(6): 

1041-1070. 

Hay, Jennifer and R. Harald Baayen. 2002. Parsing and productivity. In Geert Booij and Jaap 

van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 2001. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 203- 235. 

Taft, Marcus and Kenneth Forster. 1975. Lexical storage and retrieval of prefixed words. Journal of 

Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 14: 638-647. 

Taft, Marcus. 2004. Morphological decomposition and the reverse base frequency effect. 

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 57A:745–65.


Jeffrey Parker and Andrea Sims (OSU) 

Parker.642@osu.edu, sims.120@osu.edu 

The complexity and Complexity of Russian affix ordering 

Like other languages, Russian exhibits restrictions on affix order. For example, well-formed 

examples such as pere-raz-dat’- ‘to redistribute’ and pere-po-dat’ - ‘to resubmit’ appear in contrast 

to ill-formed but semantically viable examples such as *raz-pere-dat’ - ‘to redistribute again’ and 

*po-pere-dat’ -‘to pass along (process of)’. In this paper we argue that affix order in Russian is 

(partly) rooted in processing complexity, and we consider cross-linguistic implications of a 

processing-based explanation. 

Most approaches to affix ordering have involved either strata (Kiparsky 1982, Mohanan 

1986, Giegerich 1999) or affix-specific selectional restrictions (Fabb 1988, Plag 1999), but both 

greatly over-predict the number of possible affix combinations. Recently, however, Hay and Plag 

(2004) have argued based on English data that affixes that are more easily parsed during cognitive 

processing must occur farther from the root than less easily parsed affixes. An affix’s parsability is 

determined by the frequency of a derived word compared with its base, the affix’s productivity, 

phonotactics at the boundary between affix and base, and other factors. For instance, -age 

(advantage, appendage) is less productive than -less (helpless, childless), and also less easily 

parsed. In Hay and Plag’s terminology, -less creates more ‘complex’ word-internal structure than 

does -age. 

Since the underlying processing mechanisms are assumed to be universal, Complexity- 

Based Ordering should make cross-linguistic predictions. However, the exact predictions for 

Russian are unclear. Based on the common belief that Russian morphology is more productive 

than English morphology, one possibility is that Russian has fewer affix ordering constraints: 

greater productivity greater average complexity greater freedom of attachment (see Plag 

and Baayen 2009:146; also, Turkish has both highly productive morphology and relatively few 

ordering constraints (Hankamer 1989)). Another possibility is that ordering restrictions are just as 

strict in Russian as in English because ordering is based on the relative complexity created by 

affixes, rather than any absolute measure. 

We explore the combinability of 13 Russian suffixes (Figure A) using a 30 million word 

subset of the Russian National Corpus. First, using English data in Plag and Baayen (2009), we 

establish that Russian and English exhibit affix ordering restrictions to a similar degree (a subset of 

the Russian data is in Figure B). Second, we explore whether complexity measures predict this 

pattern. For instance, we use number of attested types to make cross-linguistic comparisons of 

productivity (Aronoff 1976). On average there are more types per attested affix combination in 

Russian than in English; this is significant, given that the Russian corpus is substantially smaller. 

74


Thus, Russian derivational morphology is more productive in a certain sense, suggesting that affix 

ordering restrictions are sensitive to relative, but not absolute, complexity. 

Despite a reasonable belief that the productivity of Russian morphology should lead to 

weaker affix ordering restrictions, this does not play out in the data. The Russian data thus clarify 

one way in which a language’s particular morphological structure interacts with universal 

processing constraints. However, it still leaves us to question why some languages (e.g. Turkish) 

have fewer affix ordering restrictions than others. 

Figure A 

Affix Example (Russian) Gloss 

- ant muzykant musician 

-ist žurnal’ist journalist 

-čik l’otčik pilot 

-stv(o) načal’stvo command 

-ušk(o) xlebuško bread/loaf 

-ëž(’) molodëž’ young people 

-ost(’) smelost’ boldness 

-zn(’) žizn’ life 

-el(’) metel’ snowstorm 

-ar(‘) bibliotekar’ librarian 

-ov klassovyj class (ADJ) 

-sk morskoj nautical 

-tije razvitie development 

75


References 

Figure B 

Ordering for subset of affix data; each number represents unique word types 

First Suffix 

Second Suffix 

ant ar' el' ist ov sk stvo čik 

ant - 0 0 0 2 30 9 0 

ar' 0 - 0 3 0 37 17 2 

el' 0 0 - 1 0 69 113 0 

ist 0 0 1 - 1 192 0 0 

ov 0 0 0 1 - ~800 26 0 

sk 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 

stvo 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 

čik 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 

Aronoff, Mark. 1976. Word formation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 

Fabb, Nigel. 1988. English Suffixation is constrained only by selectional restrictions. Natural Language and 

Linguistic Theory 6.527-39. 

Giegerich, Heinz J. 1999. Lexical strata in English: Morphological causes, phonological effects. Cambridge: 


Hay, Jennifer B., and Ingo Plag. 2004. What constrains possible suffix combinations? On the interaction of 

grammatical and processing restrictions in derivational morphology. Natural Language and Linguistic 

Theory 22.565-96. 

Kiparsky, Paul. 1982. From cyclic phonology to lexical phonology. The structure of phonological 

representations, ed. by Harry van der Hulst and Norval Smith, 131-76. Dordrecht: Foris. 

Mohanan, Karuvannur P. 1986. The theory of lexical phonology. Dordrecht: Reidel. 

Plag, Ingo. 1999. Morphological productivity: Structural constraints in English derivation. Berlin: Mouton de 

Gruyter. 

Plag, Ingo and R. Harald Baayen. 2009. Suffix ordering and morphological processing. Language 85(1): 109- 

152. 

76


Katia Paykin and Marleen Van Peteghem (University Lille 3/UMR 8163 “STL” (CNRS) & Universiteit 

Gent (Belgium) 

Katia.paykin-arroues@univ-lille3.fr, Marleen.VanPeteghem@UGent.be 

Russian Adnominal Genitive Revisited 

The adnominal genitive, which marks the nominal complement or modifier of the head noun of 

the NP, is the most typical usage of the genitive in case languages. In Modern Russian, it covers a 

large array of semantic relations between the head noun and the genitive noun, which explains 

why Russian grammars (cf. among others, Vinogradov & Istrina 1960, Švedova et al. 1980) and 

authors like Knorina (1988) tend to distinguish several sub-types, based exclusively on the lexical 

meaning of the nouns combined. Rappaport (2000), in his turn, proposes to divide the adnominal 

genitive into three sub-types in terms of syntactic relations between the head noun and the 

genitive noun: specifier, complement and adjunct. In our presentation, we propose to combine 

the two approaches and come up with some semantico-syntactic tests regulating a system that 

takes into account both the meaning of the two nouns and their syntactic relation. 

Among the formal criteria for our classification, we will use the following: (i) the predicate 

agreement and the selectional restrictions, allowing to determine the semantic nucleus of the 

complex NP, which can be either the head noun or the genitive noun; (ii) various interrogatives 

that can be used to question N2 or N1 (as the adnominal genitive generally follows the head noun, 

we will call the first noun N1 and the adnominal genitive N2, without taking into account its 

constituent type); and (iii) the competition between the genitive and other kinds of constituents, 

i.e. possessive pronouns, possessive and denominal adjectives, and various PPs. 

We will differentiate among three main types of the adnominal genitive, according to the 

substitution-test by an interrogative: 

(i) The kakoj-type, corresponding to genitive adjuncts. The interrogative form kakoj ‘which, 

what kind of’ concerns N2 (cf. čelovek bol’šogo uma ‘a person of great intelligence’ – 

kakoj čelovek? ‘what kind of a person?’). In this type of construction, N2 denotes a 

characteristic of the N1 referent, the latter functioning as the semantic head. In the 

majority of cases, N2 contains a modifier and can occur as a predicate. This type of 

adnominal genitive cannot be replaced by a possessive adjective and never 

alternates with a pronoun (cf. #moj čelovek ‘my man’; *čelovek men-ja man.NOM 

me-GEN). Depending on the semantic relations between N1 and the genitive 

modifier, the latter allows alternation with a PP governed by the preposition s + 

instrumental or iz + genitive (cf. stol krasn-ogo derev-a ‘a table of red wood’ – stol iz 

krasn-ogo derev-a ‘a table made of red wood’). The N2 never displays the umorphology 

(a morphological variant form for some singular masculine nouns). 

(ii) The skol’ko-type: the interrogative skol’ko ‘how much/many’ concerns N1 and provides 

information on quantity (cf. stakan moloka ‘a glass of milk’ – skol’ko moloka? ‘how much milk?’). 

In this interpretation, the semantic nucleus of the NP is N2. However, the construction can have 

77


another interpretation in which the semantic nucleus is N1, the corresponding interrogative form 

to question N2 being kogo/čego (cf. stakan moloka ‘a glass of milk’ – stakan č-ego? ‘a glass of 

what?’). N2 can only be a mass noun or a bare plural. As for N1, it denotes a container, a group or 

any other entity that can be interpreted as a measure. Some of these complex NPs allow the 

alternation with a genitive pronoun (cf. kusok men-ja ‘a piece of me’), but never with the 

possessive pronoun, which always has a possessive reading, nor with the possessive adjective, nor 

any other kind of adjective. When the u-form is available, the alternation between the a-form and 

the u-form is possible (cf. kusok saxar-a/saxar-u ‘a piece of sugar’). 

(iii) The kogo/čego-type, subsuming several categories of the adnominal genitive 

(possessive, argumental, etc. (e.g. sobaka dočeri ‘my daughter’s dog’ – sobaka kogo? ‘a dog of 

whom?’). Although it subsumes several subtypes, this type can be characterized by various formal 

criteria as a class distinct from the previous two. Besides the possibility of using the interrogative 

kogo/čego ‘of whom/of what’, these criteria are the following: a) N1 always functions as a 

semantic nucleus (vs. skol’ko-type); b) the adnominal genitive can alternate with a possessive 

adjective, when available (vs. both other types); c) the substitution of the adnominal genitive by a 

possessive pronoun is generally possible (vs. both other types); d) nouns with the u-morphology 

cannot display it in this construction (vs. skol’ko-type). We argue that in spite of the differences 

between the subtypes of the kogo/čego-type, all sub-types occupy the same syntactic position, as 

they cannot appear together with the same head noun, unlike what has been pointed out by 

Rappaport (2000). 

According to Rappaport (2000), two adnominal genitives can co-occur when they belong to 

different above-mentioned types. For instance, the kakoj-type can combine with the kogo/čegotype 

or with the possessive/subject subtype. However, contrary to what has been noted by 

Rappaport (2000), the order of the two genitives is not rigid, but depends on a number of 

parameters. Moreover, Russian tends to avoid this type of structures preferring to replace the 

kakoj-type by the equivalent adjective (cf. ?uxod mo-ego brat-a neobyčajn-oj pospešnost-i 

‘departure.NOM my-GEN brother-GEN extraordinary-GEN haste-GEN’, ??uxod neobyčajn-oj 

pospešnost-i mo-ego brat-a ‘departure.NOM extraordinary-GEN haste-GEN my-GEN brother-GEN’ 

vs. neobyčajn-o pospešn-yj uxod mo-ego brat-a ‘extraordinarily-ADV hasty-ADJ departure.NOM 

my-GEN brother-GEN’). 

As our conclusion, we will argue for the structural nature of the genitive case in Russian. 

Indeed, the adnominal genitive can express various semantic relations to N1, which necessarily 

result from the matching between the lexical meaning of N1 and N2. When no matching is 

possible, like in contingent relations, the genitive case cannot be used, confirming the structural 

nature of this case, which is not predisposed to any particular semantic role. 

References 

Knorina, L.V. 1988. “Klassifikacia leksiki i slovarnye definicii”, in: J.N. Karaulov (ed.) Nacional’naja 

specifika jazyka i eë otraženie v normativnom slovare. Moskva: Nauka, 60-63. 

Rappaport, G. C. 2000. “The Slavic Noun Phrase in Comparative Perspective”, in: G. Fowler (ed.) 

Comparative Slavic Morphology. Bloomington: Slavica Publishers. 

Vinogradov, V. V. & E. S. Istrina (eds). 1960. Grammatika russkogo jazyka, t. 2 Sintaksis I. Moskva: 

Akademija Nauk SSSR. 

Švedova, N. Ju. et al. (éds). 1980. Russkaja grammatika, t. 2 Sintaksis. Moskva: Nauka. 

78


James Pennington (OSU) 

Pennington.106@osu.edu 

"Brother to me likes" or "My brother likes": A Closer Look at the Dative of 

Interest in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian 

In the dialects of BCS, as for all Slavic languages, speakers can chose to avoid ―egocentric‖ 

narration through the use of impersonal constructions which are composed of expletive subjects and 

assign a logical subject an oblique case marking (e.g. Russian mne nravitsja ‗It pleases me (I like)‘, 

or mne ploxo ‗I don‘t feel well‘ (ono or eto being ―expletive‖ or ―dummy‖ subjects). Moreover, in 

many of the Slavic languages there exists the so-called ―dative of possession/relationship/interest‖ 

(DI). 

Although occurring in a restricted context, even Russian exhibits this possessive or relational 

function of the dative with kinship terms (on mne brat ‗he‘s my bro(ther)‘, e.g.). However, BCS 

presents a major problem regarding the combinability of the various dative case constructions due 

to the presence of the DI (brat mi, e.g.) as a semantic equal to possessive adjectival construction 

(moj brat). Moreover, native speakers of BCS also have trouble accepting the head of a DI phrase in 

any ―non-nominative‖ context (i.e. as the argument of another verb in the same clause). 

Having examined a variety of literature on syntax (General and Slavic alike), it is surprising 

none have addressed this issue. This is an important oversight, I believe, inasmuch as IPs and DIs 

are introduced in a narrow chronological window in the preferred BCS grammar (Alexander 2006) 

used at American universities, and for most students the possibility of combining a DI with an IP or 

VP with an argument seems natural since the head of the DI can take inflection as well (e.g. *Bratu 

mi se sviĎa fudbal, *Volim sestru mu). I have observed, as a BCS instructor, the frustration 

students express when no clear explanation for this constraint is available, yet it is considered 

ungrammatical. Therefore, the purpose of this talk is to present a potential resolution of the problem 

by utilizing a cross-disciplinary approach involving syntax-semantics, sociolinguistics, and general 

parsing theory. 

79


Elena Petroska (Ss Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje) 

epetrosk@indiana.edu 

DEMEK as a Discourse Particle in Macedonian: (a comparative analysis) 

The aim of this paper is to give an account of the discourse particle demek in Macedonian, 

which is a borrowing from Turkish, in a comparative analysis with the other South Slavic 

languages and especially Albanian. Demek (‗consequently‘, ‗then‘, ‗therefore‘, ‗so‘, ‗in 

other words‘ ‗that is‘‗supposedly‘…) is frequently used in the spoken discourse, and also in 

the written (newspapers and blogs). It contributes to the inferential processes involved in 

utterance understanding by making the causative-resulative relationship between the 

preceding and following discourse unites explicit. Demek is mostly found in discourse 

sequence uses. This is one of the two types of use of discourse particles (according to 

Blakemore (1996)). Demek in Macedonian in a discourse sequence can suggest that the 

particle introduces a conclusion of the proposition, and it is the logical equivalent of 

therefore in an argument (Mac. .… zgradata kje bide gotova vo april. Demek, da se strpat 

uste malku… ‗… the building will be done in April. (Therefore/So), they should be patient 

longer…‘), and can express doubt (Mac. Zosto nasite roditeli ne teraat samo da ucime? 

Demek tie ne znaat kako bilo… ‗Why do our parents force us only to study? Supposedly 

they do not know how it was…‘, -expresses a doubt. The same nuance in meaning 

presents the Albanian (Demek, Gazi po luante me letra në zyrë... ‗Supposedly played cards 

in the office…‘, but I doubt). 

The goal is to demonstrate the importance of the discourse marker (particle) demek for 

linguistic discourse analysis, for translation, for interpretation, and for effective 

communication. 

Blakemore, D. (1996) Are opposition markers discourse markers? Journal of Linguistics 

32, 325-347. 

Dedaić, M. (2010) ―Reformulating and concluding: The pragmatics of the Croatian 

discourse marker dakle‖ In: South Slavic Discourse Particles 

80


Pavel Petrukhin (Vinogradov Russian Language Institute, Moscow / Institut für Slawistik, 

Universität Wien) 

ppetrukhin@gmail.com 

The Early East Slavic supercompound past tense 

Historical descriptions of East Slavic languages have mostly considered the tense form, 

traditionally labeled ―the Russian pluperfect‖, as optional, rare and relatively late; accordingly, it 

has never attracted much scholarly attention. However, close investigation (including the 

examination of a large corpus of written sources, as well as the survey of relevant typological data) 

has brought about the revision of most of the traditional ideas about this form and to a certain extent 

changed the whole picture of the Old Russian past tense system and its historical development. 

Particularly, the following widespread ideas concerning ―the Russian pluperfect‖ are to be 

reconsidered: 

⎯ it emerged as late as in the 13 th 

cent., cf. Дурново 1924, 327: in fact, this grammatical 

marker occurs in the earliest original East Slavic texts, which means that it dates back to 

the late Common Slavic; 

⎯ ―the Russian pluperfect‖, as a ―new‖ form, developed from the ―old‖ (―bookish‖) 

pluperfect, occurring both in Old Church Slavonic and in Old Russian, by means of the 

replacement of its auxiliary verb (perfect tense > imperfect / aorist); accordingly, it has 

been assumed that the ―new‖ form inherited the semantics of the ―old‖ one, cf. 

Успенский 2002, 251: however, Old Russian examples and cross-linguistic data testify to 

the original independence (both formal and semantic) of the two forms; 

⎯ it is made up of the auxiliary verb byti in form of the perfect and the -lъ-participle (есть 

былъ + пришьлъ): the more accurate hypothesis appears to be that this form included the 

main verb in form of the perfect and the special marker byl-(есть пришьлъ + былъ), cf. 

Kryński 1910, 215; Vondrák 1928; Чернов 1961, 16; this hypothesis makes sense in a 

typological perspective and accounts for the further development of this construction; 

⎯ the traditional label ―Russian pluperfect‖ implies that this form is specifically ―Russian‖ 

(East Slavic), while in reality its formal and semantic equivalents exist (or used to exist) in 

the majority of Slavic languages, as well as in many non-Slavic languages; therefore, it 

seems reasonable to replace this peculiar and misleading term with the standard label 

―supercompound past‖ (сверхсложное прошедшее), thus underlining that the form in 

question belongs to a cross-linguistically valid category represented by such forms as, 

e.g., the French passé surcomposé or the German Doppelperfekt (Perfekt II). 

According to standard historical grammars, the Early East Slavic had four past tenses: aorist, 

imperfect, perfect and pluperfect. If the above theses are correct, namely that the ―bookish‖ 

pluperfect and the supercompound past do not represent one and the same grammatical category, 

but actually two separate categories, each having its own origin, formal structure and semantics, 

then it should be admitted that there were five preterits in Old Russian. 

The East Slavic supercompound form is particularly interesting in that it is the only past tense 

81


(except the perfect) to have survived the breakdown of the Early East Slavic past tense system. It 

wasn‘t until this form had disappeared in the 17 th 

cent. that Russian became a language with one 

past tense. 

References 

A. A. Kryński. Gramatyka języka polskiego. Warszawa, 1910. 

W. Vondrák. Vergleichende slavische Grammatik. Bd. II. Göttingen, 1928. 

Н. Н. Дурново. Очерк истории русского языка. М., Л., 1924. 

Б. А. Успенский. История русского литературного языка (XI-XVII вв.). М.: Аспект Пресс, 2002. 

В. И. Чернов. Плюсквамперфект в истории русского языка сравнительно с чешским и 

старославянским языками. Автореферат дисс.... канд. филол. наук. Л., 1961. 

82


Pavel Petrukhin (Vinogradov Russian Language Institute, Moscow / Institut für Slawistik, Universität Wien) 

ppetrukhin@gmail.com 

Diplomacy and language contacts (observations on the language of the 1229 

Smolensk-Riga trade treaty) 

The Smolensk trade treaty of 1229 is the earliest written evidence of the linguistic and cultural 

interaction between the East Slavs and the Germans. The language of all the extant copies of the 

treaty is Old Russian. However, it is generally assumed that the Old Russian text has been strongly 

influenced by another language – either Middle Low German or Latin. The problem of the original 

language of the Russian copy of the treaty has been long disputed in Slavic historical linguistics. 

Several scholars have claimed that the Russian text was written (or translated) by a German scribe. 

In the talk I will argue that while there is no ground to feel doubts about the linguistic competence of 

the scribe, certain parts of the text (especially those related to diplomatic formulae) undoubtedly are 

translations or calques from German. Fragments of contemporary medieval German documents will 

be demonstrated, casting light on the origin of the corresponding parts of the Smolensk treaty. 

Additionally I will partly trace the further history of the borrowed diplomatic formulae in the East 

Slavic written language. 

Literature 

E. Bratishenko. On the Authorship of the 1229 Smolensk-Riga Trade Treaty // Russian Linguistics. 2002. 

Vol. 26. P. 345-361. 

V. Kiparsky. [Review of] G. Schmidt. Das Eindringen der hochdeutschen Schriftsprache in der Rigaschen 

Ratskanzlei // Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 1939. Bd. 40. № 1. S. 83 

87. 

V. Kiparsky. Wer hat den Handelsvertrag zwischen Smolensk und Riga vom J. 1229 aufgesetzt? // 

Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 1960. Bd. 61. № 2. S. 244-248. 

E. Klenin. The Smolensk Trade Treaty of 1229 (Copy A): Observations on Pragmatics, Text Boundaries, and 

Orthographic Variation // Русский язык в научном освещении. 2003. № 2 (6). С. 247-259. 

А. Иванов, А. Кузнецов. Смоленско-рижские акты: XIII в.– первая половина XIV в.: Документы 

комплекса Moscowitica – Ruthenica об отношениях Смоленска и Риги. Рига, 2009. (Исторические 

источники. Вып. 6) 

А. Ф. Литвина. Аренга: судьба латинской формулы в восточнославянских документах // 

Т. М. Николаева (ред.). Славянская языковая и этноязыковая системы в контакте 

с неславянским окружением. М., 2002. С. 315-351. Т. А. Сумникова, В. В. Лопатин (подгот. к 

печати). Смоленские грамоты XIII – XIV веков. Под ред. Р. И. Аванесова. М., 1963. 

83


Ekaterina Protassova (University of Helsinki) 

ekaterina.protassova@helsinki.fi 

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE IN BILINGUAL 

EDUCATION 

The history of the Russian schools in Finland offers examples of maintenance, change and loss of traditions 

accompanying the language shift. Numerous schools and day care centers offer different types of bilingual 

education or Russian as foreign language teaching. The Russian-speaking population constitutes the largest 

non-indigenous language group in Finland, about 1% of the whole population in this country. The historic 

Russian-speaking minority has been joined recently by large numbers of new immigrants, both repatriates 

with Finnish or Ingrian roots as people from mixed origin, speaking Russian as mother or near-native tongue 

(Protassova 2004). Research conducted on Russian-speaking children at schools in Finland has shown that the 

teaching of the mother tongue fosters its continued use as well as the cognitive and personal development of 

the children themselves. While the required lessons are not available everywhere, and not all parents are 

aware of their rights, the opportunities are many and varied (Lehtinen 2002; Vasanen and Voipio 2003). 

Russian-speaking pupils are entitled to lessons in their native language two hours per week, as long as a group 

of four pupils close in age can be formed at the beginning of the school year. Russian is taught at most of the 

universities. The University of Helsinki offers a specific program for students with Russian as a heritage 

language. Good transport connections to Russia, a tradition of educational cooperation between the two 

countries, and an expanded network of Russian organizations all help maintain Russian as a heritage language 

in Finland. Educational opportunities in the mother tongue and formal instruction to improve existing 

language skills enhance not only the intellectual and personal growth of bilingual children, but also help raise 

their self-esteem. 

The present study is curried out by the joint efforts of the presenter, as well students and researchers at 

the University of Helsinki – Olga Ikko, Mihail Kopotev, Viktoria Petrovskaja, Ilona Sammalkorpi, Tatjana 

Virpioja and some others. Written and oral skills of bilingual children and students are studied throughout the 

education from families through kindergarten and schools to the university level. The methods used vary with 

various types of psycholinguistic experiments to computer-based tests in norm and pathology. 

The well-known variables in individual heritage-speaker profiles, e.g. age; background; motivation; 

exposure to the heritage language; productive and/or receptive skills; gaps in acquisition (Andrews 2000, 

Brinton et al. 2007) certainly apply to the heritage learner in Finland. The results show that almost all types of 

deficit as well as grammatical deviations are existent both in bilingual and monolingual language 

development, yet the age when such ―errors‖ and ―mistakes‖ occur differs significantly in bilinguals 

(especially having specific language impairment) vs. those with a standard linguistic development. 

References 

Andrews, David. 2000. Heritage Learners in the Russian Classroom: Where Linguistics Can Help. ADFL Bulletin, 31, 

no. 3, 39-44. 

Brinton, Donna M.; Olga Kagan & Susan Bauckus. 2007. Heritage Language Education: A New Field Emerging. 

London: Routledge. 

Lehtinen, Tuija. 2002. Oppia kieli kaikki. Maahanmuuttajalasten suomen kielen kehitys ja kaksikielisyys peruskoulun 

ensimmäisellä luokalla. Turku: Turun yliopisto. 

Protassova, Ekaterina. 2004. Fennorossy: zhizn’ i upotreblenie jazyka. (Fennorosses: life and use of language). St 

Petersburg: Zlatoust. 

Vasama, Aurora, & Sanna Voipio. 2003. Opettajien näkökulmaa suomi toisena kielenä – opetussuunnitelman 

perusteisiin. Virittäjä-lehti, 3: 427-430. 

84


Achim Rabus (Freiburg University) 

Email: achim.rabus@slavistik.uni-frieburg.de 

Intra-Slavic contact: What are the gateways for structural transfer? 

The paper focuses on linguistic transfer as a result of contact within the Slavic language family. When 

compared to contact between genetically unrelated and/or typologically distant languages, contact within 

language families yields different results. Well-established borrowing hierarchies such as the one proposed by 

S. Thomason (e.g. 2001) do not seem to be unconditionally valid when it comes to contact within language 

families. The reason for that is simple and comprehensible: Structural borrowing is greatly facilitated both 

objectively and subjectively (cf. Besters-Dilger 2005) when the varieties in contact are related to a degree that 

even permits intercomprehension (cf. e.g. Tafel 2009) in some cases. 

In this paper, I would like to investigate some characteristic examples of contact-induced structural transfer 

found in different intra-Slavic contact situations to a varying degree. In doing so, I rely on several 

methodological approaches to classify contact within language families, such as those proposed in Blas 

Arroyo (2000), Braunmüller (2009), Moser (2004), or Trudgill (e.g. 1986). 

Examples are taken from different levels of the language system, such as phonology (e.g. shift from g>h) and 

morphology (e.g. modality, verbal inflection, etc.). 

Additionally, I will deal with the question as to whether the analyzed phenomena can be unambiguously 

ascribed to language contact or, by contrast, whether they are caused by independent parallel development or 

by means of catalytic processes (i.e. the source language strengthens and intensifies already ongoing [or 

internally predisposed] changes in the target language). 

The ultimate goal of the contribution is to gain a better understanding of what makes intra-Slavic contact so 

specific and how it concretely functions. 

References 

Besters-Dilger, Juliane (2005): Modalität im Sprachkontakt: Die ukrainische „Prosta mova― (2. Hälfte 16. Jh). In: 

Hansen, Björn; Karlík, Petr (eds): Modality in Slavonic Languages. New Perspectives. München 

(Slavolinguistica, 6), 239–258. 

Blas Arroyo, José Luis (2000): Gramáticas en contacto. München (LINCOM Studies in Romance Linguistics, 23). 

Braunmüller, Kurt (2009): Converging genetically related languages: Endstation code mixing? In: Braunmüller, Kurt; 

House, Juliane (Hg.): Convergence and divergence in language contact situations. Amsterdam (Hamburg studies 

on multilingualism, 8), 53–69. 

Moser, Michael (2004): Wechselbeziehungen zwischen slavischen Sprachen. In: Die Welt der Slaven, XLIX, 161–182. 

Tafel, Karin (2009): Slavische Interkomprehension: Eine Einführung. Tübingen. 

Thomason, Sarah G. (2001): Language contact: an introduction. Edinburgh. 

Trudgill, Peter (1986): Dialects in contact. Oxford (Language in society, 10). 

85


Spencer Robinson (OSU) 

Robinson.970@buckeyemail.osu.edu 

"Grammaticalization of a Russian Verb of Motion" 

The Russian National Corpus contains sentences like (1) where motion may or may not be implied. 

(1) Idi rabotat‟ gruzčikom, piši nočami 

‗(Go) work as a freight handler, write at night.‘ 

Has idti 'to walk, go by foot' in sentences such as (1) undergone grammaticalization (the process 

where a lexical word comes to have a more grammatical function)? In a related manner, Traugott 

and Hopper (1993:2-4) state that grammaticalization cannot occur in contexts where there is a 

destination. They are specifically discussing the English phrase be going to, but I propose that since 

grammaticalization can be found in all known languages (cf. Heine et al. 1991), this constraint on 

grammaticalization of motion verbs becoming markers of futurity should be able to be applied to 

other languages as well since verbs implying motion often undergo the grammaticalization process 

cross-linguistically (Bybee et. al. 1991). 

This paper aims is to determine whether idti 'to walk, go by foot' has undergone 

grammaticalization like other motion verbs cross-linguistically and to learn if Traugott and Hopper's 

(1993) constraint on grammaticalization not occurring with a destination can be further refined. It 

appears that Hopper and Traugott meant that when the destination is explicit, grammaticalization 

will not occur. However, I hypothesize that even when a destination is implicit, the degree that an 

action is linked to a specific location will continue to influence the grammaticalization process. 

To test this hypothesis, the intuition of native Russian speakers was needed. I designed a 

survey to test whether idti ‗to walk, go by foot‘ is indeed undergoing grammaticalization and 

whether implicit destination plays a role in hindering grammaticalization of idti ‗to walk, go by foot‘ 

in certain contexts. The survey consists of 60 questions. Ten questions use idti ‗to walk, go by foot‘ 

with an explicit destination, ten other questions have idti ‗to walk, go by foot‘ with an implicit 

destination, and ten other questions use idti ‗to walk, go by foot‘ without an explicit or implicit 

destination. This should help me determine if an implicit destination affects grammaticalization. The 

remaining 30 questions are distracter questions. All questions are randomly order throughout the 

survey. Participants read each question and then put a check mark in the box next to all the meanings 

that the given sentence has. There is also an option for participants to mark if they feel that the 

sentence does not make sense. At the end of the survey, there is a short language background 

questionnaire that participants will complete to help me understand any potential variation in 

participant answers. 

I have already begun administering this survey to native speakers of Russian who lived in the 

countries of the former Soviet Union until they were at least 18. Although this study is not yet 

86


complete, based on preliminary results it appears that idti 'to walk, go by foot' has indeed been 

grammaticalized to some degree, and it is anticipated that an implied destination will make 

grammaticalization in a given sentence less likely. 

Works Cited 

Bybee, Joan L., William Pagliuca, and Revere D. Perkins. 1991. ―Back to the Future.‖ In 

Approaches to Grammaticalization. Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Bernd Heine (eds.). 

Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 17-58. 

Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi, and Friederike Hünnemeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization: A Conceptual 

Framework. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 

Hopper, Paul J. and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge, UK, 


Russian National Corpus. http://www.ruscorpora.ru. 

87


George Rubinstein (UNC-Chapel Hill) 

geor@unc.edu 

On Relationships of Verbs in Russian Aspectual Clusters 

This study is intended to make some contribution to Janda’s cluster model, which is an alternative to 

the traditional “pair” model. According to the latter, “aspect is understood as a verbal pair” of an 

imperfective (impf) verb and its perfective (pf) correlate (Rusanivs’kij 2000: 64-65). The cluster model 

developed by Janda (2007, 2008) presents each verbal stem within a cluster, where each impf base can have 

five types of perfectives: Natural Perfective (NP: написать correlated with impf писать), Specialized 

Perfective (SP: подписать, переписать), Complex Act Perfective (CAP: Inceptive заговорить, Delimitative 

поговорить, Cumulative наговорить лишнего, Perdurative проговорить час, Completive договорить), 

Single Act Perfective (SAP: Semelfactive махнуть, схитрить; (for more on SAP see Dickey and Janda 2009), 

and prefixal Semelfactives termed Specialized Single Act Perfective (SSAP, hereafter called ‘confix’: 

взмахнуть) (Makarova and Janda 2009). Though each of these types was described and exemplified in 

Janda’s numerous publications, complete lists of verbs making up each pf type in specific clusters have not 

been provided. The present study is restricted to a subset of 127 clusters containing impf base verbs and 

their pf derivatives including confixes. (However, confixes in -ся were excluded due to categorization 

problems). The aim of this paper is to describe the composition of such clusters and the relations between 

cluster elements, to determine which prefixed verbs combine with particular impf bases, how confixes are 

related to other prefixed verbs, what preferences and restrictions in prefixation particular bases have, etc. It 

was found that the clusters under analysis contain 20% of base verbs, which motivate confixes with prefixes 

different from those in other prefixed verbs of the same stem. Compare: взбрыкнуть, прикокнуть, 

сбрызнуть but not *взбрыкать, *прикокать, *сбрызгать. It was found that the delimitative по- is 

practically unused in confixes (Senatorova 1974:58). Confixes favor вы- rather than из-. Compare: 

изблевать – выблевнуть; исклевать – выклюнуть; исплевать – выплюнуть, etc. (see Tixonov 1985). 

The inceptive of an action is often expressed in confixes by the prefix вз- rather than за. Compare: 

заблестеть – взблеснуть /*заблестнуть; завизжать – взвизгнуть /*завизгнуть. The facts of the 

combinability of base stems with certain prefixes will be described and their possible explanations given in 

the presentation. The composition of the clusters will test the validity of the implicational hierarchy 

hypothesis, according to which confixes appear only in clusters which contain SAP and CAP (see Janda 

2007:634; Rubinstein forthcoming). The relation of lexical and superlexical prefixes (Tatevosov 2009) will 

also be treated. CAPs includes verbs with superlexical prefixes; lexical prefixes are shared between NPs and 

SPs, superlexical prefixes can be also found in SSAPs (позаснуть, приуснуть). 

Correlation of Semelfactives with Multiple Act Imperfectives (‘multiplicatives’) is usually related to 

motivation relationships: дрожать →дрогнуть; грести→гребнуть. Motivation relationships exist even 

when correlative Imperfectives are not divisible into separate acts, as in глядеть → глянуть (на 

собеседника). In such cases the -ну- verb denotes an instantaneous action but not a separate act. A group 

of confixes called ‘completives’ by Plungian (2000:220) correlate in the cluster with their motivating impf 

88


verb and also has a SP synonym: повернуть, поворотить – поворачивать; настигнуть, настичь – 

настигать. 

References 

A description of the clusters under analysis will be provided in the presentation. 

Dickey, Stephen M. and Janda Laura A. “Xoxotnul, sxitril: the relationship between semelfactives 

formed with –nu- and –s- in Russian” Russian Linguistics (2009) 33:229-248. 

Janda, Laura and John Korba. (2008) “Beyond the pair: Aspectual clusters for learners of Russian”. 

SEEJ, 52:2, 253-69. 

Janda, Laura. (2007) “Aspectual clusters of Russian verbs”. Studies in Language 31:3, 607-48. 

Makarova, Anastasia and Laura Janda. (2009) “Do It Once: A Case Study of the Russian –nu- 

Semelfactives”. Scando-Slavica 55, 78-79 

Plungian, V. A. (2000) “’BYSTRO’ v grammatike russkogo i drugix jazykov”. Slovo v tekste i v slovare. 

Sbornik statej k 70-letiju akademika Ju.D. Apresjana. Moscow:Jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 212- 

230. 

Rusanivs’kij, V. M. (2000). Ukraïns’ka mova: Enciklopidija. Kiïv: Ukraïns’ka enciklopidija. 

Senatorova Ė. P. “O značenii suffiksa -NU-” . InV. N. Iakovlev (ed.). Grammatičeskie problemy 

russkogo iazyka. Barnaul, 1974: Barnaul’skii gos. ped. in-t., 50-65 

Tatevosov, S.G. (2009). “Množestvennaja prefiksacija i anatonija russkogo glagola”. In K.L. Kiseleva 

(ed.). Korpusnye issledovanija po russkoj grammatike. Moskva, 2009: “Probel-2000”, 92-156. 

Tixonov, A. N. (1985) Slovoobravovatel’nyj slovar’ russkogo jazyka. V 2-x tomax. Moscow: Russkij 

jazyk. 

89


Jelena Runic (University of Connecticut) 

jelena.runic@uconn.edu 

THE SLAVIC PCC: THE VIEW FROM MORPHOLOGY 

The Problem -The Person-Case Constraint (PCC), attested in a number of heterogeneous languages, 

forbids the combination of 3 

90 

rd 

person dative with 1 st 

or 2 nd 

person accusative within a clitic cluster (the 

weak PCC), as well as the combination of 1st and 2nd person co-argument clitics (the strong PCC) 

(Bonet 1991). As far as Slavic languages are concerned, opinions have been subject to considerable 

disagreement. Specifically, while researchers entirely agree that languages with verbal clitics, 

Bulgarian and Macedonian, are subject to the PCC, sentential/second position clitic (Cl2) languages, 

Serbian/Croatian (SC), Slovenian, Czech, and Slovak, have been widely debated over the PCC. 

Thus, whereas one line of research claims that the PCC is operative in Cl2 languages (Franks & 

King 2000; Béjar & Řezáč 2003; Bhat & Šimík 2009; Medová 2009; Sturgeon et. al. 2010), others 

contend that the PCC is not active in these languages (Lenertová 2001; Haspelmath 2004, Migdalski 

2006, Hana 2007). In this talk, I offer a solution for both views from a morphological perspective 

within a filter-based approach. The Data -My research is based on the data collected from 53 

informants, native speakers of SC, Slovenian, Czech and Slovak. I conducted a grammaticality 

judgment task, in which 53 participants were asked to mark (a) and (b) examples as grammatical or 

semi/ungrammatical sequences. PCC effects have been attested with 15 (out of 19) of the informants 

in SC, 10 (out of 12) in Slovenian, 11 (out of 14) in Czech, and 8 (out of 8) in Slovak. The Analysis 

-First, I point to the previously unnoticed pattern attested with the majority of my informants. This 

pattern shows that the PCC is actually operative in Cl2 Slavic languages since accusative clitics are 

fully acceptable in clusters with 2 nd 

person accusative ((1a), (2a)), while clusters with 1 st 

person 

accusative are degraded ((1b), (2b)) in SC, Slovenian, Czech, and Slovak, exemplified with SC in 

(1)-(2). Moreover, the non-uniform behavior of 1st and 2nd person is present with both the weak 

PCC (1) and the strong PCC (2). The clusters in (1)-(2) show that in ditransitive constructions with 

bound morphemes the combination of 1st person as a Theme is excluded ((1b), (2b)), whereas the 

combination of 2nd person as a Theme is acceptable ((1a), (2a)). Importantly, there is a robust crosslinguistic 

generalization showing harmonic alignment between the person scale and the semantic 

role scale (Aissen 1999, i.a.). On the person scale 1st person outranks 2nd person and 3rd person 

(3a). Similarly, on the semantic role scale, Agent outranks Recipient, which in turn outranks 

Theme/Patient (3b). Hence, in ditransitive constructions the (highest) 1st person is typically 

associated with (highest) roles, Agent and Recipient. The data in (1)-(2) show this is the case, as 1st 

person in the degraded clusters is associated with the Theme. Assuming that 1st person is featurally 

represented as [+ Author] (Halle 1997), while Theme in Slavic contains the feature [+Accusative], I 

propose a morphological output filter that bans the combination of features lacking harmonic 

alignment between the person scale and the semantic role scale in argument clitic clusters (4). This 

filter is active in the morphological component of the grammar once the syntax generates the 

structure and sends it to the PF for morphological and phonological processing. Morphological 

filters (or constraints) represent innate combinations of morphological features that have to be 

deactivated on the basis of positive evidence in order to surface (Noyer 1997). Based on 

implicational hierarchy established top down among current microvariations of the PCC, I postulate 

three filters with a filter for Slavic being deepest/lowest on the hierarchy (5). Whenever positive


evidence contradicts a particular filter, this filter (and all filters above it) will be deactivated. This 

explains why some Slavic speakers do not find PCC effects at all. Since such combinations are rare 

in the input, only some (but not all) speakers deactivate the lowest filter and all the filters above it, 

which in turn explicates the partial absence of PCC effects in Cl2 Slavic languages. 

(1) a. Toplo mu/joj te preporučujem. [SC] 

warmly him/her.3DAT you.2ACC recommend.1SG 

‗I warmly recommend you to him/her.‘ 

b.??(*) Toplo mu/joj me preporučuješ. 

warmly him/her.3DAT me.1ACC recommend.2SG 

‗You warmly recommend me to him/her.‘ 

(2) a. Toplo mi te preporučuje. 

warmly me.1DAT you.2ACC recommends 

‗He warmly recommends you to me.‘ 

b.??(*) Toplo ti me preporučuje. 

certainly you.2DAT me.1ACC recommends 

‗He warmly recommends me to you.‘ a. 1st > 2nd > 3rd 

(3) 

b. Agent > Recipient > Theme/Patient 

(4) *[Arg Cl α Arg Cl ß ] if α [+Author + Accusative] & ß[-Author + Dative] 

(5) *[Arg Cl α Arg Cl ß ] if 

α [+Participant +Accusative] & ß [±Participant, +Dative] (Greek) 

α [+ Participant +Accusative] & ß [-Participant + Dative] (Romance) 

α [+ Author + Accusative] & ß [-Author, +Dative] (Slavic) 

References 

Aissen, Judith (1999). Markedness and subject choice in Optimality Theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 

17: 673-711. 

Béjar, Susana & Milan Řezáč (2003). Person licensing and the derivation of PCC effects. In Pérez-Leroux, A. T. & Y. 

Roberge (Eds.), Romance Linguistics: Theory and Acquisition, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 49-62. 

Bhatt, Rajesh & Radek Šimík (2009). Variable Binding and the Person-Case Constraint. 

Paper presented at the IATL 25. Bonet, Eulàlia (1991). Morphology after Syntax: 

Pronominal Clitics in Romance. MIT: Doctoral dissertation. 

Franks, Steven & Tracy Holloway King (2000). A Handbook of Slavic Clitics. OUP. 

Halle, Morris (1997). Distributed Morphology: Impoverishment and Fission. In B. Bruening, Y. 

Kang, and M. McGinnis (Eds.), MITWPL Vol. 30, 425-449. Hana, Jirka (2007). Clitic 

in Higher Order Grammar. Doctoral dissertation. Ohio State University. 

Haspelmath, Martin (2004). Explaining the Ditransitive Person-Role Constraint: a usage-based 

account. Constuctions 2/2004, 49 pp. Lenartová, Denisa (2001). Czech Pronominal 

Clitics. Paper presented at The Workshop on Slavic Pronominal Clitics, Berlin, 8-9 

February 2001. 

Medová, Lucie (2009). PCC effects in Czech. Paper presented at FASL 18. 

Migdalski, Krzysztof (2006). The Syntax of Compound Tense in Slavic. Doctoral Dissertation. 

University of Tilburg. 

Noyer, Rolf (1997). Features, positions, and affixes in autonomous morphological structure. 

New York & London: Garland Publishing. 

Sturgeon, Anne & Boris Harizanov & Maria Polinsky & Ekaterina Kravtchenko & Carlos Gómez Gallo & Lucie 

Medová & Václav Koula (2010). Revisiting the Person Case Constraint in Czech. Paper presented at FASL 19. 

91


Alexander Rusakov (Institute of Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg) 

ayurusakov@gmail.com 

Slavo-Albanian language contacts: a view from the Albanian dialectal map 

It is well-known that the Slavic influence on Albanian has had a long-term and deep character. A 

characteristic property of Slavo-Albanian language contacts is their especially diverse character: 

various parts of the Albanian population contacted with different groups of Slavic inhabitants 

(belonging to different parts of the South Slavic dialectal continuum) at different times (in the 

course of nearly one and a half thousand years) and in different geographic environments. The 

sociolinguistic character of these contact situations differed very essentially as well. As a result 

Albanian dialects show drastically discrepant degrees of Slavic influence which is represented in 

the form of numerous isoglosses on the Albanian dialectal map. Lexical isoglosses are studied 

today rather thoroughly, while grammatical isoglosses were repeatedly registered, but were not 

studied in their integrity. 

The goal of this paper is to examine some important isoglosses on Albanian dialectal map sub 

specie Slavo-Albanian language contacts and to try to reconstruct them as far as possible those real 

contact situations which might have given rise to these isoglosses. 

92


Tatiana Sazonova (NIU-KGU) 

TSazonova@gmail.com 

Men and Women in Search of Referent: Evidence from Novel Objects Naming in 

Russian 

One of the most striking evidence of language embodiment is the fact that people cannot actually 

manipulate with a real world object before they label it with a word. We use the objects names to be able 

to perform physical or mental tasks involving the named objects. When a word for an object is not 

available we use substitutes or create a coinage. New as they are these words seem to present no difficulty 

in referent identification. Often they are used metaphorically. 

To investigate the perceptual and cognitive basis for objects naming by men and women two 

experiments were conducted. The participating subjects were all native speakers of Russian and had 

normal or corrected-to-normal vision. All participation was voluntary. Pictures of novel objects (collected 

by Jessica Horst) were used to elicit names, each picture is of a real 3D object, thought none of the objects 

have names. 

The data collected in the object-naming experiment for 45 colored pictures were analyzed to 

explore what cues are more typical and what features are more recognizable in spontaneous object 

naming. Depending on the formal and/or semantic cues competing to trigger a word for naming, the 

naming strategies were brought to light. 

The discussion of the naming strategies is carried out within the Word Identification Model 

framework. It is an interactive model which treats mental lexicon as a dynamic functional system and an 

integral part of human cognitive abilities. The items in the mental lexicon are viewed as products of a 

complex interaction of perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and verbal experience stored in one’s memory 

and simultaneously utilized at different levels of consciousness when a word provides access to 

interconnected fragments of the personal knowledge. Within this framework picture naming process is 

viewed as the phenomena of “natural semiosis” which occurs «for me – here - and now» and largely 

depends upon the features recognized in the picture as well as on the wider context of all mental 

processes. 

We found that both Perceptual and Functional information may play role in naming unknown nonliving 

things. As most of the research in visual perception shows, object shape plays a crucial part in object 

recognition. However shape recognized, the objects are related to different categories by men and women 

and receive different names. The subjects mentally construct the situation imagining how this object can 

be used. At the same time background knowledge and individual category content influence object 

identification. 

93


человечек (без рук) - little man (without hands) 

конструктор - meccano 

деталь от детского конструктора – meccano part 

ключ гаечный (2) - wrench 

ядерная кнопка детская - nuclear button for kids 

вилка - fork 

кран подъёмный - crane 

прищепка - cloths-peg 

стул - chair 

пулемёт - mashine-gun 

дуло поролоновой базуки - muzzle of foam-rubber mashine-gun 

ракета - rocket 

бигуди (5) - hair-rollers 

предмет из поролона - foam-rubber object 

нитки - sewing 

женщина - woman 

купец (игрушка) - merchant (a toy) 

бутылка пластмассовая - plastic bottle 

термос - thermos bottle 

матрёшка - matreshka 

дублёнка - shipskin coat 

баклажан - eggplant 

бегемот - hyppopotamus 

скульптура недовольного индейца - sculpture of a displeased Indian 

94


Vera Schmiedtova (Charles University, Prague) 

Vera.schmiedtova@ff.cuni.cz 

The Czech National Corpus – Looking Back, Looking Forward 

The Institute of the Czech National Corpus (ICNC) was founded in 1994 as part of the Faculty of 

Arts, Charles University in Prague. At the outset the Institute‘s primary aim was to compile a material 

database for a new monolingual dictionary of the Czech language. Since then the Institute has set itself a 

number of other targets. To date, the Institute has built the following types of corpus which are accessible to 

users via the Internet: 

1. Corpora of synchronic written language; 

(Two representative corpora have been made public, SYN2000 (100 million words) and SYN2005 (100 

million words). One other corpus, the non-representative SYN2006pub (300 million words), was been 

released into the public domain. During 2010 there are plans to make SYN2009pub (500 million words) 

accessible to all. This means that during this year the Czech language will have available electronic data of a 

billion word forms of contemporary written language.) 

2. Diachronic corpus; 

(It includes texts from the end of 13 th century onwards, numbering more than 3 600 000 word forms.) 

3. Corpora of spontaneous spoken language; 

(There are four corpora of spontaneous spoken language available now - Praţský mluvený korpus (PMK) 

[Prague Spoken Corpus], Brněnský mluvený korpus (BMK) [Brno Spoken Corpus] and the corpora 

ORAL2006 and ORAL2008.) 

4. Parallel corpora; 

(In 2005 the project InterCorp was initiated; participating in its compilation are linguistic departments of the 

Faculty of Arts, Charles University. The project includes 20 of mostly European languages contrasted with 

Czech. At present these corpora are comprised of some 44 million word forms in fiction texts.) 

5. Corpora of author’s language; 

(The Institute has compiled author corpora of two important Czech writers – Karel Čapek and Bohumil 

Hrabal. Both of them has already resulted in Čapek‘s dictionary Jazyk Karla Čapka [The Language of Karel 

Čapek] (2007); and dictionary of Bohumil Hrabal‘s language Jazyk Bohumila Hrabala (2009.) 

The list of the ICNC‘s publishing achievements is quite impressive. The SYN2000 corpus was the 

source for Frekvenční slovník češtiny [The Word Frequency List of Czech] (2004), while the PMK was the 

source for Frekvenční slovník mluvené češtiny [The Word Frequency List of Spoken Czech] (2007). The 

Institute has so far published ten volumes in the series Studie z korpusové lingvistiky [Corpus Linguistics 

Studies], presenting monographs based on the ICNC‘s corpora. 

95


Alexei Shmelev 

Shmelev.alexei@gmail.com 

Western Concepts in Russian: Ways of Adaptation 

In the paper, I will deal with linguistic data indicative of how the Russian culture perceives ‘Western’ 

concepts. In situations where Russian needs to be spoken, there arises the problem of how to use the 

resources of the Russian language to encode the required meaning. There are two options: (a) borrowing a 

word or expression from the language that serves the cultural sphere to which the concept belongs, and 

(b) using a Russian counterpart of the foreign word. What happens in all cases, a new meaning is created as 

the result of a reinterpretation of the ‘Western’ concept by members of the Russian cultural sphere. The 

resulting concept is based on the adaptation of the original concept to the Russian linguistic worldview. 

Two main methods of adaptation must be distinguished: ‘integration’ of the borrowed concept into the 

Russian linguistic worldview (whereby the concept undergoes a greater or lesser transformation), and 

‘adoption’ of the borrowed concept (in which case it is the relevant fragment of the linguistic worldview 

that is transformed to some degree). Overall, it can be said that the ‘integration’ of the borrowed concept 

usually happens when loanwords are used, while ‘adoption’ takes place when a Russian counterpart 

(possibly itself an earlier loanword) is used; however, this is not a straightforward correspondence. 

Various subtypes of ‘integration’ are illustrated by such words as кураж, гонор, соборный (a 

translation of the Greek katholikos), and some others. Thus, the French word courage has, in its Russian 

form кураж, significantly changed its meaning and has been drawn into the semantic field that includes 

language-specific words like удаль, размах, загул, associated with the major cultural motif of ‘broadness’. 

Its Russian meaning is not primarily that of bravery, but rather ‘lack of restraint/inhibitions’. There is a 

notion in Russian culture that this mental state can be attained by means of consuming alcoholic 

beverages. The Polish word honor (not equivalent to ‘honour’ in English) designates one of the central 

values of Polish culture; it implies the notion of sacrifice and personal dignity, which prevents one from 

demeaning oneself or compromising one’s principles in the hope of material gain or an escape from 

danger. In the Russian perception, conduct based on such premises is very often seen as conceited and 

arrogant, reflecting a lack of genuine humility. The word гонор in Russian has therefore come to be 

associated with negative concepts like спесь, кичливость, самоуверенность, самонадеянность, 

самомнение (all of which refer to haughtiness and excessive self-esteem). 

What happens in other cases is that the ‘Western’ concept is ‘adopted’ with practically no assimilation. 

A number of borrowings and semantic calques (on a particularly massive scale since the 1990s) are 

connected with the dissemination in contemporary Russian society of an ideology of success, consumption, 

and enjoyment. Traditional dictionary entries for words like успешный ‘successful’, эффективный 

‘effective’, амбициозный ‘ambitious’, or карьера ‘career’ do not correspond to the way that these words 

are used in contemporary discourse. 

96


Miriam Shrager (Indiana University) 

mshrage@indiana.edu 

Features of Innovation and Retention in Susak Dialect Spoken in New Jersey 

The case of Susak dialect spoken in New Jersey is an example of extraordinary language retention. 

Speakers of this dialect live in the USA for about fifty years, yet they clearly retain some of the most archaic 

Common Slavic features. The current study is based on recordings of two field trips to the community of 

people from Susak Island leaving in New Jersey, the first trip was in December 2007, and the second trip 

was in March 2010. 

In Hamm, Hraste, and Guberina (1956) there is a description of Croatian Čakavian dialect spoken on the 

Susak Island. Among other things, the work describes an interesting phenomenon of unusual accentual 

nominal paradigm of the Susak dialect. According to this description some masculine nouns which in other 

Slavic dialects have reflexes of AP-C, in Susak have reflexes of AP-C in the Nom case, but have the reflexes 

of AP-B in the oblique cases (1956: 106). Later this type of accentuation was called the “mixed accentual 

paradigm” (Illič-Svityč), and served as one of the main argumentations for the new theory of AP-D for late 

Common-Slavic (Dybo, et al. 1990, 1993). One of the points for criticism of this theory was the reliability of 

the material provided by the description of Hamm et al. Indeed, the description by Hamm et al is hard to 

validate, since the island currently is inhabited by newcomers; most of the original Susak inhabitants have 

left the island in the fifties of the 20 th century. That is why the recordings we have made are especially 

important. The analysis of these recordings validates the previous descriptions of this dialect. The current 

paper aims at showing the “old” and the “new” in the New Jersey Susak dialect, i.e., to what extend did the 

speakers retain the “mixed accentuation” type. 

References 

1) Dybo, V.A., G. I. Zamjatina, and S. L. Nikolaev. (1990) Osnovy slavjanskoj akcentologii. 

Moscow: Nauka. 

2) . (1993) Osnovy slavjanskoj akcentologii. Slovar. Moscow: Nauka. 

3) Hamm, J., M. Hraste, and P. Guberina. (1956) ―Govor otoka Suska.‖ Hrvatski dijalektološki 

zbornik. Zagreb: Knj. 1. 

4) Illič-Svityč, V. M. (1963) Imennaja akcentuacija v baltijskom i slavjanskom. Sud‟ba 

akcentuacionnyx paradigm. Moscow. Translated in 1979 by Richard Leed and 

Ronald Feldstein, Nominal Accentuation in Baltic and Slavic. Cambridge. MIT 

Press. 

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Malgorzata Szajbel-Keck (UC-Berkeley) 

szajbelkeck@berkeley.edu 

Nouns with Aspect – The Curious Case of Polish Verbal Nouns 

Polish verbal nouns are unlike any other nous because they are always specified for aspect. For 

instance, czytanie ‗reading‘ is imperfective, whereas przeczytanie ‗reading from the beginning to 

the end‘ is perfective. The aspect of verbal nouns cannot be ignored, as it essentially contributes to 

the meaning and grammaticality of the whole phrase or clause: 

Chodzenie(IPF) / *Pójście(PF) do szkoły jest nudne. 

‗Going to school is boring‘ 

Pójście(PF) / *Chodzenie(IPF) dziś do szkoły jest niemoliwe. 

‗Going to school today is impossible‘ 

I believe that this unusual characteristic of Polish verbal nouns is due to their complex structure. In 

my analysis argue that they are a kind of linguistic Chimeras, which in the process of 

nominalization do not lose their ‗verbness‘, as it is often claimed (cf. Chomsky 1970). Instead, on 

top of their being verbs, they become nouns. As a result they have a complex syntactic structure – 

the lexical verbal layer is covered, but not substituted, by the functional nominal layer. Such 

interpretation more accurately accounts for the dual character of Polish verbal nouns, noticed 

already by Comrie (1976) but not explained satisfactorily so far, than standard analyses that assume 

that every nominalization turns verbs into pure nouns (cf. the influential work of Chomsky 1970 

and its followers). My doublelayer analysis is supported by the fact that Polish verbal nouns have 

both verbal (aspect, reflexivity, argument structure, passivization and adverbial modification) and 

nominal characteristics (case, number, gender, adjectival modification). Moreover, it is important 

that the verbal layer is closer to the core as it affects more the meaning of the verbal noun – aspect, 

reflexivity, number and type of arguments. In contrast, the nominal layer is the outer functional one 

– it helps to embed items carrying verbal meaning into syntactic positions reserved only for 

nominals by providing them with case, number and gender. Although Polish verbal nouns differ 

significantly from English ones (the most popular language for the linguistic description), and from 

Russian ones (the most widely described Slavic language), they have not received much attention 

in the linguistic literature apart from Rozwadowska‘s work (1997). I hope to change it and fill the 

gap with my research that includes not only their theoretical description, but also an indepth 

investigation of their actual use in Polish thorough extensive corpus analysis and interaction with 

native speakers. 

References: 

Bartnicka, Barbara, Hansen, B., Klemm, W., Lehmann, V., and Satkiewicz, H. 2004. Grammatik 

des Polnischen: Slavolinguistica, 5. München:Otto Sagner. 

Chomsky, Noam. 1970. Remarks on Nominalization. In Readings in English Transformational 

Grammar, eds. R. A. Jacobs and P. S. Rosenbaum, 184221. Waltham, Massachusetts; Toronto; 

London:Ginn and Company. 

Comrie, Bernard. 1976. The syntax of action nominals: a crosslanguage study. Lingua 40:177201. 

Comrie, Bernard. 1980. Nominalizations in Russian: lexical noun phrases or transformed 

sentences? In Morphosyntax in Slavic, eds. C. V. Chvany and R. D. Brecht:Slavica Publishers, 

Inc. 

98


Comrie, Bernard, and Thompson, S. 1985. Lexical nominalization. In Language Typology and 

Syntactic Description, ed. T. Shopen, 349399. Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press. 

Damborský, Jirí. 1973. Czy w jezyku polskim istnieje gerundium? Poradnik Jezykowy 10:581587. 

Dickey, Stephen M. 2000. Parameters of Slavic Aspect: a Cognitive Approach. Stanford, 

CA:Center for the Study of Language and Information. 

Doroszewski, Witold. 1970. Konstrukcja składniowa z rzeczownikiem odsłownym. In O kulture 

słowa. Poradnik jezykowy, 173. Warszawa:PIW. 

Fokker, Abraham Anthony. 1966. Nouns from Verbs. A Contribution to the Study of PresentDay 

Polish WordFormation. Amsterdam:NorthHolland Pub. Co. 

Fraser, Bruce. 1970. Some remarks on the action nominalization in English. In Readings in English 

Transformational Grammar, eds. R. A. Jacobs and P. S. Rosenbaum, 8398. Waltham, 

Massachusetts; Toronto; London:Ginn and Company. 

KoptjevskajaTamm, Maria. 1993. Nominalizations. London; New York:Routledge. 

Lees, Robert B. 1960. The Grammar of English Nominalizations. Bloomington, Ind. 

Puzynina, Jadwiga. 1969. Nazwy czynności we współczesnym języku polskim. Warszawa:PWN. 

Rappaport, Gilbert C. 2001. The geometry of the Polish nominal phrase: problems, progress, and 

prospects. In Generative Linguistics in Poland: Syntax and Morphosyntax, eds. P. Bański and 

A. Przepiórkowski, 173189. Warszawa:PAN 

Rozwadowska, Boż ena. 1997. Towards a Unified Theory of Nominalizations: External and 

Internal Eventualities: Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo 

Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego. 

Rozwadowska, Boż ena. 2000. Event structure, argument structure and the byphrase 

in Polish nominalizations. In Lexical Specification and Insertion, eds. P. 

Coopmans, M. Everaert and J. B. Grimshaw, 329347. Amsterdam; 

Philadelphia:J. Benjamins. 

99


Nadine Thielemann (University of Potsdam) 

nthielem@rz.uni-potsdam.de 

Arguing by anecdote – jocular accounts in conversations between Russian 

interlocutors 

The telling of an anecdote resp. joke – both covered by the Russian term anekdot – is a prominent Russian 

speech genre (Šmeleva/Šmelev 2002, Adams 2005, Graham 2003) that is not only common in private 

conversation but also in broadcast interviews and panel discussions, which serve as data for the given 

analysis. Interviewers and interviewees use anekdoty mainly as accounts (Heritage 1988, Antaki 1994). 

Several features of the anekdot qualify them for this usage: As a sort of retold narrative anekdoty obtain a 

specific epistemological status because they comprise collective knowledge and experience (cf. Ong 1981; 

Wierzbicka 1992) that is accepted and hard to challenge within the speech community. Furthermore many 

anekdoty are inherently argumentative. They embody topoi that can be functionalized in the argumentation 

at hand such as induction, illustration or analogy (cf. Kienpointner 1992, Kuße 2004). Finally the teller of an 

anekdot lends his resp. her voice to the community who authors the anekdot. When telling an anekdot the 

speaker changes the footing (Goffman 1992) of his resp. her utterance. So interviewers can realize offensive 

questions or challenges by anekdot thereby preserving their institutionally required neutrality (cf. Clayman 

1992). The paper presents different usages of the anekdot in Russian broadcast interviews and panel 

discussions and interprets them as a feature of a culture-specific persuasive style (cf. Johnstone 1989) 

strongly relying on the persuasive power of the collectively authored narrative, stressing the argumentative 

value of analogy and appreciating the coping capacity of wit and humor. 

References 

Adams, B. (2005): Tiny Revolutions in Russia: 20 th 

century Soviet and Russian History in 

Anecdotes and Jokes. London. Antaki, Ch. (1994): Explaining and Arguing: The Social Organization of 

Accounts. London. Clayman, S. (1992): Footing in the achievement of neutrality: the case of news 

interviews 

discourse. In: Drew, P./Heritage, J. (eds.): Talk at Work. Interaction in Institutional Settings. 

Cambridge, 163-198. Goffman, E. (1992): Forms of Talk. Oxford. Graham, B. (2003): A Cultural Analysis 

of the Russo-Soviet Anekdot. Diss, University of Pittburg. 

(latest access 7.1.2010) Heritage, J. (1988): Explanations as 

accounts: a conversation analytic perspective. In: Antaki, Ch. (ed.): Analyzing Everyday 

Explanation. A Casebook of Methods. London, 127-144. 

Johnstone, B. (1989): Linguistic strategies and cultural styles for persuasive discourse. In: Ting-Toomey, 

S./Korzenny, F. (eds.): Language, Communication, and Culture: Current Directions. Newbury Park, 

139-159. 

Kienpointner, M. (1992): Alltagslogik. Struktur und Funktion von Argumentationsmustern. Stuttgart Bad 

Canstatt. 

Kuße, H. (2004): Metadiskursive Argumentation: Linguistische Untersuchungen zum russischen 

philosophischen Diskurs von Lomonosov bis Losev. München. (Sagners Slavistische Sammlung; 28) 

Ong, W. (1981): Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London New York. 

Šmeleva, E.A./Šmelev, A.D. (2002): Russkij anekdot kak rečevoj ţanr. Moskva. 

Wierzbicka, A. (1992): Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. The Semantics of Human Interaction. Berlin 

New York (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs; 53) 

100


Natasha Todorovich (University of Illinois Chicago) 

Ntodor1@uic.edu 

The syntax of da in Serbian 

When speaking of da in Serbian, it is clear that there are many different da(s). If we exclude the affirmative 

da and a third person singular form da of verb dati (give), we note that the particle da is very productive in 

many different sentential constructions. Although the infinitive is still used in Serbian, it is less preferred 

and often replaced with da + present while in some dialects, such as Torlak, it is almost entirely absent 

(Joseph (1983)). However, it does not mean that da +present would replace every instance of the infinitive 

in Serbian. 

The loss of the infinitive is one of the characteristics of other Balkan languages, for example Greek, 

a language that employs a combination of a particle/complementizer and a finite verbal form instead of 

the infinitive. As the following example clearly indicates, Greek employs different 

particles/complementizers in the instances where in Serbian we only find da. But, is this indeed the same 

and ‘one’ da? 

(1) a. Marija misli da sam rekla da du da napišem 

Maria think-3sg that aux-1sg said that aux-1sg to write-1sg.perf. 

knjigu da bih postala slavna. 

book-acc to aux-1sg became famous-fem. 

b 4 . I Maria pistevi oti ipa oti tha grapso ena vivlio ja na jino dniasimi. 

The Mari believes that said that fut write-perf. one book for na become famous. 

Maria thinks that I said that I will write a book to become famous 

I investigate the syntax of da used in da+ present, subordinating constructions, optatives, secondary 

imperatives and questions. While my main goal is to define the syntax of da in independent and as well as 

dependent contexts, at this moment I focus mainly on da in dependent contexts. To make a situation more 

complex, not only should da found in the independent contexts be distinguished from da found in some of 

the dependent contexts, but the one da that appears in the dependent contexts can be further separated 

into da1 and da2 (Progovac (1993), Goląb (1964) Browne (1986), Tomid-Mišeska (2003)). 

Within the formal framework, I mainly focus on da used after subjunctive and indicative verbs. I 

adopt and adapt to Serbian Giannakidou’s (1998) classification of Greek verbs. In her classification, the 

indicative group consists of assertive, fiction verbs, epistemic, factives and semifactives while the 

subjunctive verbs can be separated into two groups that here I label as a subjunctive subgroup 1,which 

includes volitionals, directives, modals, permissives, negative, and verbs of fear and a subjunctive subgroup 

4 The Greek example provided by Anastasia Giannakidou, personal conversation. 

101


2, which includes aspectual, perception, commissive and implicative verbs. The semantics of the matrix 

verbs determines which da is used in the complement constructions: da1, the indicative or da2, the 

subjunctive. Based on the data provided in my research, both of these da(s) exhibit different syntactic 

behavior in relationship to tense and aspect selection, negation, licensing of polarity items and position of 

clitics. 

Selected References: 

Browne, Wayles. 1986. Relative Clause in Serbo-Croatian in Comparison with English. Institute of Linguistics. 

University of Zagreb. 

Giannakidou, Anastasia. 1998. Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)veridical Dependency. Amsterdam and Philadelphia. John 

Benjamins. 

Goląb, Zbigniew. 1964. The problem of verbal moods in Slavic languages. International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and 

Poetics 8:1-36 

Joseph, Brian. 1983. The Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive. A Study in areal, general, and historical 

linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Philippaki-Warburton, Irene. 1994. The subjunctive mood and the syntactic status of the particle na in Modern Greek. 

Folia Linguistica XXVIII (3–4): 297–326. 

Progovac, Ljiljana. 1993a. “Locality and subjunctive-like complements in Serbo-Croatian”Journal of Slavic Linguistics 

1:116-44. 

Tomid-Mišeska, Olga. 2003. The Syntax of the Balkan Slavic Future tenses. Lingua 114: 517-549. 

Vrzid, Zvjezdana, 1994. Categorial status of the Serbo-Croatian “modal” da. Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics. 

2:291-312. 

102


Beata Trawinski (University of Vienna) 

beata.trawinski@univie.ac.at 

On the Distribution of AND-Type and WITH-Type 

Coordinations in Polish: A Corpus-Based Study 

Slavic languages (as well as many other languages of the world) offer (at least) two possibilities 

for expressing nominal (conjunctive) coordination: the conjunction and and the comitative 

preposition with (cf. Ladusaw (1989), McNally (1993), Urtz (1994), Dalrymple et al. (1998), 

Vassilieva and Larson (2005), Feldman (2002), Ionin and Matushansky (2003) for Russian; 

Skrabalova (2003) for Czech; Dyła (1988, 2003) and Trawinski (2005) for Polish). (1) and (2) 

respectively illustrate these possibilities for Polish. 

(1) Ja i (moja) zona mieszkamy w˙Warszawie. 

I and my wife.NOM live.PL in Warsaw 

‗My wife and I live in Warsaw.‘ 

(2) Ja z (moj ˛˙a mieszkamy w Warszawie. 

I with my wife.INSTR live.PL in Warsaw 

‗My wife and I live in Warsaw.‘ 

According to Schwartz (1988), NPs connected with a comitative preposition, as in (2), function 

as conjuncts, bearing the same thematic relationship to the predicate. Dalrymple et al. (1998) also 

argue for denotational uniformity of AND-type and WITH-type coordinations (with reference to 

Russian). Both types of coordination are assumed to be semantically represented as sums (in terms 

of Link (1984)). By contrast, Urtz (1994) believes that a comitative preposition, unlike a 

conjunction, always implies a close but unequal relationship between two referents, where the 

referent of the instrumental NP is more or less subordinate. Miller (1971), Comacho (1994, 2000), 

McNally (1993) and Kopcinska (1995) also claim that there is a slight difference between ANDtype 

coordination and WITH-type coordination. They suggest that in contrast to individuals in the 

denotation of ordinary coordination, individuals in the denotation of a WITH-type coordination are 

related to each other in some relevant sense. Instances of such relatedness include family 

relationships such as that between husband and wife, between mother and child, or between brother 

and sister, or professional relationships such as the relationship between doctor and patient, or 

between teacher and student, as well as many other relationships. While Miller (1971) provides a 

syntactic explanation for the difference between AND-type coordination, which he calls ―loose 

type of coordination‖, and WITH-type coordination, which he refers to as ―close type of 

coordination‖, McNally (1993) proposes to describe the postulated relatedness between the 

referents of WITH-type coordination by means of conventional implicature. 

The goal of this paper is to verify the hypothesis of relatedness by examining the distribution of a 

number of AND-type coordinations and the corresponding WITH-type coordinations in Polish texts 

of different registers. For our investigations, we use data from the current version of the National 

Corpus of Polish (http://nkjp.pl), which contains both written and spoken registers. We 

analyze the frequency of expressions like those involved in (1) and (2) in various text types, such as 

classic literature, daily newspapers, specialist periodicals and journals, transcripts of conversations, 

and a variety of internet texts. The results of our initial observations suggest that the hypothesis of 

103


relatedness is correct, and, therefore, it seems to be worthy of further empirical exploration and 

theoretical discussion. 

References 

Comacho, J. (1994). Comitative Coordination in Spanish. In C. Parodi, C. Quicoli, M. Saltarelli, and M. L. Zubizarreta 

(Eds.), Aspects of Romance Linguistics, Number XXIV in Selected Papers from the Linguistic Symposium on 

Romance Languages, pp. 107–122. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. 

Comacho, J. (2000). Structural Restrictions on Comitative Coordination. Linguistic Inquiry 31, 366–375. 

Dalrymple, M., I. Hayrapetian, and T. King (1998). The Semantics of the Russian Comitative Construction. Natural 

Language and Linguistic Theory 16, 597–631. 

Dyła, S. (1988). Quasi-Comitative Coordination in Polish. Linguistics 26, 383–414. 

Dyła, S. (2003). Note on Gender Resolution in the Plural Pronoun Construction in Polish. Glot International 7(3), 383– 

414. 

Feldman, A. (2002). On NP-Coordination. In S. Baauw, M. Huiskes, and M. Schoorlemmer (Eds.), Yearbook 2002, pp. 

39–67. Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS. 

Ionin, T. and O. Matushansky (2003). DPs with a Twist: A Unified Analysis of Russian Comitatives. In W. Browne, J.- 

Y. Kim, B. H. Partee, and R. A. Rothstein (Eds.), Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 11: The Amherst Meeting 

2002, Ann Arbor, pp. 255–274. Michigan Slavic Publications. 

Kopcinska, D. (1995). Czy słowo ´z mo˙ze pełniá sam c tak ˛a funkcj˛e jak słowo i? [Can the Word z ‗with‘ Act as the 

Word i ‗and‘?]. In M. Grochowski (Ed.), Wyra˙zenia funkcyjne w systemie i tek´scie [Functional Expressions within 

the System and the Text], pp. 125–136. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika. 

Ladusaw, W. A. (1989). Group Reference and the Plural Pronoun Construction. In Papers on the Plural Pronoun 

Construction and Comitative Coordination, pp. 1–7. UCSC Syntax Research Center Report SRC-89-02. 

Link, G. (1984). Hydras. On the Logic of Relative Constructions with Multiple Heads. In F. Landman and 

F. Veltman (Eds.), Varieties of Formal Semantics: Proceedings of the Fourth Amsterdam Colloquium, Number 3 in 

Groningen-Amsterdam Studies in Semantics, Dordrecht, pp. 245–257. Foris. 

McNally, L. (1993). Comitative Coordination: A Case Study in Group Formation. Natural Language and Linguistic 

Theory 11, 347–379. 

Miller, J. (1971). Some Types of ‗Phrasal Conjunction‘ in Russian. Journal of Linguistics 8, 55–69. 

Schwartz, L. (1988). Conditions for Verb-Coded Coordinations. In M. Hammond, E. Moravcsik, and J. Wirth (Eds.), 

Studies in Syntactic Typology, Typological Studies in Language (TSL), Amsterdam, Philadelphia, pp. 53–73. John 

Benjamins Publishing Company. 

Skrabalova, H. (2003). Comitative Constructions in Czech. In P. Kosta, J. Błaszczak, J. Frasek, L. Geist, and 

M. ˙Zygis (Eds.), Investigations into Formal Slavic Linguistics. Contributions of the Fourth European Conference on 

Formal Description of Slavic Languages (FDSL IV) held at Potsdam University, November 28–30, 2001, Number 

10/1–2 in Linguistik International, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 685–696. Lang. 

Trawinski, B. (2005). Plural Comitative Constructions in Polish. In S. Müller (Ed.), The Proceedings of the 12th 

International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Department of Informatics, University of 

Lisbon, pp. 375–395. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 

Urtz, B. (1994). The Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of a Nominal Conjunction — The Case of Russian “S”. Ph. D. 

thesis, Harvard University. 

Vassilieva, M. B. and R. K. Larson (2005). The Semantics of the Plural Pronoun Construction. Natural Language 

Semantics 13, 101–124. 

104


Rory Turnbull and Yuliia Aloshycheva (OSU) 

turnbull@ling.osu.edu, aloshycheva.1@osu.edu 

Word Frequency and Second Mention Effects on Phonetic Reduction in Russian 

The effects of lexical frequency on language perception and production are well-known and have been 

supported experimentally by many studies (e.g. Bybee, 2001). Among the numerous effects of lexical 

frequency, one of the biggest is claimed to be phonetic reduction or shortening (Jurafsky et al., 2001). 

Another well-studied phonetic effect is second mention reduction, by which a word is more likely to be 

phonetically reduced the second time it is said in a discourse (Baker & Bradlow, 2009; Fowler & Housum 

1987). 

Much of the literature thus far deals with these phenomena in English, and little to no research has 

been done on whether these generalizations hold true for Slavic languages such as Russian. Further, very 

little investigation has been done into the interplay between frequency-conditioned reduction and 

second mention reduction. This study therefore has two main aims: determining whether these phonetic 

generalizations about frequency effects and second mention reduction hold true for Slavic languages; 

and whether these two phenomena interact in a meaningful way. Does frequency affect reduction on the 

second mention? Since it is well-established that high-frequency words are already phonetically reduced, 

it is possible that low-frequency words possess more scope for second-mention reduction. We thus 

hypothesize that after being exposed to both low- and high-frequency words, more extensive phonetic 

reduction will be observed in production of the low-frequency words than the high-frequency words. 

To test this hypothesis we used a novel methodology which allowed us to control for the desired 

frequency in a successfully disguised manner. We chose Russian as our language of investigation, as it 

has readily accessible word frequency information available via the Russian National Corpus. Subjects 

were presented with a series of informative and cohesive texts of a relatively formal style---similar to 

news reports or encyclopedia entries---both on-screen and through headphones. Crucially, each text 

featured two high-frequency words (e.g. pravitel’stvo, ‘government’) and two low-frequency words (e.g. 

podnošenie, ‘gift, tribute’). Directly before and directly after these texts were presented, productions of 

these words were elicited from the subjects. The duration of each target word production was measured 

and the pre- and post-text conditions compared. 

Preliminary data from pilot tests confirm the presence of a frequency effect, whereby more common 

words are pronounced with a shorter duration than less common words. Linear regression showed log 

frequency to be a significant predictor of duration (R 2 = 0.237, p < 0.001). A paired t-test revealed 

evidence for second-mention reduction, with the words being pronounced significantly shorter on 

second utterance (t = 2.781, df = 59, p < 0.01). Further, the data suggest the possibility of an interaction 

between these two phenomena. 

105


The existence of both of these effects in Russian lends support to the generalization that they are 

universal phonetic processes. We seek to explain this through a functional explanation rooted in the 

notions of expectation or probability (Aylett & Turk, 2004; Hume, 2008). Such an approach helps explain 

why these effects appear to be context-specific (Fowler, 1988). 

References: 

Aylett, M. and Turk, A. E. (2004). The smooth signal redundancy hypothesis: A functional explanation for 

relationships between redundancy, prosodic prominence, and duration in spontaneous speech. 

Language and Speech, 47(1):31–56. 

Baker, R. and Bradlow, A. R. (2009). Variability in word duration as a function of probability, speech style, 

and prosody. Language and Speech, 52(4):391–413. 

Bybee, J. (2001). Phonology and Language Use. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 

Fowler, C. A. (1988). Differential shortening of repeated context words produced in various 

communicative contexts. Language and Speech, 31:307–319. 

Fowler, C. A. and Housum, J. (1987). Talkers’ signaling of “new” and “old” words in speech and listeners’ 

perception and use of the distinction. Journal of Memory and Language, 26:489–504. 

Hume, E. (2008). Markedness and the language user. Phonological Studies, 11. 

Jurafsky, D., Bell, A., Gregory, M., and Raymond, W. (2001). Probabilistic relations between words: 

Evidence from reduction in lexical production. In Bybee, J. and Hopper, P., editors, Frequency and the 

emergence of linguistic structure. John Benjamins, Amsterdam. 

106


Ruprecht von Waldenfels (Universitaet Bern) 

ruprecht.waldenfels@issl.unibe.ch 

Tracing areality on the basis of a parallel corpus: aspect in the Slavic imperative 

Recent years has seen interest in the comparison of aspect across Slavic, with a growing 

recognition of a broad east-west-divide as to the use (or semantics) of the category (see Dickey 

2000, Barentsen 1998, Petrukhina 2000). However, little studies have so far taken all Slavic 

languages into consideration. When this is done, as in the research project devoted to aspect in 

the morphological infinitive in Slavic, described in Benacchio 2004, 2003 and others, the analyis 

usually takes departure from aspectual functions in Russian, where the category of aspect has 

received most attention so far. 

The present study takes a different, bottom-up approach, by systematically investigating 

translational equivalents in the ParaSol Slavic parallel corpus. The study is strictly corpus driven, 

taking departure from aspect use in Bulgakov‘s Master i Margarita and its translations into all 

modern Slavic literary languages with the exception of Sorbian. For contrast, Modern Greek is 

included in the analyis as a Non-Slavic contrast language. 

The analysis proceeds as follows. In a first step, all instances of the imperatives in the Russian 

original are extracted; a variety of erroneous cases (pragmatic markers, etc.) are discarded. Then, 

verbal aspect in these imperatives is compared with aspect usage in the corresponding segments 

of four other Slavic languages. Further investigation is then restricted to those contexts where 

these translations show intraslavic variation in respect toaspect(about40%ofallimperatives), 

butexpandedtoalltranslations(calleddoculects here). 

For analysis, each use of the imperative is considered a data point with one of three values: 

perfective, imperfective or non-assigned (for biaspectuals, alignment mistakes, gaps in the 

translation etc.) The resulting data matrix is then transformed to a matrix of distances between 

different doculects. This distance matrix is visualized using a near-neighbor network 

implemented in SplitsTree (Husan and Brant 2006), a software package for investigating 

phylogenetic networks on the basis of biological data. 

Asidefromoneimportantexception, theresultingvisualizationasshowninfigure1clearly confirms the 

east-west-distribution mentioned above: the maximal distance in the graph is between the East 

Slavic texts and Slovene, Czech and Slovak; the other doculects fall inbetween, 

withthemostextremegapobtainingbetweenCzech/Slovak onone, andPolish on the other side. 

The subtypes involved suggest an areal cline with more functions for the imperfective aspect 

obtaining from West to East. However, the Macedonian translation, perhaps surprisingly, does 

not pattern with the Bulgarian text, but with Croatian and Slovenian. Thefactthatmodern Greek 

likewise patterns with thesedoculextsmaysuggestacommon explanation for these languages along 

the lines of contact language influences, namely German / Romance in the West and the other 

Balkan languages / Romance in the South-East. 

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Figure 1: Neighbor-net representation of the Slavic doculects. 

References: 

ParaSol: A parallel corpus of Slavic and Other languages. UniversityofBern, Switzerland, 

and Regensburg, Germany. Available at www-korpus.uni-r.de/ParaSol. 

Barentsen, A. (1998): Priznak «sekventnaja svjaz‘» i vidovoe protivopostavlenie v 

russkomjazyke. In: M.Ju. Čertkova (ed.): Tipologija vida. Problemy, poiski, rešenija, 

43-58. Moskva. 

Benacchio, R (2004): Glagol‘nyj vid v imperative v juţnoslavjanskich jazykach. In: 

Sokrovennye smysli. Slovo. Tekst. Kul‟tura. Moskva, 267 275. 

Benacchio, R (2005): Glagol‘nyj vid v imperative v cešskom i slovackom jazykach. In: 

Jazyk. Licnost‟. Tekst. Moskva, 191200. 

Dickey, S.M. (2000): Parameters of Slavic Aspect: A Cognitive Approach. Chicago. 

Huson,D.H.andD.Bryant(2006): ApplicationofPhylogeneticNetworksinEvolutionary Studies, Mol. Biol. Evol., 

23(2):254–267. 

Petrukhina, E. (2000): Aspektual‟nye kategorii glagola v russkom iazyke v sopostavlenii s 

chešskim, slovackim, polskim i bolgarskim jazykami. Moskva. 

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Ruprecht von Waldenfels (Universitaet Bern) 

ruprecht.waldenfels@issl.unibe.ch 

Using a parallel corpus in undergraduate teaching 

The paper describes an approach to an introduction to (Slavic) linguistics that tries to accomodate 

a broad audience of people studying various Slavic languages by using a parallel text, Bulgakov‘s 

Master and Margarita in translations into almost all Slavic languages. After a number of more 

general topics which students are asked to illustrate and explore on the basis of the text in any 

language, attention is turned to morphology and word form lists of these texts are issued in two 

versions: as alphabetical lists and sortedbyfrequency. 

Theselists(andtheparalleltexts)thenserveasmaterialforstudying the principles of morphological 

distributional analysis and the relation of word forms and texts, in general. 

This perspective, effectively moving from content to form is a powerful device for furthering the 

understanding of fundamental properties of morphology and syntax which, I expect, cannot be as 

easily demonstrated with less inflecting languages. I have found that such insights into language 

structures can be achieved even if students do not know Slavic languages well yet. The possibility 

of such insights may be part of what the study of Slavic languages in particular may offer for the 

"wider curriculum". 

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Anton Zimmerling & Elena Kulinich (Moscow State University for Humanities, University of Montreal) 

meinmat@yahoo.com, ekulinich@yahoo.com 

Dative-predicative structures and lexical predicatives in Russian and Ukrainian 

The paper discusses the status of lexical predicatives used in dative-impersonal structures in two 

neighbor Slavic languages, Russian and Ukrainian. Both languages have large classes of non-agreeing 

nominal forms which are used as Stage-level predicates and denote state of affairs that cannot be 

interpreted as a direct result of any process or activity, cf. Ukr. Meni sumno “I am sad”, Rus. mne grustno 

“the same”. Russian has 260-270 predicatives, which select a dative subject with the feature [+Animate], 

Ukrainian has 200-210 predicatives of this kind. The majority of predicatives in both languages have an – 

o-final and are derived from adjectival stems (cf. sumn-yj, grustn-yj). 

We argue that the ability to take a dative subject is a non-trivial feature in both languages: both Russian 

and Ukrainian have many adjectival stems from which no Stage-level form can be derived, cf. Rus. mne 

smeshno ‘it makes me laugh’, smeshn-oj adj. ‘funny, amusing’, but Rus. *mne smeshlivo, smechlivyj, adj. 

‘X is easily amused’. Consequently, adjectival stems should be divided into a class permitting derivation 

of Stage-level predicates and a class banning it. Stems banning derivation of Stage-level predicates can 

only produce designations of properties tied up to specific referents. Stems permitting derivation of 

Stage-level predicates as a rule also produce designations of properties, but there are few exceptions, 

where predicatives with an o-final don’t correlate with any agreeing forms, cf. stydno ‘X is ashamed’, 

*stydnyj, bojazno ‘X is frightened’, *bojaznyj. The forms like stydno are more typical of Russian than of 

Ukrainian, where adjectives stydnyj, bojaznyj exist. The class of predicatives is closed in neither language 

and can accommodate borrowings and new formations, cf. Ukr. colloquial meni kul’n-o ‘I feel cool’ < Eng. 

cool and Rus. colloquial mne fioletov-o ‘It doesn’t matter to me’ < fioletov-yj ‘purple’. 

We argue that the parallelism of Russian and Ukrainian syntax of predicatives is a result of contact 

development. While the patterns of the dative-predicative structures in both languages are almost 

identical, Ukrainian and Russian share about 100 predicative stems, roughly one half of the entire 

Ukrainian class. The origin of this shared stock has never been investigated. We assume that a minor part 

of the shared stems might be inherited from a common source, while the major part was borrowed from 

Russian into Ukrainian. The tentative borrowings from Russian always have close synonyms in 

predicatives attested only in Ukrainian and lacking from Russian. The borrowing in the opposite direction 

is unlikely since the class of predicatives is larger in Russian, and their lexical meanings are more varied. 

Therefore, predicatives of Ukrainian origin (cf. sumno, zhurno, tuzhno ‘X is sad, bored, distressed’) do not 

add new lexical meanings compared with their equivalents in codified Russian: the chances that such 

items can be absorbed by the Russian lexicon are low, since they introduce new predicative stems which 

are synonymic to the existing ones. Such forms don’t get a high social status and are associated with 

stylistically non-neutral texts. 

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LITERATURE 

Issachenko A.V. O vozniknovenii i razvitii “kategorii sostojanija” v slavjanskih jazykah //Voprosy 

jazykoznanija, 1955, N 6. 

Zatovkaňuk M. Neosobní predikativa a utváry přibuzné, zvlaště v ruštine //Rozpravy 

Československé akademie věd, 1965, sešit 6, ročník 75. 

Zimmerling A.V. Istorija odnoj polemiki // Jazyk i recevaja dejateljnostj, 1998, № 1, 63-88. 

Zimmerling А. Dative Subjects and Semi-Expletive pronouns // Studies in Formal Slavic 

Phonology, Syntax, Semantics and Information Structure/G.Zybatow, Uwe Junghanns, Denisa Lenertová, 

Petr Biskup (eds). Frankfurt-a-M-Berlin-Bern-Bruxelles-N.Y –Oxford-Wien: Peter Lang, 2009, 253-265. 

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Anton Zimmerling (Moscow State University for Humanities) 

meinmat@yahoo.com 

Syntactic criteria for identifying Russian and Ukrainian predicatives 

A prominent feature of Slavic, Baltic and Germanic languages are sentence patterns with the dative case 

marking on the semantic subject. The predicative nucleus in these patterns can be represented by a) an 

infinitive used in Dative-Infinitive Structures Ndat — Vinf, cf. [Mrazek 1990]; b) a special finite verbal form, 

as in Latvian [Holvoet 2001]; c) a non-agreeing nominal predicate called slovo kategorii sostojanija (lit. 

‘Category-of-State form’ in the Russian tradition *Ščerba 1974+, or lexical predicatives in [Zimmerling 

2010]. The last term specifies that non-agreeing nominal predicates used in Dative-Predicative Structures 

of the type Ndat — Vlink — Pred are not identical with any participles or adjectives. They lack such verbal 

categories as voice, aspect, tense or mood and do not denote states of affairs that can be interpreted as 

a direct result of any process or activity. Dative-Predicative-Structure with lexical predicatives are 

attested in Ukrainian, Czech, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croat, Old Icelandic, Old Swedish, Modern Icelandic, 

Lithuanian. In these languages agreeing adjectives and participles are used for expressing predicative 

meanings of a different type. Meanwhile, most of these languages have or have earlier had productive 

word-building mechanisms deriving lexical predicatives from a subclass of adjectives. In Germanic, it is 

strong adjectives, in Slavic and Baltic it is short adjectives: the ending of Nom.-Acc. Sg. Neut. is the most 

common marker of predicatives in Germanic, Baltic and Slavic areas. Therefore, one needs a syntactic 

procedure for identifying lexical predicatives and keeping them apart from agreeing adjectives. In 

Russian and Ukrainian, both lexical predicatives and agreeing adjectives can take dative arguments, but 

agreeing adjectives can also take non-sentential nominative arguments, while lexical predicatives cannot. 

I propose the following checking procedure for these languages: 

A nominal non-agreeing form can be identified as a lexical predicative in Ukrainian and Russian if 

it selects a dative subject and is used in dative-predicative structures in such a way that: 

(i) It can form a complete sentence with the sole dative argument, cf. Rus. mne tošno ‘I am sick’, Rus. 

mne stydno ‘I feel ashamed’. 

Or: 

(ii) it can at once take the dative subject and be expanded by an infinitival complement, cf. Rus. mne 

nužno [ujti +‘I need *to leave/go+’. 

Or: 

(iii) it can at once take the dative subject and be expanded by a CP-argument with complementizers 

Rus. čto ‘that’, Ukr. ščo ‘that’, cf. Rus. mne stydno, [čto on opazdal+ ‘I feel ashamed that he 

came late’. 

And: 

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(iv) it can at once take the dative subject and the semi-formal pronoun Rus. eto ‘it’, Ukr. ce, cf. Rus. 

mne eto ne nužno ‘I don’t need it’, Ukr. meni ce cikavo ‘it is interesting to me’. 

One and the same lexical predicative may allow for options (i-iv), but this is not a general requirement. If 

a nominal form only allows for the option (iv), but not (i-iii), it is not a predicative, but an agreeing 

adjective. Cf. Rus. (1) mne eto-Nom.Sg.Neut. čuždo-Nom.Sg.Neut ‘This is alien to me’, but Rus. (2) mne 

eti-Nom.Pl. veš’i-Nom.Pl. čuždy-Nom.Pl. ‘These things are alien to me’: the conclusive proof that čuždo in 

(1) is not a non-agreeing predicative and exhibits an agreement relation with eto, comes from the fact 

that čuždo does not allow for options (i-iii): 

(i) Rus. *mne čuždo. 

(ii) Rus. *mne čuždo pisatj knigi intended meaning “It is alien to me to write books”. 

(iii) Rus. *mne čuždo, čto on pišet knigi intended meaning “It is alien to me that he writes books”. 

Russian and Ukrainian lexical predicatives are used as Stage-level predicates. The 

presence/absence of agreeing correlates (cf. Rus. smešnoj vs *stydnyj) does not have any impact 

on the semantics of a predicative in any language. At the same time, the presence/absence of 

agreeing correlates is relevant for a structural classification of adjectival stems. The non-trivial 

feature of stems from the class stydn- is that they are used only for producing Stage-level 

predicates and cannot be used for denoting properties of objects or persons. I label stems from 

this class ‗stems with a situative polarity‘. Modern Russian and Ukrainian also have a class of 

adjectival stems that are used only for producing designations of objects or persons. The 

adjectives from this class are either not capable of any predicative usage in structures without 

agreement (Rus. *mne gnevno, *eto gnevno), or cannot be used in Dative-Predicative Structures 

(Rus. *mne alogično, eto alogično). I label stems from this class ‗stems with an argument 

polarity‘. Finally, Modern Russian and Ukrainian have a class of stems that both produce 

designations of objects/persons and Stage-level predicates: Rus. mne skučno, skučnyj film. I label 

stems from this class ‗ambivalent stems‘. 

LITERATURE 

Holvoet A. (2001) Studies in the Latvian Verb. Kraków. 

Mrazek R. (1990). Sravniteljnyj sintaksis slavyanskih literaturnih jazykov. Brno. 

Ščerba L.V. (1974) Yazykovaja sistema i recevaya dejateljnost’. М.-L. 

Zimmerling А. (2010) Imennye predicativy i dativnye predloženia v evropejskih yazykah // 

Kompjuternaya lingvistika i intellektualnye technologii, vol. 9 (16) (Proceeding of the International Conference 

“Dialogue 2010”). M, 549-558. 

113


Jelena Vujić (Belgrade University) 

jvujic@sbb.rs 

ON GENDER (AND NUMBER) ASSIGNMENT IN SOME RECENT 

ANGLICISMS IN SERBIAN 

The processes by which words transfer from one language into other are numerous and complex 

and this issue has been the topic of many scientific studies in the field of contact linguistics. 

Already complicated and intricate ways and mechanisms of lexical borrowing acquire additional 

complexity in the cases when the lexical material transfer happens between two systematically 

different languages, such as English and Serbian (Serbo-Croat). This paper investigates the 

gender assignment in some nominal lexical borrowings from English in which gender 

assignment on nouns rests on "semantic criteria with almost no formal clues" (Corbett 1991) 

into Serbian (Serbo-Croat) in which both semantic gender assignment rules and formal gender 

assignment rules relying on nouns' morpho-phonological features are in operation (Ivic 1963, 

Stevanovic 1956, Corbett 1991). 

The problem of gender assignment in lexical borrowings is the topic that linguists have been 

interested in for quite a while and there is a vast literature on the gender of borrowings resulting 

from various language contacts ( Poplack, Pousada & Sankoff 1982; Wawryzniak 1985; Poplack, 

Sankoff &Miller 1988; Corbett 1991; Fuller & Lehnert 2000). Gender assignment is seen by 

linguists as one means available to speakers to incorporate foreign material into the host 

language (Poplack, Pousada & Sankoff 1982). In our paper we take a corpus of some 1000 recent 

lexical borrowings from English in Serbian. Roughly two thirds of this number are nominal 

lexical borrowings, predominantly assigned with male gender. However the particular interest of 

our research are minority of nouns assigned female gender. We analyse the mechanisms used for 

female gender assignment in anglicisms in Serbian and various problems in the declension of 

such nouns in Serbian once they have been fully adopted and adapted. 

Most commonly the morpho-phonological information ( typically the nouns ending in -a) 

classifies the particular borrowing as feminine noun of type III declension such as in starlette > 

starletA; icon > ikonA; hostess > hostesA; console > konzolA. on the other hand some nouns in 

-a in English are not assigned an expected female gender but male like in sandinista, fashionista, 

The problem arises from the fact that very few nominal lexical borrowings from English end in - 

a, so Serbian speakers try to accommodate such nouns by suffixing them with productive female 

attributing suffixes of Slavic origin - ica, and -ka. This is particularly the case with nouns that 

are considered to have a common gender in English such as skater > skejter (m), -KA (f); 

trendsetter > trendseter, -KA. Apart from such relatively regular examples the paper presents the 

cases of those nouns that are unmarked for gender in English such as yard, laundry, shop but due 

to concept association with their Serbian equivalents ( baštA, vešernicA, radnjA -pordavnicA) 

they are assigned female gender by morphophonological adaptation of adding -a as in jardA, 

landrA, šopA. Particular attention in the paper is given to the semantic and cognitive analsys of 

the cases of English compound nouns containing the word MAN and their adaptation in Serbian. 

114


In English, nouns of the type businessman are overtly marked for male gender and their female 

counterparts have different forms with WOMAN as the second constituent ( business-woman (f), 

while in Serbian nouns of this type which are explicitly both formally and semantically marked 

for male gender become additionally suffixed for female gender as in biznismen (m) > 

biznismenKA. Additional problems in gender assignment of English nouns in Serbian is gender 

interdependency with number in some cases. The cases of semantic gender defy declension in 

plural so two parallel singular forms exist like in miss>mis (sg.f.)/misica (sg.f) > misice (pl.f.) or 

no plural exists at all like in lady > ledi (sg.f.) > / (pl.f.). Furthermore, the gender assignment 

patterns become additionally complicated in the cases semantic gender remains female while 

grammatical is male as in top-model which has female reference but grammatical agreement of 

male denoting noun. 

References: 

Corbett, G., 1991. Gender, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Fuller, J.M. & Lenhert, H., 2000. Noun phrase structure in German-English codeswitching: 

Variation in gender assignment and article use, in International Journal of Bilingualism 4 (3): 

399-420 

Gregor, B., 1983. Genuszuordnung, Tubingen: Niemeyer 

Ivic, M., 1963. The realtion of gender and number in Serbocratian nominal substantives. 

International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 6: 51-57 

Poplack, S., A. Pousada & D. Sankoff, 1982. Competing influences on gender assignment: 

variable process, stable outcome, Lingua 56:139-166. 

Poplack, S., D. Sankoff & C. Miller, 1988. The social correlates and lexical processes lexical 

borrowing and assimilation. Linguistics 26: 47-104 

Stanojcic, Z & Lj. Popovic. 2000. Gramatika srpskog jezika, Beograd: Zavod za udzbenike i 

nastavna sredstva. 

Stevanovic, M. 1956. Gramatika srpskohrvatskog jezika. Cetinje: Obod. 

Stevanovic, M. 1986. Savremeni srpski jezik 1i 2, Beograd: Naucna knjiga. 

Wawrzyniak, U., 1985. Das Genus franzosischer Lehnworter in Deutschen, in Zetschrift fur 

Sprachwissenschaft 4 (2): 201-217 

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