Summary In this article, I examine relative uses of Polish że, which is normally regarded as a ‘that’-type complementizer. As is shown with corpus data, że is in some contexts used as a non-canonical relativizer in colloquial spoken language, a use which may be seen as a relic function reflecting the historical origin of the subordinator. Crucially, I argue that contemporary relative uses of że are restricted to a specific functional variety, i. e. the presentational relative construction, as developed by, among others, Lambrecht (1988a, 1988b), Duffield et al. (2010), and Murelli (2011). Additional issues that will be addressed are the varying degrees of clausal integration and the rather fluid continuum of the very functions performed by że: its relative uses, general subordinator uses, że marking elaboration/reformulation, as well as the relativization/complementation contrast.
{"title":"Presentational relative clauses introduced by że in Polish","authors":"Wojciech Guz","doi":"10.1515/slaw-2023-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/slaw-2023-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Summary In this article, I examine relative uses of Polish że, which is normally regarded as a ‘that’-type complementizer. As is shown with corpus data, że is in some contexts used as a non-canonical relativizer in colloquial spoken language, a use which may be seen as a relic function reflecting the historical origin of the subordinator. Crucially, I argue that contemporary relative uses of że are restricted to a specific functional variety, i. e. the presentational relative construction, as developed by, among others, Lambrecht (1988a, 1988b), Duffield et al. (2010), and Murelli (2011). Additional issues that will be addressed are the varying degrees of clausal integration and the rather fluid continuum of the very functions performed by że: its relative uses, general subordinator uses, że marking elaboration/reformulation, as well as the relativization/complementation contrast.","PeriodicalId":41834,"journal":{"name":"ZEITSCHRIFT FUR SLAWISTIK","volume":"68 1","pages":"307 - 337"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45838091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary The article addresses empirical and methodological issues that are of central concern for an assessment of uninflected function words doing services in clause-combining and/or in indicating the speaker’s stance toward illocutionary force or propositional content. Such units have been variably treated: either just as ‘particles’, as subordinating conjunctions or complementizers, or as auxiliaries of ‘analytic moods’ (marking directive or optative illocutionary force). Whatever they are called, all these units scope over clauses and manipulate their reality status. A discrimination of these types of units is difficult or hardly possible, first of all, because core notions (especially ‘(analytic) mood’ and ‘complementizer’) are ill-defined and their consequent cross-linguistic application suggests an almost arbitrary exchangeability: since the notional contrasts behind them are basically identical, clear criteria based on form and paradigmatic organization are warranted. Jointly, one needs to specify the format of the relevant units in terms of clines between morphemes and words, and between words and constructions, first of all for North Slavic by and South Slavic da. Concomitantly, the delimitation of discourse coherence from syntactic subordination poses notorious problems. First, embedding is a property on a gradient, mainly because symptomatic shifts of egocentricals need not (and often do not) occur simultaneously. Second, there is an enormous grey zone of clausal complements vs adjuncts leaving ample space for indeterminacy. Both intensional and extensional approaches to determining clausal complements have their inherent and empirical weaknesses, and one wonders whether these might be recompensated by combining both types of approaches. The article gives a complex account of general theoretical and empirical pitfalls, with illustrations from a comprehensive body of data across Slavic on a typological background. The article also shows a principled divide between volition- and cognition-based clause connectives (and of their constructions), for which it points out inner-Slavic areal clines.
{"title":"Between analytical mood and clause-initial particles – on the diagnostics of subordination for (emergent) complementizers","authors":"B. Wiemer","doi":"10.1515/slaw-2023-0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/slaw-2023-0012","url":null,"abstract":"Summary The article addresses empirical and methodological issues that are of central concern for an assessment of uninflected function words doing services in clause-combining and/or in indicating the speaker’s stance toward illocutionary force or propositional content. Such units have been variably treated: either just as ‘particles’, as subordinating conjunctions or complementizers, or as auxiliaries of ‘analytic moods’ (marking directive or optative illocutionary force). Whatever they are called, all these units scope over clauses and manipulate their reality status. A discrimination of these types of units is difficult or hardly possible, first of all, because core notions (especially ‘(analytic) mood’ and ‘complementizer’) are ill-defined and their consequent cross-linguistic application suggests an almost arbitrary exchangeability: since the notional contrasts behind them are basically identical, clear criteria based on form and paradigmatic organization are warranted. Jointly, one needs to specify the format of the relevant units in terms of clines between morphemes and words, and between words and constructions, first of all for North Slavic by and South Slavic da. Concomitantly, the delimitation of discourse coherence from syntactic subordination poses notorious problems. First, embedding is a property on a gradient, mainly because symptomatic shifts of egocentricals need not (and often do not) occur simultaneously. Second, there is an enormous grey zone of clausal complements vs adjuncts leaving ample space for indeterminacy. Both intensional and extensional approaches to determining clausal complements have their inherent and empirical weaknesses, and one wonders whether these might be recompensated by combining both types of approaches. The article gives a complex account of general theoretical and empirical pitfalls, with illustrations from a comprehensive body of data across Slavic on a typological background. The article also shows a principled divide between volition- and cognition-based clause connectives (and of their constructions), for which it points out inner-Slavic areal clines.","PeriodicalId":41834,"journal":{"name":"ZEITSCHRIFT FUR SLAWISTIK","volume":"68 1","pages":"187 - 260"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41789580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Integration and Autonomy in Clause Combining: (How) do Linguistic Categories Fit Corpus Data?","authors":"Imke Mendoza, Barbara Sonnenhauser, B. Wiemer","doi":"10.1515/slaw-2023-5005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/slaw-2023-5005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41834,"journal":{"name":"ZEITSCHRIFT FUR SLAWISTIK","volume":"68 1","pages":"183 - 186"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42404321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary In this article, I examine the external and internal syntax of speech act adverbial clauses in Polish with the main focus on conditional clauses headed by the complementizer jeśli ‘if’. I argue that speech act adverbial clauses radically differ from hypothetical/content conditional clauses, and that they adjoin outside the structure of the matrix clause. As far as their internal syntax is concerned, I discuss evidence showing that speech act adverbial clauses project up to JP in Krifka’s terms (2023), and can also host epistemic and evidential expressions.
{"title":"Speech act adverbial clauses: The case of conditional jeśli-clauses in Polish","authors":"Łukasz Jędrzejowski","doi":"10.1515/slaw-2023-0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/slaw-2023-0014","url":null,"abstract":"Summary In this article, I examine the external and internal syntax of speech act adverbial clauses in Polish with the main focus on conditional clauses headed by the complementizer jeśli ‘if’. I argue that speech act adverbial clauses radically differ from hypothetical/content conditional clauses, and that they adjoin outside the structure of the matrix clause. As far as their internal syntax is concerned, I discuss evidence showing that speech act adverbial clauses project up to JP in Krifka’s terms (2023), and can also host epistemic and evidential expressions.","PeriodicalId":41834,"journal":{"name":"ZEITSCHRIFT FUR SLAWISTIK","volume":"68 1","pages":"282 - 306"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44108461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary According to the norms of the contemporary Russian standard language, the covert first argument of the adverbial participle (AP) has to be co-referential with the first argument of its matrix verb. However, other co-reference choices are a frequent phenomenon, as numerous publications both descriptive (Rappaport 1984; Jokojama 1984) and prescriptive (Ickovič 1982; Glovinskaja 2000) testify. Since the reasons for these divergent co-reference choices have been insufficiently addressed so far, we conducted an experiment that tested the influence of linguistic and sociodemographic factors on the co-reference choices. The linguistic factors tested are sentence semantics, argument structure of the verb and linear syntactic order of adverbial participle and matrix clause. Since the adverbial participle has been subject to an intensive normativization process, we assume that the degree of the respondents’ familiarity with prescriptive language rules and the degree of their exposition to texts reflecting these rules influence respondents’ co-reference choices. Therefore, we also tested for sociodemographic factors reflecting these degrees, namely the status of Russian as primary or secondary language, age, gender and highest level of education attained. Our data suggest a contrast between actual language use, in which the co-referential ambiguity of APs is resolved by verb and sentence semantics and the syntactic position of the AP, and the normative rules of Russian grammaticography, which allow only for co-reference with the first argument of the matrix clause. Long-lasting exposure to highly normatized text registers show effect, as respondents with master’s degree or even higher levels of education significantly prefer co-reference with the first argument of the matrix clause even in ambiguous contexts. The paper is structured as follows: The first section gives a survey of the divergent co-reference choices discussed in the literature and identifies linguistic factors hypothesized to influence a speaker’s choice. Section 2 discusses possible sociolinguistic factors affecting the co-reference choice. How these two types of factors are considered in the design of our experiment as well as participant sampling is described in section 3. In section 4 we apply logistic regression to our data and discuss its results, to be followed by the conclusions in section 5.
{"title":"Just Syntax?","authors":"S. Birzer, Hellìk Mayer","doi":"10.1515/slaw-2023-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/slaw-2023-0016","url":null,"abstract":"Summary According to the norms of the contemporary Russian standard language, the covert first argument of the adverbial participle (AP) has to be co-referential with the first argument of its matrix verb. However, other co-reference choices are a frequent phenomenon, as numerous publications both descriptive (Rappaport 1984; Jokojama 1984) and prescriptive (Ickovič 1982; Glovinskaja 2000) testify. Since the reasons for these divergent co-reference choices have been insufficiently addressed so far, we conducted an experiment that tested the influence of linguistic and sociodemographic factors on the co-reference choices. The linguistic factors tested are sentence semantics, argument structure of the verb and linear syntactic order of adverbial participle and matrix clause. Since the adverbial participle has been subject to an intensive normativization process, we assume that the degree of the respondents’ familiarity with prescriptive language rules and the degree of their exposition to texts reflecting these rules influence respondents’ co-reference choices. Therefore, we also tested for sociodemographic factors reflecting these degrees, namely the status of Russian as primary or secondary language, age, gender and highest level of education attained. Our data suggest a contrast between actual language use, in which the co-referential ambiguity of APs is resolved by verb and sentence semantics and the syntactic position of the AP, and the normative rules of Russian grammaticography, which allow only for co-reference with the first argument of the matrix clause. Long-lasting exposure to highly normatized text registers show effect, as respondents with master’s degree or even higher levels of education significantly prefer co-reference with the first argument of the matrix clause even in ambiguous contexts. The paper is structured as follows: The first section gives a survey of the divergent co-reference choices discussed in the literature and identifies linguistic factors hypothesized to influence a speaker’s choice. Section 2 discusses possible sociolinguistic factors affecting the co-reference choice. How these two types of factors are considered in the design of our experiment as well as participant sampling is described in section 3. In section 4 we apply logistic regression to our data and discuss its results, to be followed by the conclusions in section 5.","PeriodicalId":41834,"journal":{"name":"ZEITSCHRIFT FUR SLAWISTIK","volume":"68 1","pages":"338 - 361"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45324281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}