Journal of Slavic Linguistics最新文献

Anaphor binding is a broadly-studied and widely-used diagnostic for syntactic structure across languages: since anaphors (which are subject to Principle A of the Binding Theory) require an antecedent that is local, c-commanding and in an A-position, the possibility of anaphor binding is commonly used as a diagnostic for both c-command (e.g. Barss & Lasnik 1986) and A- vs. A'- distinction. This use of anaphor binding as a syntactic diagnostic is not without problems, however, as evidenced from the debate surrounding the structure of OVS sentences in Russian. The goals of this paper are, thus, three-fold: (a) to gain a better understanding of anaphor binding as a syntactic diagnostic, (b) to shed new light on the long-standing and hotly-debated puzzle of OVS sentences in Russian, and (c) to explore the interaction of syntax and semantics, as concerns binding and thematic roles.

This paper analyzes the SOV order in Russian. Various hypotheses concerning its distribution have been proposed in previous functional and formal studies, but none of them became widely accepted. We tested these hypotheses on the large "Taiga" corpus and found that the main factor that triggers SOV is pronominalization: if the object is pronominal, it is highly likely to be preverbal. The absolute majority of non-pronominal objects follow the verb, although both giveness and contrastive, emphatic or narrow focus increase their (altogether very small) chances to be preverbal. Thus, the factors discussed in many previous studies play a role, but this role is extremely small. We propose a syntactic account to capture different information-structural properties of preverbal objects and the optionality of this construction.

This paper builds on the proposal that human languages reconstruct back to an intransitive (one argument) absolutive-like grammar. Such grammars are arguably still found in a variety of constructions across languages, including in verb-noun compounds in e.g. English and Serbian, and in Serbian se "middles." Given the highly productive nature of se middles in Serbian, and given their specialization for low elaboration of events, and for the inanimate end of the Animacy Hierarchy, the proposal is that Serbian is best analyzed as a split-accusative language, on analogy with split-ergative languages, in that its dominant/default grammar is accusative, but the absolutive grammar (ergativity) occupies a significant niche.

The paper reports on an experiment that shows the preference of pair-list interpretations over single-pair interpretations in Russian multiple coordinated and non-coordinated wh-interrogatives and wh-exclamatives. Moreover, the paper points out that neither the Superiority effect nor the distinction between argument and adjunct wh-phrases determines the choice of an interpretation in interrogatives and exclamatives. In general, the results challenge the existing theories of multiple wh-interrogatives and open a new page in investigating multiple wh-exclamatives.

Reviewed by:

• Approaches to Predicative Possession: The View from Slavic and Finno-Ugric ed. by Gréte Dalmi, Jacek Witkoś, and Piotr Cegłowski
• Ljuba Veselinova

It is widely acknowledged that possession is a universal domain in the sense that all known human languages have conventionalized expressions for it, such as (1) and (2) below (cf. Heine 1997: 2). Like most abstract notions, the domain of possession defies a generally accepted definition. Yet, as pointed out by Stassen (2009: 10–11), most linguists and laymen would agree that the expressions in (1) and (2) illustrate cases of "real"/prototypical possession, while intuitions and views would differ on whether sentences such as (3–6) would count as examples of possession.

(1) Tom has a car.

(2) his car

(3) Frank has a sister.

(4) A spider has six legs.

(5) Mandy has a basket on her lap.

(6) Bill has the flu.

The domain of possession has been construed in terms of judicial ownership, belonging, and spatial proximity. Perhaps one of the most accepted analyses sees possession as a relation between two entities, a possessor and a possessee (Langacker 1991; Stassen 2009; Heine 1997). There are authors, such as Miller and Johnson-Laird (1976), who see possession as a social construct; this understanding has been subject to debate. A number of scholars (Seiler 1973; Hagège 1993; Heine 1997; Evans 1995; Stassen 2009, among others) bring up the aspect of control¹ in the relation possessor-possessee. That is, in the prototypical case, the possessor controls the relation over the possessee. This, in turn, entails that a prototypical possessor is a high-ranking animate, usually [End Page 353] a human, and a prototypical possessee is an inanimate object, as is the case in the predication shown in (1). Analyses of kinship relations, as well as encodings of body parts versus the body they belong to, as in (3) and (4), bring out aspects of durability and part-whole relations that contribute to the semantic complexity of the domain of possession. Thus, possessees that can be detached from the possessor without any physical/other kind of damage instantiate alienable possession, while possessees whose detachment leads to permanent destruction, for instance, the removal of one

Abstract:

This paper considers components necessary for a successful account of A-binding relations in Polish, a language with subject-oriented reflexives and a binding domain delimited by the Tensed Sentence Condition. Following the presentation of major relevant data points in Polish, two comprehensive theories of binding—the Agree-based theory, presented in Reuland 2011, and the Move-based theory, presented in Boeckx et.al. 2008—are briefly outlined and applied to said data. It turns out that the two theories, in their most orthodox forms, fall short of achieving empirical adequacy. Subsequently, a positive theory of A-binding is proposed which combines upward Agree, movement (and copy pronunciation) of the bound element, similar to movement of clitic/weak pronoun in Polish, and a lexicalization algorithm modeled upon the proposals in Safir 2014 and Nikolaeva 2014. It is shown in a number of derivations with possessives how both the subject and the object engage in binding relations as antecedents and how their dependents become lexicalized as either reflexive or pronominal.

Reviewed by:

• Grammatika prilagatel′nogo: Tipologija ad′′jektivnosti i atributivnosti by P. V. Graščenkov
• Egor Tsedryk

1. Introduction

It seems inconceivable to describe syntactic properties of a given language without reference to parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, and so on). They are inherited from traditional grammars of well-known languages and are usually taken for granted. Nonetheless, one may wonder whether or not they are universal and how languages encode them in their systems. Focusing on the adjective, Graščenkov (hereafter: G) in his book scrutinizes the morphosyntactic properties of this category from a crosslinguistic perspective, with Russian being the most representative (in addition to being the language of the book). As the author points out from the outset, Russian embraces a large "zone of grammatical phenomena typologically related to adjectives" (p. 10).¹ Nevertheless, the reader avid for crosslinguistic data will find a wealth of examples from many other typologically unrelated languages; next to Russian, these are Ossetic, Altaic, and Nakh-Daghestanian languages. Overall, the book covers an impressive array of languages, listed at the end of the book (pp. 427–29), with a total of 73 tokens. It is clear that such a volume of data is impossible to cover without the use of secondary sources, but the author also reports data collected during his own fieldwork, including expeditions dating back to his work under the supervision of Aleksandr Evgenievič Kibrik. In the preface, the author acknowledges Kibrik's influence on his broader typological view of adjectives. He also mentions Ekaterina Anatolievna Lyutikova, who influenced his choice of syntax as a main field of interest. In fact, G's keenness for syntactic analysis emerges through the book (selected structures from chapters 2 and 3 will be presented in sections 2.2 [End Page 329] and 2.3). The book has four chapters, which I will report on sequentially in §2. Starting from chapter 2, the material presented in the book is quite dense (and sometimes it goes beyond the realm of adjectives in their strict understanding). For this reason, I have to limit myself to selected highlights. For expository purposes, I will mostly focus on Russian, with only a couple of examples taken from Altaic and Nakh-Daghestanian languages (see §2.4). In §3 I revisit the extended projections that G proposes for the adjectives in Russian, and I briefly conclude in §4.

2. Summary

2.1. Chapter 1

The book starts with an overview of approaches to parts of speech, presenting both functional

Abstract:

Several recent accounts (Lowenstamm 2014; Nevins 2015; Creemers, Don, and Fenger 2017) couched in the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993, 1994) argue for extending the separation between roots and categorial heads to derivational affixes. Such approaches offer a straightforward account of affixes that surface under different categorial embeddings (e.g., -ant, both in the noun defendant and in the adjective defiant) by viewing these affixes as roots. In this article, the affixes-as-roots approach is applied to Slovenian affixes. An account is proposed of the variable prosodic behavior of Slovenian derivational affixes, which behave as either stress-attracting or stress-neutral. It is shown that Slovenian derivational affixes have no lexical stress and all their prosodic effects follow from the structures in which they occur. Specifically, stress-attracting behavior is a result of the fact that sequences of roots with no intermediate functional structure (the so-called radical cores) are spelled out to phonology without any prosodic specification. Phonology then assigns the default final prosody to such sequences, creating the illusion of accented derivational affixes. The proposed account is applied to two affixes, -av and -ov, which occur across categorial embeddings (nominal, verbal, adjectival).

Abstract:

This paper examines sentences with the verbs pomoč' 'help' and pomešat' 'hinder' in Russian and demonstrates that, although they are usually listed among object control predicates, these verbs appear in a wide range of constructions that cannot be accounted for by a straightforward control analysis. To explain the distribution of pomoč' and pomešat', I argue that they are, in essence, ditransitive, similarly to 'give' or 'send': they require a Goal (a person or a situation that will be helped/hindered) and a Theme headed by a silent noun HETP/HINDRANCE. A dative DP, either [+sentient] or eventive, a subjunctive čtoby-clause, or a non-finite clause with an overt subject, when present, should be analyzed as a Goal. A controlled infinitival clause is merged as a modifier within the Theme NP. The approach is extended to control collocations such as 'give a chance'. It further offers an opportunity to develop a uniform structural representation for various verbs of object control that will reduce the differences between them to particular properties of the Theme.

Abstract:

This article investigates the emergence of the cardinal numerals dva 'two', tri 'three', and četyre 'four' in nominal phrases in the Novgorod dialect during the 11th–15th centuries. An innovative approach presented here brings together three productive lines of inquiry—corpus analysis, historical linguistics, and diachronic generative syntax. A corpus analysis was conducted to identify 301 tokens of numeral-containing NPs and to trace the patterns of their diachronic development. The cardinal numerals 2, 3, 4 are shown to evolve from the adjectival "number" words through the process of grammaticalization, more specifically, numeralization. After the loss of dual number, the lower adjectival "number" words for 2, 3, and 4 turned into the cardinal numerals, as their lexically encoded numerosity became functionally encoded countability. The diachrony of the cardinal numerals in the Old Novgorod dialect has shown that the cognitive concepts of cardinality, individuality, and countability are inextricably connected. These concepts are grammatically encoded and subject to diachronic change. This study has demonstrated that a change in grammatical number (loss of the dual) led to the restructuring of countability and the rise of cardinal numerals.