Journal of Slavic Linguistics

Journal of Slavic Linguistics or JSL, is the official journal of the Slavic Linguistics Society. JSL publishes research articles and book reviews that address the description and analysis of Slavic languages and that are of general interest to linguists. Published papers deal with any aspect of synchronic or diachronic Slavic linguistics – phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, or pragmatics – which raises substantive problems of broad theoretical concern or proposes significant descriptive generalizations. Comparative studies and formal analyses are also published. Different theoretical orientations are represented in the journal. One volume (two issues) is published per year, ca. 360 pp.
Journal Details
- Frequency: One volume (two issues) per year
- ISSN/eISSN: 1068-2090/1543-0391
- Website: Slavic Linguistics Society
Indexing and Abstracting
American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies, ERIH (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences), Humanities International Index, IBZ (Internationale Bibliographie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur), MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association), OCLC ArticleFirst, Web of Science Emerging Sources Citation Index, SCOPUS Citation Index, Clarivate Analytics Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), an index in the Web of Science™ Core Collection.
Submission information
Subscription information
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Online Availability
Special Issue
Agreement in Slavic
Edited by
Boban Arsenijević, Marijana Kresić, Nedžad Leko, Andrew Nevins, and Jana Willer-Gold
From the Guest Editors 1
Articles
Nadira Aljović and Muamera Begović
Morphosyntactic Aspects of Adjectival and Verbal First-Conjunct Agreement 7
Boban Arsenijević and Ivana Mitić
On the Number-Gender (In)dependence in Agreement with Coordinated Subjects 41
Nermina Čordalija, Amra Bešić, Ivana Jovović, Nevenka Marijanović, Lidija Perković, Midhat Šaljić, Dženana Telalagić, and Nedžad Leko
Grammars of Participle Agreement with Conjoined Subjects in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 71
Paulina Łęska
Agreement under Case Matching in Polish co and który Relative Clauses Headed by Numerically Quantified Nouns 113
Marijan Palmović and Jana Willer-Gold
Croatian Mixed-Gender Conjunct Agreement: An ERP Study 137
Eva Pavlinušić and Marijan Palmović
Object-Clitic Agreement in Croatian: An ERP Study 161
Jana Willer-Gold, Boban Arsenijević, Mia Batinić, Nermina Čordalija, Marijana Kresić, Nedžad Leko, Franc Lanko Marušič, Tanja Milićev, Nataša Milićević, Ivana Mitić, Andrew Nevins, Anita Peti-Stantić, Branimir Stanković, Tina Šuligoj, and Jelena Tušek
Conjunct Agreement and Gender in South Slavic: From Theory to Experiments to Theory 187
Jacek Witkoś and Dominika Dziubała-Szrejbrowska
Numeral Phrases as Subjects and Agreement with Participles and Predicative Adjectives 225
Article Abstracts
Nadira Aljović and Muamera Begović
Abstract: The paper defines and analyzes the morphosyntactic properties of first- conjunct agreement, which arises when an adjective or verb agrees with the high- est/first conjunct of a coordinate noun phrase. This agreement pattern is derived by means of the syntactic operation Agree and a new postsyntactic mechanism which acts as a filter on Vocabulary Insertion within the framework of Distributed Mor- phology. The proposed filter is called Vocabulary Item Feature Harmony, and roughly consists of (phi-)feature identity between Vocabulary Items. The biaspectual analysis, and especially feature harmony, is used to understand and account for gradable and variable acceptability of first-conjunct agreement, as well as the distribution of this agreement pattern in relation to another agreement pattern, namely, masculine plural agreement (with the coordinate phrase as a whole). The investigation is focused on Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian first-conjunct agreement, but the findings could be extrap- olated to similar cases in other languages.
Boban Arsenijević and Ivana Mitić
Abstract: This paper examines the availability of single-conjunct agreement in number and gender in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. Reported are the results of an experiment in which coordinated singulars are included, as well as disjunction and negative-con- cord conjunction, next to the typically examined conjoined plurals. The research shows that, contra the general assumptions in the literature (Marušič, Nevins, and Saksida 2007, Marušič, Nevins, and Badecker 2015, Bošković 2009) but in line with ear- lier research (Moskovljević 1983, Bojović 2003), single-conjunct agreement does occur with coordinated singulars, especially in gender, even if less frequently. This paper shows that (i) first-conjunct agreement in gender preverbally and even last-conjunct agreement postverbally are produced above error level, and that the availability of collective interpretations for the coordinated subject influences the acceptability of the different agreement patterns available, and (ii) number and gender agreement do not have to target the same constituent. The findings shed light on the relation between the features of number and gender with regard to the issues of their bundling and simultaneous agreement, where the experimental results suggest that, while number tends to agree in a pattern that fits either semantic agreement or agreement with the entire conjunction, gender prefers to target single members of coordination, the first or the last. We speculate that a degree of “attraction” obtains, whereby number may attract gender to agree with the entire conjunction or gender may attract number to agree with a single conjunct. The results are used to compare two analyses offered in the literature—Marušič, Nevins, and Saksida 2007/Marušič, Nevins, and Badecker 2015 and Bošković 2009—showing that our empirical findings are problematic for both, but give a certain advantage to Marušič and his co-authors.
Nermina Čordalija, Amra Bešić, Ivana Jovović, Nevenka Marijanović, Lidija Perković, Midhat Šaljić, Dženana Telalagić, and Nedžad Leko
Abstract: This paper shows that Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS), like Slovenian, has three distinct strategies for subject-predicate agreement when the subject consists of conjoined noun phrases: (i) agreement with the maximal projection, a Boolean Phrase (&P); (ii) agreement with the conjunct that is closest to the participle; (iii) agreement with the conjunct that is hierarchically the highest. In order to test the initial hypoth- esis that there are three agreement strategies, a controlled experimental study of the morphosyntactic agreement between conjoined subjects and participles in BCS was conducted, consisting of three experiments: an oral-production experiment, a writ- ten-production experiment, and an acceptability-judgment task. The experiments showed a high presence of default agreement and closest-conjunct agreement. Of the preverbal conjoined phrases, 50% elicited default masculine agreement, while 95% of postverbal conjoined noun phrases elicited closest-conjunct agreement. However, the bulk of the analysis was focused on the possibility of treating highest-conjunct agreement (HCA) as a legitimate agreement strategy. The agreement forms in the preverbal-subject (SV) examples showed HCA 7% of the time. Moreover, acceptabil- ity-judgment results showed that scores for HCA examples ranged between 2 and 3 (1 = weakly acceptable; 5 = strongly acceptable). Last-conjunct agreement (LCA) for postverbal-subject (VS) examples, on the other hand, occurred only in 1% of the exam- ples in the corpus, and these examples were mostly rated weakly acceptable by native speakers (1.5/5 on average). For this reason, they were classified as performance errors, eliminating LCA as an agreement strategy. The overall results go against Bošković (2009), who does not acknowledge HCA as a legitimate strategy, but they confirm the findings of Marušič, Nevins, and Badecker (2015).
Paulina Łęska
Abstract: This paper aims to describe subject-verb agreement patterns within Polish co and który relative clauses in which the relativized subject head noun (virile and non- virile) modified by a higher numeral is assigned genitive case. Such subjects in Polish obligatorily induce default 3sg. neut. agreement on the main-clause verbal predicate. However, when the same subject is relativized while also being the relative-clause subject, various agreement options may occur depending on the type of relative marker as well as the grammatical gender of the head noun. In order to examine these agreement possibilities, a survey was conducted measuring Polish native speakers’ acceptability judgments. These patterns suggest that both co and który relatives could be derived via a matching analysis because they both allow optionality of agreement in certain environments. Furthermore, this optionality can be accounted for in terms of Case attraction and syncretism of case found in the paradigms of higher numerals and the relative pronoun który.
Marijan Palmović and Jana Willer-Gold
Abstract: In a recent elicited-production study with native speakers of Slovenian, Marušič, Nevins, and Saksida (2007) and Marušič, Nevins, and Badecker (2015) show that there are three distinct variously attested gender-agreement grammars. In this study, the high temporal-resolution of the ERP (event-related potential) technique was used to detect neurological components and measure the processing cost of the three gender-computing mechanisms. The study is comprised of two acceptability- judgment experiments, using a factorial design with nonmasculine mixed-gender con- juncts. Experiment 1 contrasts two strategies, Distant- (DCA) and Closest-Conjunct Agreement (CCA), to question whether the linear distance between a participle and the two conjuncts is language- or memory-related. The Experiment 1 results show be- haviorally an overall significant effect of gender; and neurologically a memory-related component, the P300. Experiment 2 sets out to detect alternations to the processing cost when default (Def) agreement is added to the experimental paradigm. The Ex- periment 2 results indicate no gender effects; instead, two language-related compo- nents, N250 and N450, were observed, statistically picking out DCA once again. We argue that in an ecologically valid environment where all three grammatical options are made available, processing of DCA is no longer supported by a general cognitive mechanism, such as memory, but is rather computed by language-related processes.
Eva Pavlinušić and Marijan Palmović
Abstract: The present experiment was designed to open a discussion on the processing of anaphoric clitics in Croatian. The aim of the experiment was to examine the role of long-distance anaphoric relations and local structural case constraints during pro- noun interpretation. On-line processing of cliticized direct-object pronouns embedded in a sentence context was examined using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. Pronominal clitics were either morphologically correct or incorrect. Incorrect pronoun forms contained a gender violation, a case violation, or a violation of both gender and case. Electrophysiological response to each of the violation types was measured at the clitic site and at the sentence-final word and compared to activity in the control condition. The results indicate that, as attested in previous studies in other languages, there are functional and temporal differences between the processing of gender and case violations in pronouns. Whereas gender violations elicit late positivity, i.e., the component related to the processing of syntactic difficulties, case violations elicit a biphasic response in the form of early negativity followed by late positivity. A similar ERP effect is observed with double violations as well, albeit with a different distribu- tion of the early negativity. The appearance of early negativities with case violations confirms previous findings on the rapidity of local syntactic processing as compared to the processing of long-distance anaphoric dependencies. At the end of the sentence, the typical wrap-up effect that reflects final semantic integration is replaced by the component related to syntactic reanalysis and repair.
Jana Willer-Gold, Boban Arsenijević, Mia Batinić, Nermina Čordalija, Marijana Kresić, Nedžad Leko, Franc Lanko Marušič, Tanja Milićev, Nataša Milićević, Ivana Mitić, Andrew Nevins, Anita Peti-Stantić, Branimir Stanković, Tina Šuligoj, and Jelena Tušek
Abstract: Agreement with coordinated subjects in Slavic languages has recently seen a rapid increase in theoretical and experimental approaches, contributing to a wider theoretical discussion on the locus of agreement in grammar (cf. Marušič, Nevins, and Saksida 2007; Bošković 2009; Marušič, Nevins, and Badecker 2015). This paper revisits the theoretical predictions proposed for conjunction agreement in a group of South Slavic languages, with a special focus on gender agreement. The paper is based on two experiments involving speakers of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) and Slovenian (Sln). Experiment 1 is an elicited production experiment investigating preverbal-conjunct agreement, while Experiment 2 investigates postverbal-conjunct agreement. The data provide experimental evidence discriminating between syntax proper and distributed-agreement models in terms of their ability to account for pre- verbal highest-conjunct agreement and present a theoretical mechanism for the dis- tinction between default agreement (which has a fixed number and gender, indepen- dent of the value of each conjunct) and resolved agreement (which computes number and gender based on the values of each conjunct and must resolve potential conflicts). Focusing on the variability in the gender-agreement ratio across nine combinations, the experimental results for BCS and Sln morphosyntax challenge the notion of gen- der markedness that is generally posited for South Slavic languages.
Jacek Witkoś and Dominika Dziubała-Szrejbrowska
Abstract: The aim of this article is to briefly analyze the agreement patterns in Polish constructions with quantified subjects and participial/adjectival predicates. The anal- ysis addresses two troublesome issues: the Genitive of Quantification, i.e., the source of Genitive on the nominal complement in structural contexts, and the optionality in agreement in case between the participial/adjectival predicate and the numeral (≥ 5) or the noun of the quantified subject. The essential part of the proposal is based on the nanosyntactic approach to the nature of case, i.e., the split Kase Phrase (Caha 2009, 2010). The analysis is concerned with the functional sequence of the extended nominal projection and its role in the syntactic derivation of case.
Contents
From the Editor 173
In Memoriam Jens Norgard-Sørensen 177
In Memoriam Charles Townsend 181
Reflections
Steven Franks
The Slavic Linguistics Society Comes of Age 189
Articles
Masako Fidler and Václav Cvrček
A Data-Driven Analysis of Reader Viewpoints: Reconstructing the Historical Reader Using Keyword Analysis 197
Frank Y. Gladney
On Forming Deverbal Nouns and Adjectives 241
Julia Kuznetsova and Tore Nesset
In Which Case Are Russians Afraid? Bojat’sja with Genitive and Accusative Objects 255
A. Kate White
The Cognate Boost: A Study of Picture Naming across Proficiency Levels with L2 Learners of Russian 285
Reviews
Krzysztof E. Borowski and Alexandra Fisher
Elżbieta Kaczmarska and Motoki Nomachi, eds. Slavic and
German in contact: Studies from areal and contrastive linguistics. 313
Katarzyna Dziwirek
Jacek Witkoś and Sylwester Jaworski, eds. New insights into
Slavic linguistics. 319
Elisabeth Elliott
Keith Langston and Anita Peti-Stantić. Language
planning and national identity in Croatia. 323
Olga Mitrenina
Anna Bondaruk, Gréte Dalmi, and Alexander Grosu, eds. Advances in the syntax of DPs: Structure, agreement, and case. 331
Abbreviations 343
Article Abstracts
Masako Fidler and Václav Cvrček
A Data-Driven Analysis of Reader Viewpoints:
Reconstructing the Historical Reader Using
Keyword Analysis
Abstract: This study uses corpus-linguistic methods to examine the relation- ship between language usage patterns and divergence in text interpretation. Our target of analysis is a set of texts (Czechoslovak presidential New Year’s addresses from 1975 to 1989), which contemporary readers consider repeti- tious and devoid of content. These texts were statistically contrasted with corpora from two different periods: one from the totalitarian period and the other from the contemporary (post-totalitarian) period. The comparison was based on the Difference Index, the most recent effect-size estimator, which was used to enhance the interpretation of keyword analysis outcomes. The two analyses yield significantly different results: the data from the analy- sis using the contemporary corpus were commensurate with contemporary readers’ impressions; those from the analysis using the totalitarian corpus fluctuated in tandem with (and sometimes in anticipation of) political and social changes during the 15-year period and suggested an interpretation of the texts by a reader more familiar with totalitarian texts.
Frank Y. Gladney
On Forming Deverbal Nouns and Adjectives in Russian
Abstract: Some deverbal nouns and adjectives govern their complements as nouns and adjectives. In vladelec jazykov ‘polyglot’ genitive case is assigned by the Adnominal Genitive Rule, and in zabyvčiva na imena ‘forgetful of names’ na is required similarly as in the gloss. With other deverbal nouns and adjec- tives, e.g., vladenie jazykami ‘a command of languages’ and zabyvajuščaja imena ‘who forgets names’, the form of the complement is governed by the embed- ded verb; compare vladeet jazykami and zabyvaet imena. To capture this affinity, the noun phrase is represented as a noun headed by the noun suffix /-ij/ and containing a verb phrase corresponding to vladeet jazykami, and the adjective phrase is represented as an adjective headed by the adjective suffix /-ušč/ and containing a verb phrase corresponding to zabyvaet imena. These underlying representations give syntax the task of uniting /vlad/ with /-ij/ and /zaby/ with /-ušč/, matters traditionally relegated to a morphology component of the grammar. To relegate them to syntax is to enter uncharted territory.
Julia Kuznetsova and Tore Nesset
In Which Case Are Russians Afraid? Bojat’sja with
Genitive and Accusative Objects
Abstract: The present article investigates case usage with the verb bojat’sja ‘be scared’ in Russian. Many verbs with -sja never combine with objects in the accusative case. The verb bojat’sja historically was among them, but this verb is undergoing a shift and is currently used with both genitive and accusative objects. This study examines the parameters that motivate this change. Using data from the Russian National Corpus and an experimental study, this arti- cle shows that the accusative case is more likely to appear when the object is individuated. It is furthermore demonstrated that the use of accusative objects depends on register: Less restricted registers, such as newspaper texts and answers in the experiment, show higher use of accusative objects.
A. Kate White
The Cognate Boost: A Study of Picture Naming across
Proficiency Levels with L2 Learners of Russian
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the “cognate boost” in Russian. Based on the Revised Hierarchical Model of bilingual memory and the theory of nonselective language storage in bilinguals, it was assumed that cognates would facilitate the performance of L1 English learners of L2 Russian in a picture-naming task, though this effect would be modulated by proficiency level. Twenty-two college-level learners of Russian from two pro- ficiency levels were asked to complete a picture-naming task in Russian. Half performed a task with cognates present and half without. An analysis of re- sponse time and accuracy showed that cognates facilitate the performance of lower proficiency speakers, while higher proficiency speakers are not affected. These results support the theories mentioned previously and show a cognate effect despite the differing orthographies of English and Russian. This paper presents the results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses and their im- plications for theories of language acquisition and storage.
Contents
From the Editor 1
Articles
Radovan Lučić
Observations on Collective Numerals in
Standard Croatian 3
AnnaMaria Meyer
“Thanks from the mountain!”: Humorous Calques in
Ponglish as an Output of Language Contact and Language Creativity 33
Traci Speed
Manner/Path Typology of Bulgarian Motion Verbs 51
Oscar Swan
Polish Gender, Subgender, and Quasi-Gender 83
Reviews
Ronelle Alexander
PaulLouis Thomas and Vladimir Osipov. Grammaire du
bosniaque, croate, monténégrin, serbe. 123
Mijo Lončarić
Grant H. Lundberg. Dialect leveling in Haloze, Slovenia. 147
Ludmila Pöppel
A. N. Baranov and D. O. Dobrovol’skij. Osnovy frazeologii
(kratkij kurs): Učeb. Posobie. 153
Submission Guidelines and Style Sheet 161
Article Abstracts
Radovan Lučić
Observations on Collective Numerals in Standard Croatian
Abstract: In present-day Croatian there is quite a large discrepancy between the actual usage of numerals and their description in major normative works. This discrepancy seems to be most present in the case of collective numerals, which are normally described as quantifiers for the elements making up a group of mixed gender. The actual usage of many instances of declensions and agreement of collective numerals often remains unexplained. In the clas- sic Hrvatska gramatika (Barić et al. 2005: 219), for example, seven different forms are given for the dative as well as the locative case and four different forms for the genitive. When or how exactly a specific form is used remains unclear. Most Croatian grammars pay very little attention to the agreement of collec- tive numerals and give only nominal agreement in the genitive and some re- marks on possible verbal agreement in the singular and the plural. Conditions for the choice between the alternatives are generally not discussed. This paper attempts to distinguish between the morphological and semantic principles of classification. Furthermore, it describes and discusses the declension, distri- bution, and agreement of collective numerals in present-day spoken Croatian. This is done without adopting a theoretical stance: this study is limited to the comparison of the treatment of collective numerals in different grammars, and the investigation of the extent to which this treatment reflects the actual usage as found in hits sampled from the Internet and the Croatian National Corpus (HNK).
Anna-Maria Meyer
“Thanks from the mountain!”: Humorous Calques in Ponglish as an Output of Language Contact and Language Creativity
Abstract: Since the enlargement of the European Union beginning in 2004, there has been a huge wave of migration to the United Kingdom from Poland. The UK, unlike other EU countries, allowed full access to its labor market to nationals of eight accession countries, including Poland. The diaspora formed new communities and a new contact variety emerged among them, common- ly referred to as “Ponglish.” Although Ponglish has enjoyed some attention within linguistics, the humorous, “technically incorrect” literal translations of Polish words and phrases into English, usually by Poles with a rather high proficiency in English, have remained unexamined to date. This article ana- lyzes the phenomenon of literal translations in Ponglish in detail, based on a number of websites dedicated to the subject, and attempts a classification.
Traci Speed
Manner/Path Typology of Bulgarian Motion Verbs
Abstract: This study examines the Bulgarian motion verb system in terms of what information is typically conveyed by motion verbs in addition to motion itself. The theoretical framework is Talmy’s (1985) typological theory, which divides languages into low-manner verb-framed languages and high-manner satellite-framed languages according to what additional information is typi- cally conflated with motion in a motion event. Bulgarian motion verbs empha- size path of motion to a greater extent than do most other (non-Balkan) Slav- ic languages. Non-Balkan Slavic languages more often use verbs of motion expressing manner in combination with (satellite) prefixes indicating path, while Bulgarian focuses on verbs which express the path of motion, some of which are Bulgarian innovations. These verbs are often prefixed, but the pre- fixes may be fused to the root to the extent that an unprefixed form of the verb does not occur, and prefixation here is no longer productive. Typical examples include the frequent use of the path verb izljaza ‘to exit, go out’ when speakers could also use izletja ‘to fly out’ or izmâkna ‘to sneak out’. This variation in the Bulgarian motion verb system brings Bulgarian closer to the other Balkan languages (especially Greek, with its parallel motion event conflation), and is viewed here as a possible instance of Balkan Sprachbund influence.
Oscar Swan
Polish Gender, Subgender, and Quasi-Gender
Abstract: The question as to how many genders there are in Polish has ab- sorbed linguists for well over half a century. Almost everyone approaching this question has applied a different criterion to the exclusion of other criteria in order to obtain an answer, and answers have ranged from every number from three though nine, or even more. One matter that has never been given due importance is the evidence of third-person pronouns which, in both nom- inative and accusative cases, would seem to have come into existence partly in order to be able to refer to nouns by their gender. All told, evidence points to the existence of four main Polish grammatical genders, consisting of the traditional three (masculine, feminine, neuter) and the Polish innovative one of “masculine personal.” These comprise a tightly knit coherent system. Other gender candidates can be considered to be either “subgenders” (masculine animate and masculine depreciative) or “quasi-genders,” of which there are around half a dozen. The existence and behaviors of the quasi-genders, i.e., nouns that would appear to belong to one gender but can act like another (an example being “facultative animate” nouns, i.e., referentially inanimate nouns that behave as if animate) shows that users of the language remain sen- sitive to mismatches between declension-type, gender, and sexual or animate reference, and will allow referential reality to assert itself against grammati- cal gender in accordance with Corbett’s observation as to the increasing insta- bility of agreement targets the farther they are from the agreement controller.
If we take an Indo-European-type three-gender system (as in German, Polish, or Russian, ignoring subgenders), we find that the meanings we can identify for the personal pronouns are “male,” “female,” and “neither male nor female.” Thus the meaning of the pronouns matchespart of the meaning of prototypical nouns ofthe corresponding genders; it reflects the core meaning of the genders. (Corbett 1991: 245–46)
Contents
From the Editor 165
In Memoriam Roman Laskowski 167
Articles
Christina Bethin
Contraction in Russian Dialects: Evidence for
Paradigm Contrast 171
Franc Marušič and Rok Žaucer
The Involuntary State/feel-like Construction:
What Aspect Cannot Do 185
Ksenia Zanon
Two Russian Hybirds 215
Reviews
Peter Arkadiev
Leonard H. Babby. The syntax of argument structure. 259
Robert Orr
Andreii Danylenko. Slavica et Islamica: Ukrainian in Context. 277
Adam Szczegielniak
Anna Bondaruk. Copular clauses in English and Polish:
Structure, derivation, and interpretation. 293
Article Abstracts
Christina Bethin
Contraction in Russian Dialects: Evidence for Paradigm Contrast
Abstract: Contraction of VjV sequences to V as in aja > a, aje > a, ojo > o, uju > u, eje > e, ije > i is found in northern and central Russian dialects, primarily in non-past verb forms and in adjectives. The focus of this paper is on the manifestation of this process in verbs and specifically on the resistance to contraction found in the 2pl forms. There are several different explanations in the literature for the exceptionality of 2pl forms, but they are not entirely convincing. I propose a new and more comprehensive explanation for the resistance to contraction in this category based on the notion of paradigm contrast.
Franc Marušič and Rok Žaucer
The Involuntary State/feel-like Construction:What Aspect Cannot Do
Abstract: The hyperintensional South Slavic involuntary state/feel-like construction is interesting in that it is restricted to a peculiar syntactic frame (dative subject and reflexive-impersonal or reflexive-passive verb) but has no overt element encoding its desiderative meaning and its intensionality. Recently it received two very different analyses. For Marušič and Žaucer (2006a), the construction is biclausal, with its desiderative meaning coming from a phonologically null verb. For Rivero (2009), its “modal” meaning arises from a viewpoint-aspect imperfective operator in a monoclausal structure. The aspect-based account poses a challenge for the theory of null verbs, since it cancels what had been considered a rare attestation of the theory’s logical possibility of having a null matrix verb. It also poses a challenge for the sententionalist view of hyperintensionality, since it posits that the latter can arise outside a clausal complement. This paper demonstrates that the aspect-based account is problematic in several respects and reinstates the null-verb analysis.
Ksenia Zanon
Two Russian Hybirds
Abstract: This paper reports on a peculiar phenomenon in Russian which involves both a Y/N marker (li) with a wh-word. Under consideration are the two incarnations of this construction—herein called Hybrid Wh-coordination (HWh) and its reverse counterpart (rHWh). In the former the Y/N marker precedes the wh-word (and the coordinator), while in the latter this order is permuted. This surface difference has deeper underpinnings, since the two constructions do not behave in identical fashion with respect to various diagnostics. Hence they are not amenable to the same treatment. I will argue for a biclausal genesis of HWh questions. The rHWh cases, on the other hand, are ambiguous between biclausal and monoclausal structures, depending on the nature of the wh-word. The paper offers novel empirical generalizations, cataloguing previously unreported facts associated with hybrid coordination, as well as some theoretical contributions, bearing on the status of Across-The-Board extractions (ATB), quantifier raising (QR), li-placement, and the distribution of topicalized constituents (TC). In particular, the paper presents arguments in favor of QR in Russian. It is argued that the clauseboundedness restriction can be repaired under ellipsis. ATB movement is analyzed as a process of extraction out of each participating conjunct. The placement of li is understood as a result of PF reordering, which is distinct from Prosodic Inversion. Finally, D-linked wh-phrases are analyzed on a par with TCs.
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Articles
Bradley Larson
Russian Comitatives and the Ambiguity of Adjunction 11
Mila Schwartz and Miriam Minkov
Russian Case System Acquisition among Russian-Hebrew
Speaking Children 51
Remark
Natalia Fitzgibbons
Every Kid Doesn’t Speak English 93
Reviews
Nerea Madariaga
Nikita Mixajlov. Tvoritel'nyj padež v russkom jazyke XVIII veka. 105
Ora Matushansky
Olga Kagan. Semantics of genitive objects in Russian. 115
Radek Šimík
Lydia Grebenyova. Syntax, semantics, and acquisition of
multiple interrogatives: Who wants what? 129
Article Abstracts
Bradley Larson
Russian Comitatives and the Ambiguity of Adjunction
Abstract: There is a conundrum in the study of comitative constructions in Slavic. It has long been an assumption that the construction is best analyzed through two structurally distinct representations: noun modification by a comitative prepositional phrase and verb modification by a comitative prepo-sitional phrase. Another analysis has been proposed that derives the distinc-tions in the construction not from differential attachment sites but rather via differential movement of comitative phrase and its host. In this view, the comitative phrase always adjoins to the host DP, but is sometimes stranded by movement. This paper presents empirical and theoretical arguments against these analyses using data from Russian. It is shown that both differ-ential attachment site analyses and differential movement analyses cannot account for the construction. This conundrum is avoided by adopting a “de-composed Merge”-style analysis to derive structural ambiguity in the con-struction. Under this analysis the ambiguity is an effect of attachment type, not movement or attachment site. This analysis also provides a new avenue to capture the facts that pertain to plural pronoun comitatives. Russian is the test case here for the sake of concision; however the analysis should extend to the rest of the Slavic languages.
Mila Schwartz and Miriam Minkov
Russian Case System Acquisition among Russian-Hebrew Speaking Children
Abstract: The aim of this exploratory study is to examine bilingual Russian–Hebrew-speaking children’s performance on the complex Case System in Russian. The speech of six early sequential bilinguals and three simultaneous bilinguals is analyzed for the quality and quantity of errors. Monolin¬gual data came from two sources. The first source was the error rate of case and number by two normally developing monolingual Russian-speaking children, col-lected recently in the former Soviet Union. The second source was qualitative reports on error types made by monolingual children in the course of Case System acquisition. The following research questions were ex¬amined: (i) Are there differences between bilingual children and age-matched monolingual Russian-speaking children in Russian Case System acquisition? (ii) Are there differences between simultaneous and early sequential bilin¬guals in Russian Case System acquisition? Speech of bilingual children was recorded individu-ally and monthly over a seven-month period, 20 minutes per month per child. Error analysis of the bilingual speech was conducted regarding the following target variables: noun oblique cases (Genitive, Da¬tive, Accusative, Instru-mental, and Prepositional), noun number (singular and plural), and the three declensions. The results show quantitative differ¬ences between simultaneous bilinguals, early sequential bilinguals, and mon¬olin¬guals in Russian Case System acquisition.
Natalia Fitzgibbons
Every Kid Doesn’t Speak English
Abstract: This paper provides arguments based on Czech, Polish, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian that distributive universal subjects of negated sentences allow the surface scope interpretation on the order SUBJECT > NEGATION, contrary to Zeijlstra 2004. This observation agrees with theories of negative concord that take negative concord items as universal quantifiers taking scope above sen-tential negation. The arguments are based on available scope interpretations and correlations between word order and scope.