Journal of Slavic Linguistics

Contents

Articles

Laura Janda and Olga Lyashevskaya
Semantic Profiles of Five Russian Prefixes:
po-, s-, za-, na-, pro-     211

Lucija Šimičić, Peter Houtzagers, Anita Sujoldžić, and John Nerbonne
Diatopic Patterning of Croatian Varieties in the
Adriatic Region     259

Reviews

Boban Arsenijević Sabina Halupka-Rešetar.
Rečenični fokus u engleskom i
srpskom jeziku.     303

Stanka A. Fitneva Teodora Radeva-Bork.
Single and double clitics in adult and
child grammar     311

Vadim Kimmelman
Matthew Reeve. Clefts and their relatives     317

Egor Tsedryk John Frederick Bailyn.
The syntax of Russian     341

Article Abstracts

Laura Janda and Olga Lyashevskaya
Semantic Profiles of Five Russian Prefixes: po-, s-, za-, na-, pro-

Abstract: We test the hypothesis that Russian verbal prefixes express meaning even when they are used to create a “purely aspectual pair” (čistovidovaja para). This is contrary to traditional assumptions that prefixes in this function are semantically “empty.” We analyze the semantic tags independently established in the Russian National Corpus (www.ruscorpora.ru) for 382 perfective partner verbs with five of the most common verbal prefixes in Russian: po-, s-, za-, na-, and pro-. Statistical tests show that the relationship between prefixes and semantic tags is significant and robust, and further identify which relationships constitute attractions, repulsions, and neutral relation¬ships. It is possible to specify a unique meaning for each prefix in terms of the semantic tags it attracts or repulses. A detailed analysis of all the verbs in the study shows that the meanings of the prefixed perfective partners yield consistent patterns. Even verbs in repulsed semantic classes are consistent with these patterns. The meaning patterns of verbs with “purely aspectual” prefixes can be compared with the meanings of the prefixes as established on the basis of previous scholarship, which was primarily focused on the meanings of prefixes in their “non-empty” uses. This comparison shows that the verb meanings that appear with “purely perfectivizing” prefixes are the same as those found for “non-empty” uses of prefixes. We conclude that verbs select the prefix that is most compatible with their meanings when forming “purely aspectual” perfective partners, confirming our hypothesis.

Lucija Šimičić, Peter Houtzagers, Anita Sujoldžić, and John Nerbonne

Diatopic Patterning of Croatian Varieties in the Adriatic Region

Abstract: The calculation of aggregate linguistic distances can compensate for some of the drawbacks inherent to the isogloss bundling method used in traditional dialectology to identify dialect areas. Synchronic aggregate analysis can also point out differences with respect to a diachronically based classification of dialects. In this study the Levenshtein algorithm is applied for the first time to obtain an aggregate analysis of the linguistic distances among 88 diatopic varieties of Croatian spoken along the Eastern Adriatic coast and in the Italian province of Molise. We also measured lexical differences among these varieties, which are traditionally grouped into Čakavian, Štokavian, and transitional Čakavian-Štokavian varieties. The lexical and pronunciation distances are subsequently projected onto multidimensional cartographic representations. Both kinds of analyses confirm that linguistic discontinuity is characteristic of the whole region, and that discontinuities are more pronounced in the northern Adriatic area than in the south. We also show that the geographic lines are in many cases the most decisive factor contributing to linguistic cohesion, and that the internal heterogeneity within Čakavian is often greater than the differences between Čakavian and Štokavian varieties. This holds both for pronunciation and lexicon.

“Aspect in Slavic: Creating Time, Creating Grammar,” guest edited by Laura A. Janda

Contents

From the Guest Editor: “Creating the Contours of Grammar”     1

Articles

Henning Andersen
On the Origin of the Slavic Aspects: Aorist and Imperfect     17

Östen Dahl
How Telicity Creates Time     45

Stephen M. Dickey
See, Now They Vanish: Third-Person Perfect Auxiliaries in
Old and Middle Czech     77

Tore Nesset
The History of the Russian Semelfactive:
The Development of a Radial Category      123

Svetlana Sokolova
Verbal Prefixation and Metaphor: How Does Metaphor
Interact with Constructions?     171

Article Abstracts

Henning Andersen

On the Origin of the Slavic Aspects: Aorist and Imperfect

Abstract: This article presents a sketch of the prehistorical development of the Common Slavic preterital imperfect/aorist category. The methods of in¬ternal analysis and linguistic geography are applied to mostly well-established data in order to reconstruct major elements of this development, in particular the relative chronology of the main morphological changes, correlations with well-known Common Slavic phonological changes, as well as correlations of regional morphological differences with major phonological isoglosses. The results contribute to our understanding of the development of Common Slavic and its dialectal differentiation in the period of the “Slavic migrations”.

Östen Dahl

How Telicity Creates Time

Abstract: Most treatments of temporal semantics start out from the conception of time as a line stretching from the past into the future, which is then populated with eventualities or situations. This paper explores how time can be seen as emerging from the construction of representations of reality in which the basic building blocks are static—i.e., timeless—representations, which are connected to each other by events that are transitions between them and that create an ordering which can be understood as temporal. This connects to von Wright’s “logic of change” and the “hybrid semantics” suggested by Herweg and Löbner. In this context, telicity is seen as the capacity of events, or of the predicates that express them, to “create time” in the sense of defining a before and an after. The basic elements of the model are global states, which are timeless taken in isolation but are connected by transition events, which transform one global state into another and thereby define the temporal relationships between them. Transition events, corre¬sponding to Vendlerian achievements, represent simple changes which are then the basis for all other constructs in the model, most notably delimited states, Vendlerian activities (atelic dynamic eventualities), and accomplish-ments (telic non-punctual even¬tualities), but also time points and intervals. Transition events are further in-strumental in constructing narrative structures and are responsible for narrative progression.

Stephen M. Dickey

See, Now They Vanish: Third-Person Perfect Auxiliaries in Old and Middle Czech

Abstract: This article argues that Czech retained a semantic distinction be¬tween the expression of current relevance/emphasis and a neutral preterit in third-person compound preterit forms until the late sixteenth century. The distinction was expressed by the presence (expressing current relevance/em¬phasis) vs. absence (neutral preterit) of third-person auxiliaries. The hypothe¬sis is based on data from two late fourteenth-century narratives (Asenath and The Life of Adam and Eve) and from letters written by or to Czech women from 1365 to 1615. The results of statistical analyses are presented as support for the hypothesis, and it is suggested that the continued distinction between current relevance/emphasis and a neutral preterit in the third person is in part responsible for the fact that the two-way use of imperfective verbs never be¬came a major usage pattern in Czech, in contrast with Russian, where the tense system was reduced relatively early.

Tore Nesset

The History of the Russian Semelfactive: The Development of a Radial Category

Abstract: This paper explores the history of suffixed semelfactive verbs in Russian, i.e., verbs like maxnut’ ‘wave once’ with the nu suffix. It is argued that the semelfactive aktionsart is best analyzed as a radial category organized around a prototype with four properties: uniformity, instantaneousness, non-resultativity, and single occurrence, which are defined and discussed in the article. This paper further demonstrates that there is a small group of verbs denoting bodily acts that meet these criteria in the Old Church Slavonic texts, thus suggesting the existence of an embryonic version of the semelfactive aktionsart in Common Slavic. Although the cue validity of nu as a marker of semelfactivity remains stable, in Old Russian nu with semelfactive meaning is shown to spread to auditory verbs, optical verbs, and verbs of physical movement, which are argued to constitute a radial category organized around prototypical bodily acts. This gradual expansion through the lexicon continues in Contemporary Standard Russian; in particular a number of semelfactive behavior verbs have emerged, although many of them are of low frequency.

Svetlana Sokolova

Verbal Prefixation and Metaphor: How Does Metaphor Interact with Constructions?

Abstract: This article argues that metaphorical and non-metaphorical content find different expression on the constructional level. The hypothesis is supported by two empirical case studies of the Russian Locative Alternation verbs, based on the data from the Russian National Corpus: the unprefixed verb sypat’ ‘strew’ (which does not have an aspectual partner) and the unpre¬fixed verb gruzit’ ‘load’ and its three perfective partners with the prefixes na-, za-, and po-. It is argued that metaphorical extensions of these Locative Alter-nation verbs have a strong relationship with elaborations (interactions be¬tween different constructions), on the one hand, and reduction (Locative Alternation constructions with a reduced or omitted participant), on the other. The results indicate differences in metaphorical behavior of different prefixes (even when they are used to form perfective partner verbs) and different constructions (some constructions are more often instantiated as metaphorical extensions than the other).

Contents

From the Editor     149

Articles

Vít Boček
On the Relationship between Gemination and Palatalization in
Early Romance Loanwords in Common Slavic     151

Hans Robert Mehlig
Hybrid Predicates in Russian      171

Ivana Mitrović
A Phonetically Natural vs. Native Language Pattern:
An Experimental Study of Velar Palatalization in Serbian      229

Catherine Ringen and Vladimir Kulikov
Voicing in Russian Stops: Cross-Linguistic Implications      269

Reviews

Hagen Pitsch
Ljudmila Geist. Die Kopula und ihr Komplemente:
Zur Kompositionalität in Kopulasätzen     287

Mila Vulchanova
Björn Hansen and Jasmina Grković-Major, eds. Diachronic
Slavonic syntax: Gradual changes in focus     299

Index to Volumes 1–20     311

Article Abstracts

Vít Boček

On the Relationship between Gemination and Palatalization in Early Romance Loanwords in Common Slavic

Abstract: This paper discusses how geminates in Early Romance loanwords were treated in Common Slavic. The proposal is that there was a tendency for Romance geminates to be replaced by palatalized consonants in Slavic, possibly via an early palatalized geminate stage in Slavic itself. This proposal receives support from the close relation between gemination and palatalization found in other Indo-European languages and presents a more systematic account of the phenomenon than other available explanations.

Hans Robert Mehlig

Hybrid Predicates in Russian

Abstract: Apart from elementary predications that can be classified clearly as Activities or Accomplishments, Russian has elementary predications that are hybrid in their actionality and can be classified as Activities as well as Accomplishments. With regard to the category of aspect in Russian, these hybrid predications are characterized by the fact that they can be coded perfective not only by a paired perfective verb but also by a so-called delimitative procedural verb. The first part of this paper examines the conditions under which elementary predications can be interpreted as hybrid. Two different types of hybrid Accomplishments will be distinguished. First, there are hybrid Accomplishments where the Activity component is conceptualized as a homogeneous continuous process and thus fulfills the principle of arbitrary divisibility. In this case the imperfective aspect, which forms the basis for coding the Accomplishment as perfective by a delimitative procedural verb, has durative-processual meaning. Second, there are hybrid Accomplishments where the Activity component consists of several randomly ordered subevents and thus fulfills the principle of cumulativity. In this case the Activity component has conative meaning. The second part shows that elementary predications that are not hybrid in their actionality can be reclassified in their actionality by temporal distributivity and in that case are also characterized as hybrid. The third part deals with predications with an inner argument modified by quantifying determiners and measure expressions. I show that these predications likewise allow a reclassification by temporal distributivity. However, this is only the case if the extent of the entities involved in the situation is determined in advance.

Ivana Mitrović

A Phonetically Natural vs. Native Language Pattern: An Experimental Study of Velar Palatalization in Serbian

Abstract: Two experiments test the naturalness hypothesis of velar palatalization. This hypothesis, based on surveys of various languages with velar palatalization, states that if a language has palatalization before [e], then it will have palatalization before [i], but not necessarily vice versa. Serbian is a prima facie counterexample to this generalization in certain morphosyntactic contexts, including the present-tense paradigm examined in this paper. In this context, Serbian palatalizes a velar stop [k] to a palatoalveolar affricate [ê] before [e] but not before [i]. Two experiments are conducted to test whether Serbian-speaking children and adults generalize from the existing pattern of palatalization before [e] to the natural pattern of palatalization before both mid and high vowels. The results from the first experiment show that children conform to the phonetically natural pattern but adults do not. These results suggest that speakers must be exposed to the pattern that “violates” the phonetically natural one for a substantial period of time before overwriting the phonetically natural pattern. The results from the second experiment, artificial pattern learning, show that the type of task and the type of palatalization (before [i] or [e]) play a crucial role, while age does not. These findings strengthen the hypothesis that subjects are more likely to choose a phonetically natural form presented to them than to volunteer it.

Catherine Ringen and Vladimir Kulikov

Voicing in Russian Stops: Cross-Linguistic Implications

Abstract: This paper presents the results of an investigation of voicing in utterance-initial and intervocalic stops in monolingual Russian speakers. Prevoicing was found in over 97% of the lenis stops; over 97% of the intervocalic stops were fully voiced. Utterance-initial fortis stops were pronounced as voiceless unaspirated and had short positive VOT. Intervocalic fortis stops were completely voiceless except for a short voicing tail into closure. These results are relevant for typological studies of voicing. Some studies of languages with a two-way contrast between initial stops with prevoicing and short lag VOT have reported that prevoicing is less robust than what might be expected. These findings have been attributed to influence from another language without prevoicing. Our results with monolingual speakers of Russian support these claims. Our results are also relevant for the debate about the laryngeal feature in aspirating languages, which often have some voicing of intervocalic lenis stops. Such voicing has been attributed to passive voicing, in contrast with active voicing that occurs in true voice languages such as Russian. We found that the voicing in Russian is much more robust than the intervocalic voicing in aspirating languages. This difference is explained if the features of contrast are different in the two types of languages: [voice] in the case of Russian and [spread glottis] in the case of aspirating languages.

Contents

Articles

Andrii Danylenko
Auxiliary Clitics in Southwest Ukrainian:
Questions of Chronology, Areal Distribution,
and Grammaticalization     3

Barbara Schmiedtová and Natalya Sahonenko
Acquisition of L2 Written Narrative Competence:
Tense-Switching by Russian L2 Speakers of German     35

Miriam Shrager
Neutralization of Word-Final Voicing in Russian     71

Reviews

Barbara Citko
Jacek Witkoś and Gisbert Fanselow, eds. Elements of
Slavic and Germanic grammars: A Comparative view.
Papers on topical issues in syntax and morphosyntax.     101

Maciej Czerwiński
Anita Peti-Stantić. Jezik naš i/ili njihov. Vježbe iz poredbene
povijesti južnoslavenskih standardizacijskih procesa.     111

Robert Orr
Juhani Nuorluoto, ed. The Slavicization of the Russian
north: Mechanisms and chronology.     121

Robert A. Rothstein
Tomasz Kamusella. Schlonzska mowa. Język, Górny Śląsk
i nacjonalizm, 1; Andrzej Roczniok. Zbornik polsko-ślůnski/
Słownik polsko-śląski, 1: A–K, 2: L–P.     145

Article Abstracts

Andrii Danylenko

Auxiliary Clitics in Southwest Ukrainian: Questions of Chronology, Areal Distribution, and Grammaticalization

Abstract: This paper addresses grammaticalization of the preterit and future auxiliary clitics derived from the verbs ‘to be’ and ‘to take’ in Southwest Ukrainian in comparison with North and Southeast Ukrainian, and the adja¬cent western and eastern Slavic dialects. It posits a parallel grammaticaliza¬tion of such auxiliaries in the aspect of retrospection (preterit) and the aspect of prospection (future), although with different results in various Ukrainian dialects. Unlike the Polish auxiliaries that turned into person-number markers, the preterit auxiliary clitics are not fully degrammaticalized in Southwest Ukrainian and are altogether absent from North and Southeast Ukrainian. The auxiliary clitics used in the de-inceptive future derived from the periphrastic formation with the auxiliary ‘to take’ were undergoing grammaticalization along the clitic continuum postulated in the paper for the Ukrainian-speaking territories. The term ‘synthetic future‘ in Modern Ukrainian for formations like čytatymu ‘I will read’ is misleading, since the grammaticalization of the auxiliary did not run to completion. This explains its loose integration with the infinitive and the de-inceptive interpretation of the synthetic future ‘I will [begin] to read’ as compared to the analytic future formation ja budu čytaty ‘I will read’ in all the major Ukrainian dialects.

Barbara Schmiedtová and Natalya Sahonenko

Acquisition of L2 Written Narrative Competence: Tense-Switching by Russian L2 Speakers of German

Abstract: The present study examines how foreground and background is marked in L1 Russian and L1 German, to test the hypothesis that L1 speakers of Russian writing in German as L2 will use tense-switching to differentiate foreground and background. Results suggest that Russian-speaking writers used grammatical aspect while German-speaking writers employed inherent properties of the verbal predicate to mark foreground and background. The L2 data revealed a more mixed pattern: one third of the Russian-speaking L2 speakers of German used L1 Russian pattern, switching between different tenses to mark foreground and background; another third of the Russian-speaking L2 users of German were comparable to L1 German speakers; and a third group of the Russian-speaking L2 users of German wrote their texts in the present tense. These results indicate that switching between foreground and background, as a critical property of proficient narrative discourse, con-stitutes a long-lasting challenge in learning a second language.

Miriam Shrager

Neutralization of Word-Final Voicing in Russian

Abstract: This paper has two aims. The first is to describe a pilot instrumental study of the incomplete neutralization of Russian final dental stops /t/ and /d/. This study refutes the results of a previous instrumental study of word-final voicing neutralization, which suggested that /t/ and /d/ are completely neu-tralized word-finally. The study examines several phonetic quantities that might be correlated with incomplete neutralization and serve as cues for the correct classification of voiced and voiceless obstruents. The second aim is to bring forward an extensive summary and discussion of previous studies and theories on incomplete neutralization.

Contents

In Memoriam Maria Babyonyshev     165

Articles

Stephen M. Dickey
The Varying Role of PO- in the Grammaticalization of Slavic Aspectual Systems: Sequences of Events, Delimitives, and German Language Contact     175

Roksolana Mykhaylyk
Middle Object Scrambling     231

George Rubinstein
Aspectual Clusters of Russian Sound Verbs     273

Reviews

Keith Langston
Snježana Kordić. Jezik i nacionalizam     327

Jouko Lindstedt
Evangelia Adamou. Le nashta: Description d’un parler slave de Grèce en voie de disparition     339

Article Abstracts

Stephen M. Dickey

The Varying Role of PO- in the Grammaticalization of Slavic Aspectual Systems: Sequences of Events, Delimitives, and German Language Contact

Abstract: This article presents a comparative analysis of three interrelated phenomena: the use of imperfective verbs in sequences of events in Czech, Slovak, Sorbian, Slovene, and BCS; the use of po- delimitatives in sequences of events in East Slavic, Polish, and Bulgarian; the semantic nature of the prefix po- in the individual Slavic languages has been retained (and perhaps strengthened) due to German language contact, whereas the use of po- delimitatives for such atelic predicates represents an innovation in those languages that did not undergo significant amounts of such German language contact. The second is that the lack of the development of po- into an important perfectivizing prefix in the western languages is likewise due in part to German language contact, as po- was at various times used to calque German be- in its surface-contact, in the western languages is likewise due in part to German language contact, as po- was at various times used to calque German be- in is surface-contact and transitive meanings as well as ver- in its meaning of change of state; such calques contributed to the stabilization of po- as a lexical prefix in the western languages. The retarding effect of German language contact on the western languages whereby imperfective verbs remained acceptable in sequences of events, and po- did not become a major perfectivizing prefix, is analyzed as the result of a process of "replica preservation," as opposed to the more commonly discussed process of "replica change" describe by Heine and Kuteva(2005).

Roksolana Mykhaylyk

Middle Object Scrambling

Abstract: This paper discusses syntactic and semantic aspects of direct object scrambling in Ukrainian. Given the complex nature of scrambling, the investigation is narrowed to only one of its types: the change SVO to SOV, defined as Middle Object Scrambling (MOS). This strategy affords a detailed examination of this phenomenon at a micro-level. MOS is scrutinized with regard to its syntactic aspects (e.g., position of a moved element) and semantic properties (e.g., possible interpretations of a direct object). The semantic features of definiteness, referentiality, and partitivity are particularly emphasized, as previous studies have claimed they play an important role in the process. This research demonstrates that the most relevant feature in Ukrainian MOS is specificity in the sense of partitivity/presuppositionality. The implication of this is that Slavic data provide further support for the universality of interpretational properties of the vP edge, in line with Chomsky 2001.

George Rubinstein

Aspectual Clusters of Russian Sound Verbs

Abstract: This article explores whether the aspectual cluster model proposed by Janda (2007, 2008) can reflect the differences in the lexical semantics of Russian verbs denoting sound. A corpus of fifty sound verbs, including both sounds emitted by inanimate objects and those produced by animate beings, are divided into two groups: (i)paired verbs marking linguistic action, and (ii) paired verbs marking directional motion. Aspectual clusters for each verb were determined, and the clusters of various groups of verbs compared. Each of these groups was found to be characterized by a specific subset of aspectual cluster types.