Journal of Slavic Linguistics

Contents

Articles

Joanna Błaszczak
On the Nature of N-Words in Polish     173

Francis Butler
Russian vurdalak ‘vampire’ and Related Forms in Slavic     237

Brian Cooper
The Word vampire: Its Slavonic From and Origin     251

George M. Cummins
Literary Czech, Common Czech, and the Instrumental Plural     271

Edit Jakab
Noncanonical Uses of Russian Imperatives     299

Review

Donald Reindl
Stefan Michael Newerkla. Sprachkontakte Deutsch-Tschechisch-Slowakisch     359

Joanna Błaszczak

On the Nature of N-Words in Polish

Abstract: This paper examines the nature of so-called n-words in Polish, i.e., (morphologically) negative expressions of the type nikt ‘nobody’, nic ‘nothing’ which participate in Negative Concord structures. Two main questions discussed in the paper are: (i) Do such expressions have an inherently negative meaning? and (ii) Do they have an inherent quantificational force? Both of these questions are answered negatively. As for the first question, it is argued that n-words in Polish—despite being morphologically negative—are semantically nonnegative elements. They are interpreted as negative though, because they (always) cooccur with the sentential negation marker nie ‘not’. In this respect n-words in Polish resemble more Negative Polarity Items like any than negative quantifiers like nobody. Like the former, but unlike the latter, Polish n-words—in order to be properly interpreted (i.e., to be grammatical)—must be licensed by an appropriate licenser (here, negation). As for the second question, it is argued at length that Polish n-words cannot be treated as universal quantifiers. It is shown that an analysis of n-words in the sense of Giannakidou 1998, according to which Negative Concord terms are taken to be universal quantifiers that—in order to be properly interpreted—always have to move at LF via Quantifier Raising to a scope position above negation, leads to a number of empirical and theoretical problems. On the contrary, there is ample evidence showing that n-words in Polish have indefinite nature, i.e., they behave like other indefinites in Polish. Since indefinite elements themselves might be analyzed in terms of existential quantifiers or in terms of nonquantificational elements in the sense of Heim 1982, additional evidence is provided to show that n-words in Polish are in fact best treated as nonquantificational elements. In sum, the paper argues that n-words in Polish are nonnegative nonquantificational indefinite elements. Another issue commented on in this paper is the question of the reliability of some tests being extensively used in the literature as evidence for the universal quantifier status of the tested elements.

Article Abstracts

Francis Butler

Russian vurdalak ‘vampire’ and Related Forms in Slavic

Abstract: The paper adduces strong evidence that Russian vurdalak (‘vampire’) entered the language thanks to Puškin, who formed it from models in the work of Prosper Mérimée and Lord Byron. It also surveys the distribution of related forms in Slavic and suggests that the Croatian surname Vrdoljak may not be related to any of them. These conclusions have significant consequences for a hypothesis of Johanna Nichols regarding the ultimate Iranian origin of vurdalak and related forms.

Brian Cooper

The Word "vampire": Its Slavonic From and Origin

Abstract: After an examination of some of the historical and linguistic background to the word vampire, including its links with the purity of the earth, a new etymology is proposed for the word based on Common Slavonic borrowing from Dacian Latin and interborrowing of words within the Balkans Sprachbund.

George M. Cummins

Literary Czech, Common Czech, and the Instrumental Plural

Abstract: The gap between spoken Czech and the stylized literary language spisovná čeština is so great that in categories such as the instrumental plural of all nominals the prestige code desinences are bookish or archaic while in the spoken code they are nonstandard and colloquial; no neutral register exists. Instr pl noun phrases (modifier plus noun) are among the most marked in colloquial morphology as they have both nonstandard theme vowels and a nonstandard case-marking vowel. Nonetheless they are fully established in all supraregional spoken forms of Czech, Common Czech of Bohemia, Moravian interdialects, and Lach. Unlike one-dimensional morphological markings such as the loc pl in –ách in velar stems, they cannot be recognized in the prestige code. The hierarchical differentiation of these forms is analyzed in the wider context of other colloquial morphological features. It is argued that in code mixing or code switching all varieties of nonstandard morphology make their way into formal speech not as mere stylistic coloration but as agents of discourse function. Contemporary writers such as Hrabal in Příliš hlučná samota make selective functional use of colloquial morphology for thematic focus.

Edit Jakab

Noncanonical Uses of Russian Imperatives

Abstract not available

Contents

In Memorium Jordan Pencev     3

Articles

Klaus Abels
"Expletive Negation" in Russian: A Conspiracy Theory     5

James Lavine
The Morphosyntax of Polish and Ukrainian -no/-to     75

Grant Lundberg
Phonological Results of an Ancient Border Shift: Vocalic Merger in Northeastern Slovenia     119

Penka Stateva
On the Status of Parasitic Gaps in Bulgarian     137

Reviews

Kevin Hannan
Karol Dejna and Slawomir Gala. Atlas gwar polskich     157

Charles E. Townsend
Frantisek Vaclav Mares. Diachronische Phonologie des Ur- und Fruehslavischen     165

Article Abstracts

Klaus Abels

"Expletive Negation" in Russian: A Conspiracy Theory

Abstract: In this paper I provide a new analysis of so called "expletive negation" in Russian. Brown and Franks (1995) discovered that negation sometimes licenses the genitive of negation while being unable to license a particular class of negative concord items, ni- phrases like nikto 'nobody'. In the present paper I show that the assumption made in the literature according to which "expletive negation" lacks negative force or is semantically vacuous is not well grounded. "Expletive negation" is semantically real negation; it just occupies an unusually high clausal position. The asymmetry between the genitive of negation on the one hand and ni-phrases on the other hand is explained in terms of locality. The investigation yields a number of further results. Genitive of negation is structural Case and susceptible to Relativized Minimality. Ni-phrases are analyzed as polarity sensitive universal quantifiers, whose movement is constrained in ways typical of quantifier raising.

James Lavine

The Morphosyntax of Polish and Ukrainian -no/-to

Abstract: This paper provides a detailed description of the Polish and Ukrainian -no/-to+ accusative construction, with considerable attention paid to how the two constructions differ and to their relevance for current morphological and syntactic theory. It is argued that Polish and Ukrainian -no/-to differ with respect to where the word-final /-no/-to affix is generated in the narrow syntax. A wide range of seemingly unrelated syntactic properties follow from this single claim. In the case of Polish -no/-to, it is shown that the word-final affix is not voice-altering, but rather generated in the head of a higher Aux projection. A separationist view of Morphology is adopted in which the stem and affix are joined post -syntactically. Ukrainian -no/-to is a genuine passive. This construction is related more generally to a class of accusative-Case-marked unaccusatives. Here it is shown that a Tense projection impoverished for agreement (o-incomplete T) is a necessary (and surprising) condition for unaccusatives to appear with ACC-Case-marked complements.

Grant Lundberg

Phonological Results of an Ancient Border Shift: Vocalic Merger in Northeastern Slovenia

Abstract: The Slovene dialect area of Haloze, located to the southeast of Ptuj along the present Slovene-Croatian national boarder, is essentially part of the Pannonian Slovene dialect base, yet fieldwork documents an unexpected phonological development in Haloze that connects it to an ancient Kajkavian Croatian vocalic merger. At least two explanations for this development in the village dialects of Haloze seem possible. The vocalic mergers could be the result of relatively recent dialect contact in the area, or they could have resulted from an ancient border shift. The paper argues that both the linguistic and historical data indicated that the merger of the Common Slavic jat and jers in Haloze is an ancient development and took place during the tenth to the thirteenth century control of this area by Hungary and Croatia

Penka Stateva

On the Status of Parasitic Gaps in Bulgarian

Abstract: This paper examines the likely candidates for the Parasitic Gap (PG) construction in Bulgarian. Focusing on the properties of PGs known from previously studied languages, I conclude that there are no genuine PGs in Bulgarian. I also argue that without-clauses are irrelevant for the study of PGs. They involve a different mechanism for licensing a null element inside the clause.

Contents

Articles

Steven Franks, Uwe Junghanns, and Paul Law
Pronomial Clitics in Slavic     3

Željko Bošković
Clitic Placement in South Slavic     39

Andrew Caink
Semi-Lexical Heads and Clitic Climbing     95

Denisa Lenertova
Czech Pronominal Clitics     139

Sandra Stjepanovi
Clitic Climbing and Restructuring with "Finite Clause" and Infinitive Complements     177

Olga Miš eska Tomić
The South Slavic Pronominal Clitics     213

Archive

Wayles Browne
Serbo-Croatian Enclitics for English-Speaking Learners     251

Reviews

Loren A. Billings
Željko Bošković. On the Nature of the Syntax-Phonology Interface: Cliticization and Related Phenomena     285

Article Abstracts

Steven Franks, Uwe Junghanns, and Paul Law

Pronomial Clitics in Slavic

Abstract not available

Željko Bošković

Clitic Placement in South Slavic

Abstract: The paper examines clitic placement and the nature of clitic clustering in Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian. It is argued that Serbo-Croatian clitics do not cluster syntactically; they are located in different projections in the syntax. The order of clitics within the clitic cluster is argued to follow from the hierarchical arrangement of projections in which they are located. The paper also provides a principled account of the idiosyncratic behavior of the auxiliary clitic je, which in contrast to other auxiliary clitics follows pronominal clitics. In contrast to Serbo-Croatian clitics, Bulgarian and Macedonian clitics are argued to cluster in the same head position in the final syntactic representation. The cluster is formed through successive cyclic leftward adjunctions of clitics to the verb, in accordance with the LCA. Following Chomsky’s (1994) suggestion that clitics are ambiguous head/phrasal elements, it is argued that clitics do not branch, hence cannot take complements. This claim leads to a new proposal concerning the structural representation of several clitic forms.

Andrew Caink

Semi-Lexical Heads and Clitic Climbing

Abstract: A unified analysis of "clitic climbing” from subordinate clauses in Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian and from DP in Czech is presented. Such clitic placement is demonstrated to co-occur with a semi-lexical head, and several apparently lexical Czech nouns are shown to have semi-lexical status. The definition of an "extended projection” is made contingent upon a theory of variable lexicalization, enabling a semi-lexical head to optionally occur within the extended projection of a lower lexical head. This option allows the pronominal clitic in both constructions to appear higher in the tree, while not violating the single structural relation between any pronominal clitic and its associated theta-assigned position

Denisa Lenertova

Czech Pronominal Clitics

Abstract: This article explores the empirical properties of Czech pronominal clitics, which differ from their counterparts in other second position (2P) clitic languages (such as Serbian-Croatian) in a number of respects. After looking at clitic-first and clitic-third phenomena and their semantic/pragmatic impact, it is argued that Czech clitic placement must be basically driven by syntax, and that the 2P is a heterogeneous structure in which pronominal clitics occupy a TP-external position below clitic auxiliaries, but higher than the copula. The linear ordering of pronominal clitics within their cluster has a certain limited flexibility due to phonological requirements, which affect both monoclausal clitic placement and clitic climbing. Finally, the empirical details of clitic climbing in Czech are discussed, showing that it cannot be reduced to movement for case checking or to the phenomenon of restructuring known from Romance languages.

Sandra Stjepanovi

Clitic Climbing and Restructuring with "Finite Clause" and Infinitive Complements

Abstract not available

Olga Miš eska Tomić

The South Slavic Pronominal Clitics

Abstract not available

Contents

Articles

Anna Bondaruk
Parasitic Gaps and ATB in Polish     221

Ronald Feldstein
The Unified Monophthongization Rule of Common Slavic      251

Tore Nesset
The Assignment of Gender and Declension to Russian Nouns in Soft consonants: Predictability and Rule Interaction     287

Geoffrey Schwartz
The Lemkos' Affricates: Phonetic, Perceptual, and Sociolinguistics Implications     323

Reviews

Gregory P. Christiansen
Parameters of Slavic Aspect: A Cognitive Approach     347

Bogdan Horbal
Gramatyka języka łemkowskiego     361

Robert Orr
Old Church Slavonic Grammar     365

Peter Sgall
Register Variation and Language Standards in Czech     375

Article Abstracts

Anna Bondaruk

Parasitic Gaps and ATB in Polish

Abstract: The paper examines ATB and parasitic gap structures in Polish in order to determine whether they can be conflated into a single phenomenon. Three available approaches to these two constructions are outlined and evaluated as to their applicability to Polish data. It is argued that the approach postulating the treatment of parasitic gaps as a special case of ATB put forward by Huybregts and van Riemsdijk (1985) and Williams (1990) is problematic as it does not specify how parasitic gap constructions are assigned the coordinate status. The second approach arguing in favor of subsuming ATB gaps under parasitic gaps, advocated by Munn (1992) and Franks (1993, 1995), is more advantageous. Franks’s analysis is scrutinized in detail, as it directly deals with Polish. It is argued that there exist ATB and parasitic gaps which violate both Franks’s thematic prominence condition and his case identity requirement. It is suggested that mere morphological case identity is not sufficient and should be supplemented with identity in abstract Case, perhaps along the lines of Dyła (1984). Next, we examine the third approach, proposed by Postal (1993), suggesting that parasitic gaps and ATB gaps do not represent a single phenomenon and therefore should be kept separate. It is pointed out that the differences between Polish parasitic gaps and ATB gaps are not uniquely characteristic for these two types of structure and that is why they cannot serve as sufficient evidence for claiming that the two examined constructions are instances of distinct phenomena. A conclusion along these lines is reached independently by Hornstein and Nunes (2002) on the basis of English and Portuguese data. Their analysis generally turns out to be applicable also to Polish ATB and parasitic gaps, and only the sentences where case mismatch occurs or where thematic prominence is violated require a separate explanation.

Ronald Feldstein

The Unified Monophthongization Rule of Common Slavic

Abstract: The goal of this paper is to show that the Common Slavic monophthongization of diphthongs was a much more uniform process than has been thought. There are two main types of rules, depending on whether the two moraic components of the diphthong have a pure sonority contrast (± consonantal or ± high) or a sonority contrast in addition to one of nasality or front/back. In the case of the pure sonority contrast, one of the input moras becomes the moraic unit of the new two-mora monophthong. The question of whether it is the first or second mora depends on the sonority distance between the diphthongal components; in the unmarked case of lesser sonority distance, the second component is generalized in the monophthong, but a greater sonority distance causes the first component to become the moraic unit of the monophthong. When the diphthongal contrast involves sonority plus nasality or front/back, the non-nasal or back component first experiences assimilation to nasality or frontness and then serves as the moraic model for the resulting monophthong. These two basic rule types can be readily applied to both glide and nasal diphthongs, with the proviso that non-high vowels must be considered low (ä, a), rather than the traditionally assumed mid vowels (e, o). However, in the case of liquid diphthongs, there is an important difference of relative chronology between southern and northern zones. Southern zones experience the change of short vowels to mid only after the monophthongization of liquid diphthongs, while the northern zones first undergo the change of short vowel > mid, and only then monophthongize the liquid diphthongs. The presence of unchanged low and high vowels (*tart and *turt) accounts for the southern reflexes, while the new mid vowel combinations of the North (*tort and *tərt) account for the northern results. Thus, virtually all of the diphthongal reflexes of Slavic can be explained by: 1) recognizing differing monophthongization rules for pure sonority contrasts, as contrasted with sonority in combination with nasality or front/back; and 2) recognizing the differing northern and southern relative chronologies for monophthongization and short vowel > mid in the last set of diphthongs to monophthongize, which are the liquids.

Tore Nesset

The Assignment of Gender and Declension to Russian Nouns in Soft Consonants: Predictability and Rule Interaction

Abstract: This paper investigates the predictability of gender and declension of Russian nouns ending in soft consonants. It is argued that morphologically complex nouns and nouns denoting animates show nearly full predictability. For simplex inanimate nouns, clear statistical tendencies are documented based on stress patterns and the quality of the penultimate and final segments of the stem. In addition to explicating morphological, semantic, and phonological generalizations, the paper offers a detailed investigation of their interaction, for which an assignment hierarchy is advanced. The assignment of gender and declension is shown to be systematic and well behaved in that highly ranked generalizations consistently take precedence over those further down.

Geoffrey Schwartz

The Lemkos' Affricates: Phonetic, Perceptual, and Sociolinguistic Implications

Abstract: The Lemkos are one of a number of Ruthenian peoples inhabiting the Carpathian mountains. Their language belongs to the group of Southwest Ukrainian dialects. In the late 1940s, immediately following the second World War, most of the Lemkos were forced to abandon their homeland in the Beskid Niski, a Carpathian range between the Tatras and the Bieszczady, which forms part of the border between Poland and Slovakia. Many of them were sent to areas in Western Poland that had been part of Germany before the war, while the rest ended up in the Soviet Union. In the past couple of decades, many Lemkos have returned to the Beskid Niski. While the speech of the Lemkos before World War II was well documented in the works of Zdzisław Stieber, this author is unaware of any works examining the linguistic effects of their resettlement in Polish-speaking areas. This paper provides an acoustic phonetic characterization of the Lemkos’ voiceless affricates both in their own dialect and when they speak Polish, focusing on the distinction between the palato-alveolar /tʃ/ and the alveolo-palatal /tɕ/. An examination of the dental affricate [ts] is added for descriptive purposes, but this segment remains outside the contrast under study. The paper will go on to discuss the perceptual implications of the contrast, variation among speakers, and related sociolinguistic implications.

Ссылка на Kraken - Зеркало на кракен маркетплейс!

Contents

Special Issue on Semantics

Articles

Olga Babko-Malaya
Perfectivity and Prefixation in Russian     5

Barbara Citko
On the Syntax and Semantics of English and Polish Concessive Conditionals     37

Hana Filip
Prefixes and the Delimitation of Events     55

Svetlana Godjevac
Quantifier Scope and LF Movement in Serbo-Croatian     103

Eva Hajičová, Jiří Havelka, and Petr Sgall
Discourse Semantics and the Salience of Referents     127

Svetlana McCoy
Pronoun Doubling and Quantification in Colloquial Russian     141

Larissa Naiditch
Is There an "ANTICAUSATIVE" Component in the Semantics of Decausatives?     161

Elena Paducheva
The Communicative Effects of the Interaction between the Verbal Aspectual Categories and Temporal Adverbials in Russian     173

Tanya Yanko
Whither or Where: Case Choice and Verbs of Placement in Contemporary Ukrainian     199

Article Abstracts

Olga Babko-Malaya

Perfectivity and Prefixation in Russian

Abstract: This paper proposes an analysis of perfectivity in Russian, which aims to answer the following questions: (1) Why are perfective verbs usually prefixed in Russian? (2) Which classes of prefixed verbs have a compositional meaning, i.e., one predictable from the prefix-verb combination? (3) Which classes of prefixed verbs preserve the selectional restrictions of the corresponding unprefixed verbs? (4) Which classes of perfective verbs take internal arguments obligatorily and why? The analysis proposed in the paper assumes that perfective verbs are derived by affixation of Dowty-style aspectual operators CAUSE and BECOME, and optionally a prefix. Perfective verbs under this analysis vary in their morphological structures, as well as in the syntactic position of the prefix. Different behavior of different classes of perfective verbs is accounted for as a consequence of their compositional interpretation.

Barbara Citko

On the Syntax and Semantics of English and Polish Concessive Conditionals

Abstract: This paper presents a comparative analysis of English and Polish concessive conditionals. In English, concessive conditionals typically involve whatever or no matter what adjunct clauses. In Polish, however, they involve subjunctive mood and what looks like pleonastic negation. The main question addressed in this paper is how, in view of these differences, we can account for the parallelism in interpretation between English and Polish concessives. The analysis developed here shows that the subjunctive mood and negation in Polish combine in a way that yields a semantic contribution similar to the contribution of ever in English.

Hana Filip

Refixes and the Delimitation of Events

Abstract not available

Svetlana Godjevac

Quantifier Scope and LF Movement in Serbo-Croatian

Abstract: Despite a strong correlation between word order and quantifier scope interpretation, Serbo-Croatian cannot rely only on S-structure for quantifier scope interpretation. A level distinct from S-structure, such as LF, and an operation such as LF movement is necessary. Evidence for this position is adduced from inverse scope readings. The lack of quantifier scope ambiguity in some examples does not justify the claim that Serbo-Croatian has no LF movement, but it does reveal something important about the interpretation of DPs in Serbo-Croatian: Serbo-Croatian prefers topical interpretation of left-most DPs in null contexts.

Eva Hajičová, Jiří Havelka, and Petr Sgall

Discourse Semantics and the Salience of Referents

Abstract: A major issue in the analysis of discourse patterns is identification of the reference of coreferring expressions in consecutive utterances. The relevant questions may be approached from the viewpoint of the degrees of salience of the referents and of the development of these degrees during a discourse. We want to show how an account of salience may use the opposition of word tokens (and their underlying counterparts) occurring as contextually bound (in the topic) or non-bound (in the focus).

Svetlana McCoy

Pronoun Doubling and Quantification in Colloquial Russian

Abstract: His paper examines semantic factors that facilitate pronoun doubling in colloquial Russian. The pronoun doubling (of subjects and/or objects) is not allowed in sentences with stage-level predicates. Among constructions that facilitate this phenomenon are sentences with individual-level predicates, the universal quantifier or quantifiers like most, contrastive foci, semantic operators like even and only, and wh-questions. It is proposed that these constructions share the following semantic property: their quantificational structure involves some type of multiplicity. The multiplicity comes from either a complex event structure (sentences with ILPs, quantifiers like all or most) or from a set of alternatives that is introduced into the discourse (contrastive foci, operators like even, wh-words, etc.)

Larissa Naiditch

Is There an "ANTICAUSATIVE" Component in the Semantics of Decausatives?

Abstract: The subject of this paper is the semantics of noun phrases (adjective+noun combinations) used in Soviet Russian political discourse. The study has the following objectives: 1) to reveal the semantics of certain types of noun phrases, and the internal relations in them, i.e., the laws and patterns of their formation; 2) to investigate the pragmatic value of these word groups; 3) to contribute to the investigation of general peculiarities of Soviet political discourse. It will be demonstrated that the adjectives under discussion are similar to epitheta ornantia used in traditional texts, especially in folklore. The concept of tautological epithets can be applied to the word groups under consideration because of the proximity or even the coincidence of semantic contents of the noun and the adjective within the noun phrase. The adjective often serves here as an intensifier or qualifier, the classificative function of attribute being absent. The evaluation can be contained in each element of the word group or in both of them. The abundance of such adjectives is a striking feature of Soviet political discourse. They contribute to a certain "monumentalism” of text and provide a ready value judgement of events, the judgement prevailing over the informative content of the texts.

Elena Paducheva

The Communicative Effects of the Interaction between the Verbal Aspectual Categories and Temporal Adverbials in Russian

Abstract: In this paper Russian decausatives are claimed to be formed from those causative verbs that allow non-agentive subjects, so that the main difference between decausatives and passives is that a decausative excludes participation of a volitional Agent in the concept of the situation. Decausativization is presented as a shift of diathesis, which transfers the Object of a causative verb (with non-agentive subject) to the Subject position but preserves the Causer as an adjunct. The adjunct Causer, if not specified and thus irrelevant, may be deleted by means of a rule analogous to that responsible, e.g., for Unspecified Object deletion. The "Anticausative” analysis of decausatives, according to which decausatives denote a change that can take place spontaneously, is rejected: it is demonstrated that spontaneity of change is not an obligatory feature in the semantics of decausatives.

Tanya Yanko

The Communicative Effects of the Interaction between the Verbal Aspectual Categories and Temporal Adverbials in Russian

Abstract: In the context of the verbal aspectual forms referring to the situations which came to an end before the moment of speaking, the Russian adverbial davno ‘long ago’ is always the rheme of the sentence. The rhematic bias of davno is accounted for by the semantic parameter ‘remote in time from the speaker’. Meanwhile, in the context of the verbal aspectual forms referring to the situations which persist up to and including the moment of speaking, davno is not obligatorily the rheme. Another semantic parameter which influences the theme-rheme structure is the meaning ‘below the norm’. The parameter ‘below the norm’ determines the communicative function of the Russian adverbial nedavno ‘recently’: it is the rheme in the context of the verbal forms which refer to situations taking place over a long period of time. Thus, I hope to demonstrate that whether an adverbial belongs to the theme of a sentence or it can solely be the rheme may depend on the meaning of the verbal categories.