Journal of Slavic Linguistics

Walker Thompson. Epifanii Slavinetskii's Greek-Slavonic-Latin Lexicon between East and West

2025-03-12T11:38:37+00:00

This is a hefty and extremely well-researched doctoral dissertation for the Faculty of Modern Languages at Heidelberg University, published with minimal revision, as is the practice in Germany, [...]

Similar Place Avoidance in Slavic and other Indo-European languages

2024-12-10T16:00:32+00:00

The paper discusses a constraint on the distribution of homorganic CVC sequences known as Similar Place Avoidance (SPA). Though proposed as a statistical universal, it has been little considered in Slavic and other Indo-European languages. We evaluate the CVC distribution in 100 recorded and reconstructed varieties, of which 18 are Slavic, 44 are non-Slavic Indo-European, and 38 are non-Indo-European. The SPA principle has been formulated as pertaining to CVC sequences of two consonants sharing the same place, but it has also been suggested that coronals are dependent on sonorancy agreement for the constraint to take effect. This dependency is indeed observable but concerns dento-alveolars only, not coronals as a whole class. SPA weakly restricts combinations of dento-alveolar sonorants with palatal sonorants. Combinations of different-place coronal obstruents are disfavored, but this is instead due to sibilancy avoidance (a restriction of the co-occurrence of two sibilants in a CVC sequence, previously unreported). Finally, combinations of palatals (including post-alveolars) are less often subject to an SPA effect, and the Slavic languages virtually lack this kind of restriction.

Looking beyond information structure

2024-05-10T14:08:10+00:00

The principle of end-weight (Quirk et al. 1985) posits that language users prefer to place short (“light”) before long (“heavy”) constituents because this is easier to cognitively process (Hawkins 1994). Weight effects on constituent order have been discussed for well over a century in languages like English and German (cf. Behaghel 1909, 1930). In Slavic languages, however, they have received little attention so far (cf. Kizach 2012: 251).

Rather, the focus has been on information structure (Short 2002: 494). However, Goldberg’s Tenet #5 predicts that general cognitive restraints such as weight effects apply across languages (Goldberg 2003: 219). This article presents the results of a pilot study that investigates a phenomenon known as Heavy NP Shift, in which the _VP[NP PP] pattern changes to _VP[PP NP] when the NP is heavier than the PP.

Employing the Magnitude Estimation Test method (Hoffmann 2013), grammaticality acceptability ratings from 39 L1 Slovak speakers were elicited. The results show that Slovak is susceptible to weight effects, such that placing short before long constituents is always preferred. Moreover, the results provide evidence for the existence of a _VP[V NP PP] pattern in Slovak that has been identified as “basic” for English (Hawkins 1994: 20). This supports Hawkins’s (2004) Performance-Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis, which posits that grammaticalized patterns in analytic languages are the result of performance preference and therefore preferred in synthetic languages.

Local and Non-Local Binding of Reflexives and Pronominals in Russian Object Control Infinitives

2025-01-09T19:41:50+00:00

It has been suggested that reflexives and pronominals in Russian object control infinitives can refer either to the matrix subject (non-local binding) or to the infinitive subject (local binding), depending on the matrix verb. Specifically, it has been argued that the non-local binding of a reflexive and the local binding of a pronominal are most likely to occur when the matrix verb induces a strong cohesion between the matrix and the infinitive clause. The present study investigates Russian speakers’ preferences in the interpretation of possessives in object control infinitives with the aim of testing the cohesion hypothesis by means of a referent selection task. The results show that the matrix verb does influence the interpretation of possessive reflexives and pronominals in object control infinitives, but not as predicted by the cohesion hypothesis. For a possessive reflexive, local binding is generally preferred, but non-local binding is also possible and most likely with a matrix verb that induces weak cohesion between the matrix and the infinitive clause. For a possessive pronominal, non-local binding is preferred both with a matrix verb that induces a strong cohesion and with a matrix verb that induces a weak cohesion, while local binding dominates with a matrix verb from the middle cohesion range. The study concludes that the cohesion between the matrix and the infinitive clause is not a relevant factor underlying the effect of the matrix verb in the interpretation of Russian possessives in object control infinitives. An alternative explanation in terms of implicit causality is proposed, which argues that the interpretation of reflexives is subject to a strong syntactic locality constraint, which can be weakened when pragmatic inferences from the basic cognitive representation of the event conditioned by a matrix verb make a non-local referent salient. The interpretation of pronominals is subject to a weak anti-locality constraint, which can be overridden when pragmatic inferences suggest a local referent as the more salient interpretation.

Subject doubling in the Slovenian dialect of Resia

2024-07-05T08:37:45+00:00

One of the most curious phenomena that makes the Resian dialect of Slovenian stand out among the Slavic languages is subject doubling. Subject phrases in Resian can be doubled by clitic variants of the personal pronouns. Within Slavic, this is unknown outside the Romance-Slavic contact zone in northern Italy, which is why it is generally explained as a borrowing, most probably from Friulian (Rhaeto-Romance). Despite being such a rarity, studies dealing with subject doubling are scarce, and the phenomenon remains poorly understood. This paper aims at a description of Resian subject doubling, focusing on (1) the types of subject phrases that occur with doubling and (2) the place the subject clitics occupy in clauses with doubling. To identify cases of subject doubling, a recent translation of The Little Prince is used. Comparing potential cases with the French original helps to distinguish instances of subject doubling from instances of left- and right-dislocation. The analysis shows that subject clitics always precede the predicate. Apart from cases with subject-verb inversion, they follow the subject phrase but can be separated from it by adverbials. Partly in line with earlier research, it is observed that, with the exception of interrogatives and indefinite pronouns, all types of subjects (including universal quantifiers) occur with doubling. Moreover, it is shown that the lack of animacy, definiteness, and specificity do not inhibit subject doubling. Finally, subject doubling in Resian is contrasted with the use of subject clitics in Friulian as the language that, most probably, provided the example for Resian subject doubling.

Quasi-participial mówiąc ‘speaking’ with adverbial complements in Polish: A quantitative corpus-based study

2023-10-24T04:01:01+00:00

This article employs frame semantics, a usage-based model of construction grammar, along with a quantitative corpus-based approach, to examine the characteristics of the construction involving adverbial complements and the quasi-participle mówiąc ‘speaking’ in Polish. The author analyzes instances of this construction within the National Corpus of Polish to ascertain its structural, semantic, distributional, and discourse-functional features. Furthermore, the study identifies adverbial complements with a strong affinity for the construction. The investigation reveals that the construction is frequently associated with distinct categories of adverbial complements that invoke diverse semantic frames. Additionally, this construction appears in various registers and serves multiple functions in discourse.