26.2793, Review: Morphology; Semantics; Syntax; Typology: Chahine (2013)

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Subject: 26.2793, Review: Morphology; Semantics; Syntax; Typology: Chahine (2013)

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Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2015 14:34:54
From: Dario Lecic [dario.lecic at gmail.com]
Subject: Current Studies in Slavic Linguistics

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-134.html

EDITOR: Irina  Kor Chahine
TITLE: Current Studies in Slavic Linguistics
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Language Companion Series 146
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Dario Lecic, University of Sheffield

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

This volume is a collection of selected papers presented at the 6th Annual
Meeting of the Slavic Linguistics Society held in Aix-en-Provence from 1 to 3
September, 2011. As stated in the introduction, it intends to provide “equal
consideration to various issues of Slavic linguistics, from morphology to
syntax and semantics” (1). The primary topic of the volume is Slavic
impersonal constructions viewed from a typological perspective; however, it
also includes topics as diverse as reflexives, antipassive and evidentiality
markers, zero signs, clitics, lexical synonymy, polysemy, etc. It is
conveniently divided into 4 thematic sections: Morphosyntax (4 articles),
Syntactical relations (4 articles), Impersonal constructions (5 articles), and
Lexical semantics (4 articles).

The book starts off with an introduction by Marguerite Guiraud-Weber and Irina
Kor Chahine which gives a typological overview of the impersonal construction
(IC), which is relatively abundant in Slavic languages and used in a great
variety of functions. The authors emphasize on several occasions that it is
wrong to identify impersonal sentences with either elliptical, zero subject or
syntactically empty constructions. The subject of an IC is generic or
indeterminate, unlike in the latter types. In ICs, if there is a nominal
element present, it usually appears in an oblique case and serves the role of
experiencer or of observer but never of an active agent. They also develop a
typology of such constructions across Slavic languages, based on the case of
the nominal element and the meaning of the construction. For instance,
impersonals describing environment will usually have the nominal element in
the Locative (e.g. Russian “Na ulice xolodno”); sentences of negative
existence will appear with a Genitive nominal (e.g. Serbo-Croatian “Nema
knjige”); impersonals describing mental or physical states will involve an
experiencer in the Dative (e.g. Bulgarian “Težko ti”); whereas conveying the
meaning of damage caused by a natural phenomenon will require an impersonal
with an Instrumental (e.g. Russian “Vetrom sorvalo kryšu”) or Accusative
(Czech “Souseda ranilo”); there are also impersonal constructions that use an
Accusative argument with an intransitive verb (e.g. Russian Ego “lixoradit”).
All these constructions are in one way or another objects of interest in
Section 3. 

The section on Morphosyntax starts off with an article by Steven Franks
“Binding and morphology revisited”. Franks looks at the cross-linguistic
variation in the behaviour of anaphora such as Russian “sebja” and English
“himself”. In Government and Binding Theory (GB), “Logical Form (LF)
properties depend on Phonetic Form (PF) properties” (28). In the case of
anaphora this would mean that the choice of its antecedent relies on its
morphology. So “sebja” is usually defined as a morphologically simplex anaphor
(in that it looks like a head, is subject-oriented, and allows long-distance
antecedents) and “himself” as morphologically complex (has the internal
structure of a phrase, allows only local antecedents, and is not
subject-oriented). Furthermore, “sebja” has so-called phi-features (person,
number, gender), whereas “himself” does not. However, Franks notes several
inconsistencies that arise when Slavic anaphoras are analysed in this way. He
believes the antecedency is determined in the LF itself without ever gaining
access to PF. PF morphology can encode less than required by LF (as in the
case of Polish and Czech ‘head reciprocals’) or more (as in the case of
Bulgarian ‘phrasal reflexives’ such as “sebe si”). More importantly, what
matters is semantic rather than morphological structure. 

In his article “Possessor Raising and Slavic clitics”, Anton Zimmerling argues
against a generalised syntactic account of all Slavic constructions with
possessive operators. Some Slavic languages mark phrase-level and clause-level
possessives with different morphological cases. For instance, Russian
phrase-level possessives are genitives (“Ona ne doč’ Petrova”), whereas
clause-level possessives are datives (“Ona Petrovu ne doč’”). For such cases,
the author proposes an alternative account, that of Possessive Shift, which
involves a change in both syntax and argument marking. Also, he feels it is
necessary to keep apart the relation ‘X owns Y’, where the possessor is
necessarily animate, from other pseudo-possessive relations, namely WHOLE:
PART and ‘X has feature Y’, where the possessee is inanimate and possessor can
be either. 

Katarzyna Janic’s article deals with the antipassive, which is defined as “a
syntactic operation that detransitivizes transitive constructions” (63). The
analysis of such constructions so far has been concentrated mostly on ergative
languages. The author believes this was the case because such languages were
thought to possess explicit antipassive markers which trigger an explicit
change in the agreement pattern (Nahuatl being one example). However, Janic
argues that languages that do have such constructions rarely have a marker
dedicated exclusively to the antipassive, but rather that this function is
fulfilled by a polyfunctional marker. When considered in this light,
antipassives can be found in a number of accusative languages as well. In
Slavonic languages, for instance, the antipassive marker is usually the
reflexive/reciprocal marker (Polish “Chłopiec uchwycił się klamk-i”; Russian
“Sobaka kusaet-sja”). 

Marijana Marelj and Eric Reuland analyse the ‘reflexive clitic’ SE (manifested
as “se/sja/się/si” etc.) in a number of Slavic and Romance languages. Even
though this clitic can appear in a number of unrelated constructions in these
languages (including reflexive, reciprocal, passive and impersonal), they
argue that it is possible to account for the presence of the clitic in all
these constructions in a uniform way. In other words, SE has a fixed role in
all these constructions, and this role is neither inherently reflexive nor
anaphoric. Since SE is underspecified in terms of phi-features, the authors
consider it a member of the ‘mop up squad’, “a functional element that can be
merged and mop up offending features that need to be taken care of in syntax”
(78).

The first article in the section on Syntactic relations, written by Daniel
Weiss, bears an intriguing title, “The lazy speaker and the fascination of
emptiness”. What makes this article special is that it focuses on Colloquial
Russian (CR) and aims to discover ‘quirks’ which might distinguish it from
Standard Russian and other Slavic languages. The author analyses different
types of syntactic gaps in terms of explicitness/implicitness and textual
redundancy/economy. After analysing numerous examples of both referential
ellipsis (such as subject, object or relative pronoun omission) and
referential zeroes (indefinite zero, generic you and verb omission), he comes
to the conclusion that CR is quite unique among European languages in that it
allows simultaneous omission of both main verbs and head nouns (thus leaving
only stranded modifiers or relative pronouns). Weiss sees this as a
manipulation (but a legal one) of the third Gricean maxim. However, as more
often than not such utterances can have ambiguous readings, at the same time
it violates the first of Grice’s maxims. By allowing such drastic omissions,
it seems (Colloquial) Russian is moving closer to East Asian languages when it
comes to grammatical marking. 

The article by Dorota Sikora “Is the Polish verb iść an auxiliary to be?”
analyses the infinitive constructions (IC) with this verb to determine the
level of its grammaticalisation. She believes this verb is currently leading a
‘double life’ in Polish, existing both in the lexicon as a full verb with a
spatial meaning and an auxiliary with a future meaning (e.g. “X idzie
siedzieć”). Heine defined the process of grammaticalisation as consisting of
four stages: initial phase > bridging context phase > switch contexts phase >
conventionalisation. Sikora’s corpus analysis shows that “iść” is currently
between the second and third phase. This can be observed in the fact that
“iść” ICs can have two or three readings, but also in the release of its
selection constraints. Used as a full verb, it can only be followed by motion
verbs; however, used as an auxiliary, there is no such constraint. Also, when
used as a lexical verb, it can take a number of prefixes to express
perfectivity; as an auxiliary, it cannot do so. The author also suggests that
“iść” is fulfilling the role of the present perfect, which does not formally
exist in Polish. 

Maxim Makartsev analyses evidentiality markers in Albanian and Macedonian
bilingual political discourse. In Macedonian, expression of evidentiality is
compulsory in the past tense (perfect forms are used to express unwitnessed
events and aorist/imperfect for witnessed events); In Albanian, it is optional
(admirative forms are used to express unwitnessed evidentiality). Makartsev
analyses the language of a bilingual Albanian-Macedonian political talk show
broadcast on Macedonian TV where all exchanges are subtitled into both
languages. He looks at the common strategies used by the show’s subtitlers for
translating the past tense forms from one language into the other. His data
shows that the speakers can convey not only that they witnessed the events,
but also whether they believe in the information they convey (epistemic
modality). Macedonian uses grammatical markers for that purpose, and Albanian
lexical. 

Alexander Letuchiy analyses “A strange variant of Russian čtoby-construction”.
The ‘strange’ construction in question is a temporal clause embedded within a
“čtoby”-clause, thus giving the sentence a tripartite structure. The author
tries to determine how the tense in this temporal clause is chosen, whether it
is governed by “čtoby” or by the tense of the main clause. Namely, “čtoby” is
necessarily followed either by past tense or infinitive; other tenses are not
allowed. Most of the examples he found have a present or future tense in the
temporal clause, which would suggest the choice is based on semantic criteria.
However, there are also examples in which past tense is used in the temporal
clause to signal a future event (but all examples involve only the combination
of “čtoby” + “kogda”). Since “kogda” is one of the least restrictive
subordinators, the author believes this makes it more transparent to the
influence of “čtoby”. Unfortunately, the frequency of such a combination is
too low to be able to prove any kind of point (163 tokens out of 500,000 in
total), so the author’s conclusions are based solely on speculation. The
potential importance of this article lies in the fact that most authors
analyse only single embedding and assume that the behaviour of sentences with
multiple embedding can easily be derived from the first. However, this article
shows this might not necessarily be the case.

As stated at the beginning, Section 3 represents the main focus of the book -
impersonal constructions. First article is by Jasmina Milićević, who analyses
impersonal constructions (ICs) in Serbian within Meľčuk’s Meaning-Text
Linguistic model.  Her typology of ICs distinguishes between ICs with a
semantically full (indefinite impersonal) pronoun as subjects and those with a
semantically empty (dummy) pronoun as subject. Each of these can further have
zero and non-zero realisations; however, in Slavic languages, only the
variants with zero referents have been attested. In previous literature,
impersonal has been opposed to the passive and considered a distinct
grammatical category. However, Milićević does not consider the two mutually
exclusive but rather looks at their interaction. She notes that certain voices
(Meľčuk’s model defines a greater number of voices than the classical active -
passive distinction) are always accompanied by ICs. Although that does not
necessarily mean ICs are markers of that voice, she sees them as way of
reinforcing the information carried by the actual marker. 

Article by Małgorzata Krzek, “Interpretation and voice in Polish SIĘ and
-NO/-TO constructions” looks at the functions of the respective markers. Both
constructions have similar features: both can appear with verbs of all
transitivity patterns; in both constructions, active syntactic subjects are
projected and a generic reading is available. However, the author claims that,
despite their similarities, the two markers cannot be given a uniform
analysis. -NO/-TO suffix is best analysed as “the head of the functional
projection (VoiceP) located between vP and TP” (192); it only heads the active
impersonal Voice Phrase, not the passive one. In other words, the -NO/-TO
construction is still active and NO/TO are not passive morphemes. The SIĘ
construction, on the other hand, is also active, but does not block
passivization; as for its function according to Krzek, it is a syntactic
subject to which nominative case is assigned, but it could also be a
functional projection - she leaves this question open for future analyses. 

Dative-infinitive constructions in Russian are the topic of Alina Israeli’s
article. The author feels it is necessary to distinguish between various types
of infinitive constructions based on the case of the subject, clause type,
aspectual distinctions etc. rather than putting all of them under one roof.
The constructions she is interested in consist of four elements: 1) dative
subject, 2) infinitive, 3) negative particle “ne” and 4) the particles “li”,
“že” and “by”. These four elements can combine in 10 different ways, all of
which Israeli analyses in detail. It becomes apparent from her analysis that
aspect does play a role in these constructions - perfective and imperfective
verbs produce different semantic outcomes (e.g. prediction, impossibility,
likelihood, rhetorical questions, etc.) and have different combinatory
abilities. 

In an article “On the nature of dative arguments in Russian constructions with
‘predicatives’”, Sergey Say compares individual grammatical properties of
predicatives (e.g. “kuriť vredno”) to those of their corresponding adjectives
(“kurenye vredno”). There is considerable debate whether such predicatives
constitute a separate part of speech or they should be classified alongside
the adjectives. The property he explores is the ability of the predicative to
co-occur with the dative argument denoting Experiencer. Based on data from the
Russian National Corpus, the author establishes 4 types of predicatives based
on this property: 1) predicatives that cannot co-occur with dative arguments
(neither can the corresponding long and short adjectives, e.g. *mne tiho, *mne
solnečno), 2) predicatives that take dative arguments, but corresponding
adjectives do not, 3) predicatives and short adjectives that take dative
arguments, but long adjectives do not (“tesno”, “tjaželo”), 4) all three
constructions take dative arguments (“prijatno”, “izvesno”). Moreover, he
further subdivides Type 2 based on semantic relationship between the
predicatives and corresponding adjectives. For instance, words such as
“holodno” refer to a subjective feeling when used as predicatives, but as
adjectives their meaning is objective. Another subtype are predicatives of
emotion (such as “grustno”, “veselo”) which denote internal states of the
Experiencer, whereas the adjectives denote external manifestations of this
state. What is interesting in this article is that the author uses 3 different
models to account for the existence of each subtype, namely constructional,
derivational and inflectional. 

Kathrin Schlund analyses what she calls Russian Adversity Impersonals (AIs)
(such as “Lodku uneslo vetrom”). The reason for labelling them ‘adversity’ is
that the effect an uncontrollable elemental force has on an animate or
inanimate patient is predominantly negative. She finds several parallels
between case assignment in such constructions and case assignment in languages
with split ergativity. For instance, in ergative-absolutive languages, the
instigator of a transitive action is demoted to an oblique case (ergative).
Similarly, in AIs this agent is demoted to the Instrumental. There are also
comparable constraints of tense and aspect, animacy, adverbial and information
structure in both. It has always been argued that languages which are rich in
inflectional morphology and free in word order can vary more easily between
nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive features. According to the
author, Russian seems to be a case in point.

The final section, Lexical semantics, starts with an article by Glòria de
Valdivia, Joan Castellví and Mariona Taulé entitled “Morphological and lexical
aspect in Russian deverbal nominalizations”. The question they ask is to what
extent the morphological and lexical aspect of the base verb determines the
lexical denotation of its corresponding nominalization. Their first
revelation, based on corpus data, is that there is a tendency to derive
nominalizations from the imperfective verb rather than the perfective. After
that, they use native speakers of Russian to determine how the lexical reading
of a deverbal noun is actually determined. They show that there is a tendency
to have more nouns with an event or state reading coming from an imperfective
base verb, and more nouns with a result reading coming from a perfective base
verb. 

Dmitrij Dobrovoľskij and Ludmila Pöppel analyse two pairs of Russian lexical
synonyms from the semantic field POWER, namely “revolyucija/perevorot” and
“myatež/vosstanie”. Even though they are often mentioned as near-synonyms, the
authors show that substantial nuances in their usages exist, most notably on
the dimension of evaluation - one member of the pair (“revolyucija” and
“vosstanie”) is usually used to refer to a positive change, the other to a
negative one. As such, “they are important means of manipulating public
opinion” (294). Also, by comparing the uses of these words in the 1917
editions of Pravda and modern dictionaries, they demonstrate that a semantic
shift has taken place, which has not been noted before. 

Vladimir Beliakov analyses collocations with nominal quantifiers in Russian.
There are two classes of nouns that can serve as collocators in this case: 1)
aggregate nouns (“staja”, “roi”, “armija”, “buket”, etc.) and 2) nouns with
quantificative semantics (“gruda”, “kipa”, “prorva”, etc.). The former have
certain restrictions as to their referents (e.g. “roi pčel”, but *roi ptic).
However, they are not limited to living organisms only (“les ruk”, “roi
samoletov”). In this latter case, we are dealing with metaphorical transfer,
but in the process these nouns lose their lexical meaning and become
semantically incomplete. The collocators of the second category can also be
used metaphorically (“voroh novostei”, “kipa problem”, etc.); however, there
is no change at work as they never start off with lexical meaning in the first
place; the only meaning they have is only in association with other concepts;
in other words, they function like collective quantifiers.  

The final article of the volume is by a group of authors (Tatiana Reznikova,
Ekaterina Rahilina, Olga Karpov, Maria Kyuseva, Daria Ryzhova and Timofey
Arkhangelskiy) and deals with polysemy patterns in Russian adjectives and
adverbs of quality (e.g. “spokojnij”). Their extremely thorough analysis
involves identifying all possible meanings of a polysemous item, restrictions
on co-occurring words, types of semantic shifts between individual meanings
(the most frequent being metaphoric and metonymic extension). However, besides
these two, they also identify a third type of shift, which involves two
domains which are in no way similar (e.g. property of an animal → high
degree). They call it re-branding. The examples extracted from the Russian
National Corpus were implemented into an online database which can be searched
for all of the abovementioned features. The database gives clear evidence for
a systematic organisation of vocabulary.

EVALUATION

As is visible from the Summary above, the editor selected articles from a wide
variety of topics in Slavic linguistics, so this book will be of interest to
researchers from a range of disciplines, not limited solely to Slavic
languages. Some articles especially offer highly innovative and revolutionary
views. For instance, Schlund’s and Janic’s attempts to find parallels between
some aspects of Slavic languages on the one hand and ergative languages on the
other are definitely praiseworthy. Reznikova et al. identify a whole new type
of semantic change and Sikora notes the emergence of a whole new tense (the
Present Perfect) in Polish by means of “iść”. All of these are quite
impressive accomplishments.  

The theoretical orientation of the majority of articles is generative, so
readers without a background knowledge of traditional generativism might find
some articles harder to follow (especially the ones in Section 1) due to the
use of highly specialised terminology. However, there are also authors who
adopt a more empirical approach, analysing data from corpora and other sources
(such as Say, de Valdivia et al., Dobrovoľskij and Pöppel, etc.), thus
breaking away from classical generative focus on intuitive reasoning, which is
undoubtedly positive. 

The majority of articles deal with Russian, which is understandable as Russian
is the most widely spoken Slavic language. However, there is some
inconsistency in the visual presentation of examples from Russian. Whereas
some authors transliterate Russian examples and present them in Latin script,
some authors leave the Cyrillic originals, thus making it harder for some
readers to interpret, e.g., speakers of other Slavic languages which do not,
or have never used, the Cyrillic script. Examples from Bulgarian and Serbian,
on the other hand, always appear in Latin script. The editor could have
intervened by standardising the manner of presentation of such examples.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dario Lecic is a PhD student at the University of Sheffield doing empirical
research on Croatian morphology. His main research interests are morphology,
corpus linguistics and linguistic typology.





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