How to express approximative inversion in Russian with long prepositions

[Loren A. Billings]

Dear colleagues:
This is not my summary yet, although I have received a handfull of responses
already.  I wanted to clarify certain points:

First, as Genevra Gerhart (U Washington) and Slava Paperno (Cornell U)
mentioned, why would anone want to say "near approximately ten pine trees"?
Immagine the following scenario:  Some environmentalists in the Pacific
Northwest are tring to prevent some builders from erecting a structure on
some land not _on_, but _close to_ a stand of about ten douglass fir
trees (therefore requiring me to change _sosen_ to _elei_) in order to
prevent the "harm" of habitat to some nothern spotted owls.  Isn't it
totally immaginable to say "near approximately ten fir trees" (or "near
about ten fir trees")?  If so, then why not either of 3a or 3b below?

Next, I would be interested in how such examples are uttered in Ukrainian
and Belarusian.  My own study is primarily with Russian, but I gather that
such "approximative inversion" is possible in these other two languages as
well.

Finally, related to the last point, there have been comments to me in
response to my posting (and other comments on this list) complaining about
the apparent presumption that Slavic = Russian.  I myself have been
guilty of presuming something like this in my correspondence on this list
and elsewhere.  We should face facts:  some 250 million people speak
Russian, far more than any other Slavic language.  This does not make the
others less interesting, just (inevitably) less studied.  I myself study
primarily Russian phenomena and have only taught Russian.  Nonetheless, I
have done research on three other languages (Bulgarian, Ukrainian and
Polish), have studied Czech, and would like to work on Slovak.  As it so
happens, the particular phenomenon I'm asking about below, approximative
inversion, is only attested (to my knowledge) in East Slavic.  Others on
this list--most notably (to me), L. Jake Jacobson recently, about how a
major computer company could ignore a letter in the second most spoken
Slavic language (and one of the most spoken languages in Europe):
Ukrainian--have voiced concerns about needing to study the non-Russian
Slacic languages more.  I agree.  But just becuase some still happen to
be studying Russian does not mean they are imperialists.  (The fact that
I've written this entire commentary in English might be even more of a
matter of imperialism!)

In any event, I would appreciate your continued comments and judgments.

Sincerely, --Loren billings at princeton.edu billings at pucc.bitnet

P.P.S:  Note also that the only country that does not have a two-letter
code in its Internet addresses is the United States.  Now there's real
imperialism.  (Kindly boycott be trying my Bitnet address.)  --LAB
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear colleagues:

I would like to test the acceptability of certain constructions involving
prosodically heavy prepositions with approximative inversion in Russian.
I write to you because my own informants cannot authoritatively respond
to these particular data (for reasons which I cannot tell you now, or
else I'll probably unduly influence your responses).  I will provide
sets of examples.  Kindly respond with whichever one you prefer.  If, for
some reason, you don't accept either one, kindly try to judge whether one
or the other is preferable (i.e., _dopustimo_) and add how YOU would say
it yourself.  In some examples you must look at the English gloss to be
sure to use the right meaning, when there can be two of them:

(1a)  otnositel'no ochkov tridtsati i govorit' ne stoit
(1b)  ochkov otnositel'no tridtsati i govorit' ne stoit

      'It is not even worth having a discussion regarding about 30 points.'

(2a)  okolo sosen desiati
(2b)  sosen okolo desiati

      'approximately ten pine trees'

(3a)  okolo sosen desiati
(3b)  sosen okolo desiati

      'NEAR approximately ten pine trees'

Be sure to keep the two meanings in (2) and (3) separate.  (I know that
there're other ways of saying all of these.  I am testing whether one can
also express these sentences in this way.)  I use the Library of Congress
transliteration in each.  I will post a summary of what I find out.  I will
also include the sources of these examples.  (I do not include them here
because I don't wish to influence your responses.)  Kindly e-mail me
directly instead of responding to the list; I will cite all respondents
unless they request anonymity.  Thank you.

Loren Billings
billings at princeton.edu
billings at pucc.bitnet