Sorbian/Kashub prepositions; Russian phonetics course

[Loren A. Billings]

Dear colleagues:

I have two relatively unrelated queries:

1.  As is relatively well known, Russian has the order _ni u kogo_ 'not at
     anybody's (place)', while Czech has _u nikoho_ (same gloss).  Polish and
     Slovak, as well as all of S. Slavic except Serbo-Croatian patterns like
     the Czech, while all of E. Slvic and S-C patterns like the Russian.  My
     question is this:  How do the non-Polish Lechitic languages (such as
     Kashub) and Upper and Lower Sorbian pattern?  If you know, kindly send
     examples and references if possible.  (I don't expect you to use exactly
     this example; any negated prepositional phrase will do.)

2.  Next semester I will be teaching a phonetics course for U.S. students of
     Russian.  I would prefer it if the course were a practical exercise in
     pronunciation (including intonation).  Is there a textbook in existence
     designed for native speakers of English to help them deal with the
     most difficult problems of pronouncing Russian (for example, one that
     deals with softness, vowel reduction, the IK system or the like, stress,
     etc.)?  If not, does someone have materials of this sort they'd be
     willing to share?

Thanks much,

Loren Billings

billings at mailer.fsu.edu

Dept. of Modern Langs. and Linguistics
Florida State University
362 Diffenbaugh Building
Tallahassee, FL 32302-1020 _USA_