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JSL  Vol. 1, No. 2 


(Summer-Fall 1993; 197-388)

 



 
 

  • From the Editors (197-98)

Articles


Review Articles

  • Henrik Birnbaum. On the Ethnogenesis and Protohome of the Slavs: The Linguistic Evidence (352-74)
  • [Charles E. Townsend]: Terence R. Carlton. Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages (375-88)

ABSTRACTS:
 

Interpretants and Linguistic Change: The Case of -x in Contemporary Standard Colloquial Russian

Edna Andrews

The following analysis deals with the appearance of /x/ in nominal lexemes where it would seem to be unmotivated (cf. kartoxa, Toxa, etc.). The occurrence of /x/ has several potential motivations, including: 1) the morphophonemic consonantal alternation x/s#; or 2) examples of the nominal suffix -x. The solution to this problem is established as a result of a detailed semantic analysis of all /x/-based nominal suffixes ({-ix-(a)}, {-ux-(a)}, { -ox-(a)}, {-ax-(a)}, and {-x-(a)}) and a description of derivational rules for lexemes in /x/. In order to present this analysis in its proper theoretical framework, the principles of linguistic sign theory, and, in particular, Peircean categories of inference and signs, are applied in articulating the specific principles that define diachronic linguistic change. The conclusions include statements concerning productivity of morphemes and the interrelationship between form and meaning. [Journal of Slavic Linguistics 1(2): 199-218, 1993]

Neo-Acute Length in the North Central Dialects of Late Common Slavic

Christina Y. Bethin

The shift of stress known as the neo-acute retraction took place in the context of emerging prosodic differences in Late Common Slavic (LCS). By recognizing that LCS dialects were differentiating in terms of whether they took the mora or the syllable as their prosodic domain, and by recognizing differences in syllable structure and their metrical implications, it is possible to account for the reflexes of the neo-acute retraction in the various dialects of LCS in a fairly principled way. The chronology of tone loss and the neo-acute retraction is particularly important in the North Central LCS dialects because this area does not preserve pitch accent, though differences in compensatory lengthening have been attributed to the effect of accent. I propose that what has been called "neo-acute lengthening" before weak jers in the North Central dialects was actually pretonic lengthening, and that it represents an attempt to maintain a certain metrical organization, the trochaic metrical foot, which was emerging in this area of LCS.
cbethin@ccmail.sunysb.edu
[Journal of Slavic Linguistics 1(2): 219-50, 1993]

The Argument Status of Accusative Measure Nominals in Russian

George Fowler and Michael Yadroff

This paper is a contribution to the theory of bare-NP adverbs based on an analysis of Accusative measure nominals in Russian. Duration phrases are classified into three discrete groups: arguments (with verbs like provesti `spend [time]'), quasi-arguments (with verbs in pro- and certain other prefixes), and non-arguments (other Accusative duration phrases), on the basis of the features [+, - theta-role] and [+, - referential]. It is established that case must be assigned to duration phrases independently of the verb. Two possible competing analyses of the mechanism of case assignment are proposed. One analysis relies upon a base-generated functional category of Case, with a distribution parallel to prepositions. The second analysis posits a null preposition that assigns case to duration phrases. [Journal of Slavic Linguistics 1(2): 251-79, 1993]

Negated Adjunct Phrases Are Really Partitive

Steven Franks and Katarzyna Dziwirek

This article examines genitive measure adverbials (adjuncts), which occur in various Slavic languages in the context of sentential negation. Although this phenomenon resembles the genitive of negation, it is argued that such adverbials do not result from the genitive of negation rule, and are instead partitives. Polish and Russian data are employed to support this idea on semantic grounds, the "optionality" of both depending on whether or not there is a partitive interpretation. The primary mode of argumentation, however, is comparative. The claim that genitive adjuncts are really partitives is supported by a range of data drawn from a variety of Slavic languages. These data show that for any given language the status of the genitive adjunct construction is comparable to that of the partitive construction rather than to that of the genitive of negation construction. This state of affairs is obscured in Russian, where the three phenomena are equally felicitous. If one looks beyond East Slavic, however, the felicity of the genitive of negation and partitive diverges, making it possible to identify the true nature of these genitive adjuncts. [Journal of Slavic Linguistics 1(2): 280-305, 1993]

Analogical Change in West Slavic Be

Kevin Hannan

The remodeling of present indicative be in dialects of Polish, Czech, and Slovak illustrates two different processes of analogical change. First, as seen in a variety of paradigmatic patterns from dialects of Silesia, Little Poland, Moravia, and Slovakia, 3rd-person forms were reinterpreted as the root of the paradigm. Second, preterite enclitics served as a model for new present-tense 1st-person enclitics -ch, -chmy. The geographic spread of these developments, which date to the late 15th and the 16th centuries, suggests the influence of southern Polish dialects. Such examples of analogical change present a means of typologically distinguishing the dialects which are spatially located within the center of the West Slavic dialect continuum from the peripheral dialects.
  • 2401 Thorndale Rd., Taylor, TX 76574
[Journal of Slavic Linguistics 1(2): 306-24, 1993]

The Genitive Plural Endings in the East Slavic Languages

William Mahota

Although Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Russian all have the genitive plural desinences {-ov}, {-ej}, and -O, their distribution in these languages varies substantially. This is in part due to analogical leveling to {-ov} in neuter and feminine substantives in Belorussian, and to the different ways in which stem-final hard and soft consonants correlate with the selection of desinences in each language. The consequences of the analogical spread of {-ov} are both morphophonemic (restriction of vowel-zero alternations in certain Belorussian stems, accentual modifications in Ukrainian), and semantic (markedness reversal and semantic marking with an unexpected desinence in all three). The spread of {-ov} to nouns of all genders both in the standard languages and in the dialects also represents the final stage of the loss of gender distinctions in the oblique plural cases of these languages, a process which was completed in the other oblique cases several centuries ago. [Journal of Slavic Linguistics 1(2): 325-42, 1993]

More on Glides in Contemporary Standard Russian: The Loss of Intervocalic /j/ and /v/

Stefan M. Pugh

The loss of the glide /j/ in intervocalic position is a common occurrence in colloquial Russian; data show that this phenomenon is not restricted to substandard speech. The fricative /v/ enters into a close relationship with /j/, e.g., in Flier's "glide shift". This paper shows that the loss of /v/ in intervocalic position closely parallels the loss of /j/. Therefore it is more appropriate to regard /v/ as a glide like [w] rather than an obstruent, as is traditional in Russian phonemics. [Journal of Slavic Linguistics 1(2): 343-51, 1993]