Slot: 30A– 6 Dec.
30, 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Panel: Morphosyntax
Chair: Christina Y. Bethin, Stony Brook
University
Title: Predicate Adjectives under Negation in
Modern Russian
Author: Renee Perelmutter, University of
California, Berkeley
Case choice in predicate nominals
is one of the most debated contexts of variation in modern Russian. For
adjectives, the three choices available are agreement, short form, and
instrumental: мой отец был бедный/беден/бедным ‘my father was pooragr/ poorshort/
poorinstr’. This paper asks whether the choices made under negation
are different from the choices in positive constructions, and if so, how.
Negation has been assumed to favor the instrumental (Nichols 1981:178, Ueda
1992, Timberlake 2004:288), though this claim has never been tested on a
corpus.
The
paper presents results of an extensive corpus study of predicate adjectives
under negation. I show that there are significant differences in statistical
distribution between positive and negative contexts. Specifically, long
nominative forms are extremely rare under negation (from 0% to 6.9% for various
adjectives; from 19.5% to 34.9% for the same adjectives in positive contexts).
Short-form adjectives are the most frequent under negation, followed by
instrumental.
In
the second part of the paper, I analyze the discourse and semantic factors that
contribute to the choice of adjectival form. Short form is used with animate
referential subjects, and factors that influence this choice include causality,
expectation, and evaluation of quality by observers:
(1)
Я помню его до того, как он был вовлечен в чрезвычайно
важное государственное преступление... Он не был умен - это не
преступление. Он не был достаточно информирован - как все мы в то время.
I remember him before he was involved in
a very important political crime. He wasn’t smartSHORT – this is not a crime. He wasn’t informedshort enough – like all of us
at the time.
Instrumental
is preferred with non-referential, abstract subjects (2), and is moreover the
default choice when a temporal boundary is highlighted.
(2)
Кто не знает Кастанеду, тот точно не был молодым в
уже почти ставшие легендарными 1990-е годы.
He who doesn’t know who Kastaneda is, wasn’t
younginstr in the
almost legendary 1990’s.
While
three morphological choices are available for adjectives in positive
constructions, only two are statistically significant under negation. I show
that both short form and instrumental constructions are compatible with the
functions of negation in narrative (backgrounding/foregrounding, establishing
agentive hierarchies, marking emotional involvement, etc). The third choice,
agreement, is frequent in non-narrative contexts such as reporting on visual
scenes; negation in these contexts is infrequent, and thus a combination of
agreement with negation is statistically insignificant.
References
Nichols, Johanna. Predicate
Nominals: A Partial Surface Syntax of Russian. University of California Press, 1981.
Timberlake, Alan. A
Reference Grammar of Russian.
Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Ueda, Masako. The
interaction between clause-level
parameters and context in Russian morphosyntax. Munich: Otto Sagner, 1992.
Title: A Constructional Analysis of Russian
Reflexive Impersonals
Author: Laura Elaine Davies, University of Colorado,
Boulder
The Slavic reflexive morpheme se continues to be a
problem that has not been satisfactorily solved in the literature. Some (e.g,
Babby and Brecht 1975) consider its role to be a purely syntactic matter (e.g.,
of valence reduction), while others (e.g., Janda 1993) view it as a purely
semantic element. Babby (1996) accounts for canonical and noncanonical uses of
Russian –sja
with transitive verbs, but does not account for –sja with intransitive verbs
or for the use of –sja in impersonal sentences. In this Construction-Grammatical
(CxG) analysis I address five types of Russian reflexive impersonals (RI) that
appear superficially similar and have overlapping properties, but at the same
time differ in many respects. I ultimately show that they are a family of two
major constructions and three subtyped constructions. The properties shared
across the RI constructions are the external syntactic requirements of -sja morphology and
impersonal morphology. But the CxG analysis allows us to see the formal and
functional connections between the constructions that go beyond these general
requirements.
This paper discusses four types of Dispositional
Reflexive Impersonals (DRIs) and one Communicative Reflexive Impersonal (CRI)
that have shared properties. Formally, for example, all DRIs externally require
an experiencer marked by the
dative, though we will see how this requirement is satisfied differently for
each DRI construction. The types of DRIs that are addressed are 1) generic
dispositional reflexives (DRI), 2) those that allow indefinite null
instantiation (DRI-INI), 3) those with semantic narrowing (DRI-IMP), and 4)
lexicalized instantiations (DRI-LEX).
The dative types contrast formally with CRI, which does not externally
require a dative-marked nominal. In the RIs there is no nominative subject in
agreement with the verb, serving the pragmatic functions of relating a
disposition or state (for DRIs), or of defocusing the agent participant in order to focus on something else (for
CRI).
Babby, Leonard, and Brecht, Richard. 1975. "The
Syntax of Voice in Russian." Language 51: 342-367.
Babby,
Leonard. 1996. "Inflectional Morphology and Theta Role
Suppression." Annual Workshop
on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The College Park Meeting, 1994.
Janda, Laura. 1993. "Cognitive Linguistics as a
Continuation of the Jakobsonian Tradition: The Semantics of Russian and Czech
Reflexives." American Contributions to the Eleventh International
Congress of Slavists: 310-319.
Title: Russian Conditionals with Imperative
Forms
Author: Olya Gurevich, Educational Testing
Service / Princeton University
Some conditional constructions in Russian
use an imperative verb form in the protasis. Typically, two types of such constructions are distinguished
(cf. Israeli 2001): simple conditionals (1а), comparable with esli- phrases in the apodosis (1b); and
counterfactual conditionals (2а),
comparable with esli by-
phrases (2b). This paper focuses
on the discourse and pragmatic factors that influence the choice of
imperative-form conditionals over esli and esli by
conditionals and argues that these factors include the degree to which the
speaker/protagonist is affected by the described events, the choice of
viewpoint, and the degree to which the consequent is realizable from the chosen
viewpoint. All examples come from the Russian National Corpus and internet
searches.
(1) a. Погибни он, бойцы будут
горевать, его помянет даже командир дивизии.
‘If he were to die, the soldiers would
grieve, and even the division commander would remember him.’
b. Если он погибнет, бойцы
будут горевать . . .
‘If he dies ….’
(2) a. Приди я на пять минут раньше, я бы
спокойно перешел на другой берег.
‘Had I come five minutes earlier, I would
have easily crossed over to the other shore.’
b. Если бы я пришел . . .
‘If I had come . . .’
Simple
conditionals with imperatives have been analyzed as expressing realizable
conditions (Xrakovskij 2001) or disastrous events (Israeli 2001). The discourse factors proposed in this
paper subsume both these explanations under the rubric of speaker affectedness
and viewpoint, accounting for such non-disastrous uses as (3).
(3) Для этого
Михаэлю необходимо выиграть «Большой приз» ... В этой ситуации помочь лидеру
чемпионата может его родной брат Ральф, опереди он в гонке обоих
латиноамериканцев.
‘For
this Michael must win the “Grand Prix”… In this situation the championship
leader can be aided by his brother Ralf, if he were to surpass both Latin
Americans.’
Similarly,
previous analyses have suggested that imperatives counterfactuals signal
potential disaster or highly improbable consequents. This paper argues instead that the degree of
speaker/protagonist involvement and the probability of consequents from the
point of view of the protagonist
accounts in more general ways for the use of imperatives, including such
non-improbable and non-disastrous situations as in (4).
(4) ... ему
нужна была Рахиль ... и будь она мусульманкой, буддисткой или
огнепоклонницей, он с удовольствием стал бы мусульманином, буддистом и
огнепоклонником, лишь бы Рахиль стала его женой.
‘…
he needed Rakhil’ … and had she been a Moslem, Buddhist or a fire worshipper,
he would have gladly become a Moslem, Buddhist and fire worshipper, as long as
Rakhil’ became his wife.’
References
Israeli, Alina. 2001. "An
imperative form in non-imperative constructions in Russian." Glossos 1.
Xrakovskij,
Victor (ed.). 2001. Typology of
imperative constructions.
Muenchen: Lincom Europa.