Slot: 28A-6 Dec.
28, 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Panel: Semantics and Discourse
Chair: Christina Kramer, University of Toronto
Title: The Second Plural in Georgian: A Semantic
Analysis
Author: Bert Beynen, Free Library of Philadelphia
Georgian has two plurals: one is formed by
inserting the infix -eb- before the singular endings. The other,
sometimes called the archaic plural, has the ending -ni for the nominative
plural and the ending -ta for the other cases, although the instrumental
and adverbial cases have no second plural ending. This paper provides an
explanation for the absence of these case endings. In addition, the personal
pronoun for the third person has only the second plural endings, which needs an
explanation as well. Although the
second plural is sometimes called “archaic,” it is frequently used in contemporary
expressions, e.g. sabcho-ta kavshiri, “soviets-of union.” Also, Vogt
provides contrasting examples where the use of a different plural results in a
different meaning, e.g.: kal-eb-is mushaoba vs. kal-ta mushaoba, “the
work of the women,” vs. “[typical] women’s work.”
The paper argues that the second plural
indicates that the plurality can not be verified by speaker and addressee in
the described situation. It refers hence to previous situations. Kal-ta mushaoba indicates the presence of
a type of work in the described situation that in previous situations was
performed by women. This explains why words like isi-ni, “they,” have the second plural endings
since they always refer to a previous situation, and why the instrumental and
adverbial cases do not have a second plural ending: they have the semantic
feature of marginality, which van Schooneveld has redefined as being restricted
to the described situation, hence they cannot refer to preceding situations.
Title: What do you want on your tombstone?: The
Correlation between Informational Weight and Language Choice in Russian Old
Believer Gravestone Inscriptions in the Eastern United States
Author: Jeffrey D. Holdeman, Indiana University
In an ethnic cemetery, the choice of languages
for gravestone inscriptions can be very problematic: use your heritage language
and risk the possibility that present and future generations will not be able
to find the grave; use your liturgical language and risk even fewer people
finding it; use the local language and risk the "penalties" of
non-compliance with canonical practices or the perception that you have
abandoned your ethnic and religious identity; use all three languages and run
up an enormous gravestone and engraving bill. Russian Old Believers living outside Russia are faced with
this dilemma, and many communities and individuals have developed their own
solutions.
In
this paper, the problem is approached from the point-of-view of informational
weight: what information is
most critical (name, birth/death dates), what is important but less critical
(familial relations, birth location), and what information has low importance
(formulaic phrases, marriage dates)?
What information can vary widely in importance (religious affiliation,
"artwork", baptismal names)? In this study, over thirty discrete
bits of gravestone information within the fields of names, dates, familial
relations, formulaic phrases, geographical information, emblems, and
affiliation are delineated, then every stone within each cemetery is analyzed
in order to determine which languages are used to convey each bit of
information. Comparisons are made
both between stones within a cemetery and trends in other cemeteries. As source material, two hitherto
unstudied Old Believer cemeteries in the eastern United States are
analyzed in order to discover strategies and trends in language use (English,
Russian, Church Slavonic; numerals).
The methodological approach is described and then illustrated with
specific examples. External
information from attitude surveys and personal interviews (Holdeman 2002) are
used to shed light on choices and motivations. The results from previous language use analysis of Old
Believer cemeteries in the United States and Poland (Holdeman 2000, 2003) are
also compared. Complex issues such
as multilingual gravestones, orthography, comprehensibility, identity, and
informational weight are also discussed.
Holdeman, Jeffrey D.
2000. The
Sociolinguistics of the Cemetery: Using Gravestones as a Source for
Sociolinguistic Data (on the Basis of Three Russian Old Believer Communities in
Poland and the Eastern United States). AATSEEL National Convention, December 2000.
Holdeman, Jeffrey D. 2002. Language Maintenance and Shift among the Russian Old
Believers of Erie, Pennsylvania. Ph.D. dissertation. The Ohio State University, Columbus,
OH.
Holdeman, Jeffrey D. 2003. Erie
Old Believer Russian: A Grave Situation. Endangered and Minority Languages and Cultures Working
Group of the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities,
The Ohio State University, January 31, 2003.
Title: Onomatopoeia and inflection: Semantics
and discourse functions of suffix-like formations in Czech
Author: Masako Ueda Fidler, Brown University
Recent research on discourse suggests
that onomatopoeia, just as other utterances, may have a function beyond
imitation of sounds. For example, Clark and Gerrig (1990) state that
onomatopoeia is similar to quotations, a type of “demonstration” that depicts a
situation rather than describe it.
Existing studies also find that onomatopoeia interact with morphosyntax
more significantly than it was assumed. Rhodes argues that the structure of
certain onomatopoeic expressions in English parallel that of a root and a
suffix (1994). Sereno finds a correlation between parts of speech and the vowel
height in English (1994).
In this
presentation I will examine several types of interaction between Czech
onomatopoeic expressions and morphosyntax. I will show that some parts of
onomatopoeic expressions can be closely related both in function and in form to
the suffixes used for morphological derivation and inflection. Those
include “semi-suffixes” of the
type –y (e.g. dupy dup ‘sound of an undefined number of
thuds’), -ity (cupity ‘sound of an undefined number of tiny
steps), -k (e.g. frk
‘a fast movement by flying with a fluttering sound’), and –ky (šupky ‘a command to start an action that can
be easily achieved’). Using minimal pairs, I will show that these semi-suffixes
are associated not only of semantic properties of plurality, aspectuality and
diminution, but also of discourse properties such as speech act and irony,
which can be viewed as extensions of the former. I will describe the semantics
and discourse functions, using models used in cognitive linguistics (Langacker
1987).
The results of
this study will point to a possible iconic relationship between certain
morphemes and sound. The data for this presentation comes from the eight-volume
dictionary of Czech language (Slovník spisovného jazyka českého, 1989), literature, comics, the internet,
and the databases from the Czech National Corpus (Syn2000 and Syn2005).
Title: Non-Standard
Intonation in Russian Public Discourse
Author: Tatiana
Yanko, Institute of Linguistics, Moscow
With regards to intonation my observations show that in
public speech the speaker can affect the hearer by some minor violations of
linguistic norms. A variety of questions then arises:
This study is a fragment of
a larger work devoted to systemic analysis of semantics of Russian intonation
in contrast to other languages.
I suggest that non-standard intonation is characterized by
the following parameters:
I view the following phenomena as innovations:
·
The accent-placement shift within noun phrases: СОЕДИНЕННЫЕ
Штаты
instead of Соединенные ШТАТЫ
(Светозарова 1993); stressed
words are capitalized.
·
Changes of IK-2 functions in breaking news. About
Bryzgunova’s IK-system of “intonational constructions” cf. (Русская грамматика 1980).
·
Changes of IK-4 functions when denoting text
incompleteness.
I hypothesize that there are two sources of innovations:
·
Intrinsic Russian phenomena taken as a model for shifts
by analogy;
·
English-speaking mass-media effects.
For each phenomenon, this paper includes an analysis of
both Russian and English data:
·
Records exemplifying non-standard phenomena;
·
Their Russian standard counterparts;
·
Their English counterparts;
·
Instances of Russian standard intonation being a
hypothetical source of innovations.
To conclude, this paper accounts for intonation shifts in
modern Russian.
References
Русская
грамматика. Т.1, 1980.
Светозарова Н.Д. «Акцентно-ритмические
инновации в русской спонтанной речи.» Проблемы фонетики. Т.1, 1993.