Tatiana Nikitina | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / French National Centre for Scientific Research (original) (raw)
Papers by Tatiana Nikitina
This study aims to illustrate the complex nature of logophoricity by exploring the use of logopho... more This study aims to illustrate the complex nature of logophoricity by exploring the use of logophoric pronouns outside speech and attitude reports in a corpus of Wan, a Mande language spoken in Côte d'Ivoire. Logophoricity in Wan can be seen as a gradient phenomenon, in two different senses. First, only the singular logophoric pronoun is truly specialized while the plural pronoun retains vestigial uses that are not logophoric; these uses rarely come up in elicitation but are attested in narrative discourse. The non-logophoric uses of the plural pronoun introduce a number asymmetry that seems to be typical of logophoric languages and which I propose to explain in diachronic terms, by the fact that singular and plural pronouns undergo historical change at different rates. Second, logophoric pronouns appear in contexts that do not involve any speech or attitude reporting. In addition to contexts that are often associated with reported speech constructions in other languages (such as expressions of intention or purpose), logophoric pronouns appear in Wan in expressions that have not been previously related to reported speech. Despite the considerable overlap of contexts where logophoric pronouns appear and contexts where verbs of speaking or quotative markers can be used, the two are not identical, and the discrepancies suggest that logophoricity cannot be defined in terms of reported speech but should rather be treated in its own right, as a non-derivable category of pronominal deixis.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft
This study is an exercise in micro-scale comparison based on the semantic map approach. A semanti... more This study is an exercise in micro-scale comparison based on the semantic map approach. A semantic map is constructed for meanings associated with the word for ‘grain’ in four closely related South Mande languages: Dan Blowo, Tura, Mwan, and Wan. Although non-cognate, the words show remarkable similarity in their range of meanings, suggesting that newly introduced words are associated with the same networks of meanings as the words they come to replace. Differences between the languages boil down to the unavailability or reduced productivity of particular uses in one or two of the languages (Wan and to some extent Mwan). The original network is shown to have become significantly reduced in Wan, and to a lesser extent in Mwan. A major challenge in micro-comparison is due to the small sample size and the idiosyncratic nature of some of the semantic relationships, which together make it hard to explore the network’s internal structure. Language-internal evidence can occasionally be use...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Linguistics
A major challenge presented by noun class systems of Senufo languages is the non-trivial interact... more A major challenge presented by noun class systems of Senufo languages is the non-trivial interaction between the agreement features of the noun phrase and the noun class specification on the head noun. In Kafire (Senufo, Côte d’Ivoire), demonstratives normally agree with the head noun independent of whether or not the head noun is modified by adjectives. Some adjectives, however, are exceptions to the general rule: in their presence the demonstrative appears in Class 2 or 3 (depending on the adjective), and fails to agree with the head noun. We present an account of the exceptional behavior of such adjectives within the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar. We show that agreement in Kafire is a heterogeneous phenomenon that is best viewed as transitional between a system of semantically motivated agreement and a system of noun classes that is no longer dependent on meaning. Vestiges of the old system have been preserved in a variety of phenomena that have to be addressed individu...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This chapter compares manner demonstratives in two unrelated African languages, Kambaata (Cushiti... more This chapter compares manner demonstratives in two unrelated African languages, Kambaata (Cushitic, Ethiopia) and Wan (Mande, Côte d'Ivoire). Both languages have specialised manner demonstratives, yet differ strikingly in their typological profile and in the way the manner demonstratives behave syntactically. Through systematic comparison of data from both languages, similarities, which are likely due to common semantic mechanisms of meaning extension, and differences, which are likely due to structural differences between the languages, are identified. It is argued that, despite the shared core meanings, manner demonstratives belong to different syntactic classes in Kambaata and in Wan. The difference in syntactic category helps account for the striking dissimilarities in the range of attested extended uses.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
In this paper we discuss the so-called “dominant” construction found with Latin participles. We a... more In this paper we discuss the so-called “dominant” construction found with Latin participles. We argue that this construction instantiates a rare type of subject case assignment where the case of the participle’s subject depends on the grammatical function of the participial clause. To capture this in the LFG formalism, we argue for a “copy theory” of agreement, where the information from the agreeing features are present in both the controller and the target of agreement: this theory enables us to offer a uniform account of agreement across all uses of participles. We also discuss the implications for LFG’s theory of subject case assignment, in particular the constructive case approach.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Theoretical linguists have traditionally relied on linguistic intuitions such as grammaticality j... more Theoretical linguists have traditionally relied on linguistic intuitions such as grammaticality judgments for their data. But the massive growth of computer-readable texts and recordings, the availability of cheaper, more powerful computers and software, and the development of new probabilistic models for language have now made the spontaneous useoflanguageinnaturalsettingsarichandeasilyaccessiblealternativesourceofdata. Surprisingly, many linguists believe that such ‘usage data’ are irrelevant to the theory of grammar. Four problems are repeatedly brought up in the critiques of usage data: 1. Correlated factors seeming to support reductive theories; 2. Pooled data invalidating grammatical inference; 3. Syntactic choices reducing to lexical biases; and 4. Cross-corpus differences undermining corpus studies. Presenting a case study of work on the English dative alternation, we show first,that linguistic intuitions of grammaticality are deeply flawed and seriously underestimate the sp...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Studies in Language Companion Series
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Folia Linguistica
Mainstream approaches to the typology of reported discourse have been based on the notion of a di... more Mainstream approaches to the typology of reported discourse have been based on the notion of a direct-indirect continuum: reported speech constructions are traditionally analyzed as conforming to or deviating from the “ideals” of European direct and indirect speech. This study argues that continuum-based approaches fail to distinguish between two dimensions of variation that are systematically discriminated in a number of African languages and should therefore be treated separately. First, different constructions can be recruited for speech reporting, ranging from paratactic to subordinate structures. Second, languages differ in the way pronouns in speech reports are interpreted. In European languages two different deictic strategies are associated with different syntactic types of speech report (‘indirect’ and ‘direct’ deixis is correlated with subordination and parataxis, respectively). In Kakabe, we argue, the choice of pronominal values is independent of the construction’s synta...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Notes from the field on perspective-indexing constructions
This study presents a typology of existing approaches to logophoricity and discusses problems the... more This study presents a typology of existing approaches to logophoricity and discusses problems the different approaches face. It addresses, in particular, perspective-based accounts describing constructions with logophoric pronouns in terms of their intermediate position on the direct-indirect continuum (Evans 2013), and lexical accounts incorporating the idea of coreference with the reported speaker into the pronoun’s meaning, either through role-to-value mapping mechanisms (Nikitina 2012a, b), or through feature specification (Schlenker 2003a, b). The perspective-based approach is shown to be unsatisfactory when it comes to treating language-specific data in precise and cross-linguistically comparable terms. It fails to account, for example, for cross-linguistic differences in the behavior of logophoric pronouns, for their optionality, and for their close diachronic relationship to third person elements. Lexical accounts are better equipped to handle a variety of outstanding issues...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Faits de Langues
In spite of the prominent role of missionary linguists in shaping the field of modern African lin... more In spite of the prominent role of missionary linguists in shaping the field of modern African linguistics, the approaches adopted in their early grammar descriptions remain virtually unstudied, just as the descriptions themselves are largely ignored by modern linguists. This study explores the ways two 19th century missionary grammarians, R. Maxwell MacBrair and John Kemp, approached the task of describing verbal morphology of two languages from the Mande family, Mandinka and Susu. I discuss important differences between their approach and the one that has become prevalent in modern descriptive studies; these differences reflect to a large extent the different interests and goals of missionary and academic linguists. I also use the example of the two early grammars to illustrate the diversity of attitudes and approaches to language description concealed behind the label “missionary linguistics”. Even in the narrow domain of verbal morphology – which is far from prominent in the isol...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Linguistic Typology
In many languages, expressions of the type ‘x said: “p”’, ‘x said that p’ or ‘allegedly, p’ share... more In many languages, expressions of the type ‘x said: “p”’, ‘x said that p’ or ‘allegedly, p’ share properties with common syntactic types such as constructions with subordination, paratactic constructions, and constructions with sentence-level adverbs. On closer examination, however, they often turn out to be atypical members of these syntactic classes. In this paper we argue that a more coherent picture emerges if we analyse these expressions as a dedicated syntactic domain in itself, which we refer to as ‘reported speech’. Based on typological observations we argue for the idiosyncrasy of reported speech as a syntactic class. The article concludes with a proposal for a cross-linguistic characterisation that aims at capturing this broadly conceived domain of reported speech with a single semantic definition.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Comparative Literature
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Linguistics
The study addresses the relationship between diachronic change and synchronic polysemy based on t... more The study addresses the relationship between diachronic change and synchronic polysemy based on the use of diminutives in four closely related Southeastern Mande languages. It explores the synchronic patterns of use of cognate diminutive markers deriving from the word ‘child’, and accounts for differences between the languages in terms of a Radial Category network, which is designed to capture in one representation both mechanisms of diachronic change and mechanisms of regular meaning extension. The study argues that the same approach can be used to account for the ways diminutive markers acquire new meanings and for the ways an old diminutive category disintegrates, when new markers start replacing the old one in some of the core diminutive functions. The invasion and expansion of new markers may result in discontinuous semantic structures that can only be understood when the diachrony is taken into account (in this particular case study, the evidence for historical change comes fr...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Cognitive Semantics, 2017
Is motion cognition influenced by the large-scale typological patterns proposed in Talmy’s (2000)... more Is motion cognition influenced by the large-scale typological patterns proposed in Talmy’s (2000) two-way distinction between verb-framed (V) and satellite-framed (S) languages? Previous studies investigating this question have been limited to comparing two or three languages at a time and have come to conflicting results. We present the largest cross-linguistic study on this question to date, drawing on data from nineteen genealogically diverse languages, all investigated in the same behavioral paradigm and using the same stimuli. After controlling for the different dependencies in the data by means of multilevel regression models, we find no evidence that S- vs. V-framing affects nonverbal categorization of motion events. At the same time, statistical simulations suggest that our study and previous work within the same behavioral paradigm suffer from insufficient statistical power. We discuss these findings in the light of the great variability between participants, which suggests...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 2012
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Style, 2015
This essay discusses rhyme and rhythm in sylabo-accentual verse, in which the term "rhythm&q... more This essay discusses rhyme and rhythm in sylabo-accentual verse, in which the term "rhythm" refers to stress patterning within the line. Rhyme and rhythm have been investigated in isolation, yet no studies exist that provide a rigorous framework for correlating their effects. This essay shows, based on a thorough statistical analysis of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, that rhythm of individual lines can mimic rhyming structures within the stanza. In addition, we trace the evolution of the Onegin stanze in the Russian literary tradition uncovering the ways in which covert transformations of poetic form reflect shifts in literary history from late Romanticism to Modernism.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 2015
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Linguistic Research on the Expression of Spatial Relations and Motion in Ancient Languages, 2013
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Anthropological Linguistics, 2012
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Greek Linguistics, 2013
In traditional Ancient Greek grammar, the term constructio praegnans refers to an apparent syntac... more In traditional Ancient Greek grammar, the term constructio praegnans refers to an apparent syntactic anomaly whereby the idea of motion is missing from either the verb or the prepositional phrase: a verb that does not express motion is combined with a directional prepositional phrase (e.g., ‘slaughter into a container’) or a motion verb combines with a static prepositional phrase describing a goal of motion (e.g., ‘throw in the fire’). This study explores such usages in the period from Archaic to Classical Greek and argues against treating constructio praegnans as a unitary phenomenon. The seemingly aberrant combinations of the verb’s meaning and the type of prepositional phrase are shown to be motivated by four independent factors: 1) lexical (some individual non-motion verbs select for a directional argument); 2) aspectual (static encoding of endpoints is allowed with perfect participles); 3) the encoding of results with change of state verbs; and 4) the archaic use of static prep...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This study aims to illustrate the complex nature of logophoricity by exploring the use of logopho... more This study aims to illustrate the complex nature of logophoricity by exploring the use of logophoric pronouns outside speech and attitude reports in a corpus of Wan, a Mande language spoken in Côte d'Ivoire. Logophoricity in Wan can be seen as a gradient phenomenon, in two different senses. First, only the singular logophoric pronoun is truly specialized while the plural pronoun retains vestigial uses that are not logophoric; these uses rarely come up in elicitation but are attested in narrative discourse. The non-logophoric uses of the plural pronoun introduce a number asymmetry that seems to be typical of logophoric languages and which I propose to explain in diachronic terms, by the fact that singular and plural pronouns undergo historical change at different rates. Second, logophoric pronouns appear in contexts that do not involve any speech or attitude reporting. In addition to contexts that are often associated with reported speech constructions in other languages (such as expressions of intention or purpose), logophoric pronouns appear in Wan in expressions that have not been previously related to reported speech. Despite the considerable overlap of contexts where logophoric pronouns appear and contexts where verbs of speaking or quotative markers can be used, the two are not identical, and the discrepancies suggest that logophoricity cannot be defined in terms of reported speech but should rather be treated in its own right, as a non-derivable category of pronominal deixis.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft
This study is an exercise in micro-scale comparison based on the semantic map approach. A semanti... more This study is an exercise in micro-scale comparison based on the semantic map approach. A semantic map is constructed for meanings associated with the word for ‘grain’ in four closely related South Mande languages: Dan Blowo, Tura, Mwan, and Wan. Although non-cognate, the words show remarkable similarity in their range of meanings, suggesting that newly introduced words are associated with the same networks of meanings as the words they come to replace. Differences between the languages boil down to the unavailability or reduced productivity of particular uses in one or two of the languages (Wan and to some extent Mwan). The original network is shown to have become significantly reduced in Wan, and to a lesser extent in Mwan. A major challenge in micro-comparison is due to the small sample size and the idiosyncratic nature of some of the semantic relationships, which together make it hard to explore the network’s internal structure. Language-internal evidence can occasionally be use...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Linguistics
A major challenge presented by noun class systems of Senufo languages is the non-trivial interact... more A major challenge presented by noun class systems of Senufo languages is the non-trivial interaction between the agreement features of the noun phrase and the noun class specification on the head noun. In Kafire (Senufo, Côte d’Ivoire), demonstratives normally agree with the head noun independent of whether or not the head noun is modified by adjectives. Some adjectives, however, are exceptions to the general rule: in their presence the demonstrative appears in Class 2 or 3 (depending on the adjective), and fails to agree with the head noun. We present an account of the exceptional behavior of such adjectives within the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar. We show that agreement in Kafire is a heterogeneous phenomenon that is best viewed as transitional between a system of semantically motivated agreement and a system of noun classes that is no longer dependent on meaning. Vestiges of the old system have been preserved in a variety of phenomena that have to be addressed individu...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This chapter compares manner demonstratives in two unrelated African languages, Kambaata (Cushiti... more This chapter compares manner demonstratives in two unrelated African languages, Kambaata (Cushitic, Ethiopia) and Wan (Mande, Côte d'Ivoire). Both languages have specialised manner demonstratives, yet differ strikingly in their typological profile and in the way the manner demonstratives behave syntactically. Through systematic comparison of data from both languages, similarities, which are likely due to common semantic mechanisms of meaning extension, and differences, which are likely due to structural differences between the languages, are identified. It is argued that, despite the shared core meanings, manner demonstratives belong to different syntactic classes in Kambaata and in Wan. The difference in syntactic category helps account for the striking dissimilarities in the range of attested extended uses.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
In this paper we discuss the so-called “dominant” construction found with Latin participles. We a... more In this paper we discuss the so-called “dominant” construction found with Latin participles. We argue that this construction instantiates a rare type of subject case assignment where the case of the participle’s subject depends on the grammatical function of the participial clause. To capture this in the LFG formalism, we argue for a “copy theory” of agreement, where the information from the agreeing features are present in both the controller and the target of agreement: this theory enables us to offer a uniform account of agreement across all uses of participles. We also discuss the implications for LFG’s theory of subject case assignment, in particular the constructive case approach.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Theoretical linguists have traditionally relied on linguistic intuitions such as grammaticality j... more Theoretical linguists have traditionally relied on linguistic intuitions such as grammaticality judgments for their data. But the massive growth of computer-readable texts and recordings, the availability of cheaper, more powerful computers and software, and the development of new probabilistic models for language have now made the spontaneous useoflanguageinnaturalsettingsarichandeasilyaccessiblealternativesourceofdata. Surprisingly, many linguists believe that such ‘usage data’ are irrelevant to the theory of grammar. Four problems are repeatedly brought up in the critiques of usage data: 1. Correlated factors seeming to support reductive theories; 2. Pooled data invalidating grammatical inference; 3. Syntactic choices reducing to lexical biases; and 4. Cross-corpus differences undermining corpus studies. Presenting a case study of work on the English dative alternation, we show first,that linguistic intuitions of grammaticality are deeply flawed and seriously underestimate the sp...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Studies in Language Companion Series
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Folia Linguistica
Mainstream approaches to the typology of reported discourse have been based on the notion of a di... more Mainstream approaches to the typology of reported discourse have been based on the notion of a direct-indirect continuum: reported speech constructions are traditionally analyzed as conforming to or deviating from the “ideals” of European direct and indirect speech. This study argues that continuum-based approaches fail to distinguish between two dimensions of variation that are systematically discriminated in a number of African languages and should therefore be treated separately. First, different constructions can be recruited for speech reporting, ranging from paratactic to subordinate structures. Second, languages differ in the way pronouns in speech reports are interpreted. In European languages two different deictic strategies are associated with different syntactic types of speech report (‘indirect’ and ‘direct’ deixis is correlated with subordination and parataxis, respectively). In Kakabe, we argue, the choice of pronominal values is independent of the construction’s synta...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Notes from the field on perspective-indexing constructions
This study presents a typology of existing approaches to logophoricity and discusses problems the... more This study presents a typology of existing approaches to logophoricity and discusses problems the different approaches face. It addresses, in particular, perspective-based accounts describing constructions with logophoric pronouns in terms of their intermediate position on the direct-indirect continuum (Evans 2013), and lexical accounts incorporating the idea of coreference with the reported speaker into the pronoun’s meaning, either through role-to-value mapping mechanisms (Nikitina 2012a, b), or through feature specification (Schlenker 2003a, b). The perspective-based approach is shown to be unsatisfactory when it comes to treating language-specific data in precise and cross-linguistically comparable terms. It fails to account, for example, for cross-linguistic differences in the behavior of logophoric pronouns, for their optionality, and for their close diachronic relationship to third person elements. Lexical accounts are better equipped to handle a variety of outstanding issues...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Faits de Langues
In spite of the prominent role of missionary linguists in shaping the field of modern African lin... more In spite of the prominent role of missionary linguists in shaping the field of modern African linguistics, the approaches adopted in their early grammar descriptions remain virtually unstudied, just as the descriptions themselves are largely ignored by modern linguists. This study explores the ways two 19th century missionary grammarians, R. Maxwell MacBrair and John Kemp, approached the task of describing verbal morphology of two languages from the Mande family, Mandinka and Susu. I discuss important differences between their approach and the one that has become prevalent in modern descriptive studies; these differences reflect to a large extent the different interests and goals of missionary and academic linguists. I also use the example of the two early grammars to illustrate the diversity of attitudes and approaches to language description concealed behind the label “missionary linguistics”. Even in the narrow domain of verbal morphology – which is far from prominent in the isol...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Linguistic Typology
In many languages, expressions of the type ‘x said: “p”’, ‘x said that p’ or ‘allegedly, p’ share... more In many languages, expressions of the type ‘x said: “p”’, ‘x said that p’ or ‘allegedly, p’ share properties with common syntactic types such as constructions with subordination, paratactic constructions, and constructions with sentence-level adverbs. On closer examination, however, they often turn out to be atypical members of these syntactic classes. In this paper we argue that a more coherent picture emerges if we analyse these expressions as a dedicated syntactic domain in itself, which we refer to as ‘reported speech’. Based on typological observations we argue for the idiosyncrasy of reported speech as a syntactic class. The article concludes with a proposal for a cross-linguistic characterisation that aims at capturing this broadly conceived domain of reported speech with a single semantic definition.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Comparative Literature
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Linguistics
The study addresses the relationship between diachronic change and synchronic polysemy based on t... more The study addresses the relationship between diachronic change and synchronic polysemy based on the use of diminutives in four closely related Southeastern Mande languages. It explores the synchronic patterns of use of cognate diminutive markers deriving from the word ‘child’, and accounts for differences between the languages in terms of a Radial Category network, which is designed to capture in one representation both mechanisms of diachronic change and mechanisms of regular meaning extension. The study argues that the same approach can be used to account for the ways diminutive markers acquire new meanings and for the ways an old diminutive category disintegrates, when new markers start replacing the old one in some of the core diminutive functions. The invasion and expansion of new markers may result in discontinuous semantic structures that can only be understood when the diachrony is taken into account (in this particular case study, the evidence for historical change comes fr...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Cognitive Semantics, 2017
Is motion cognition influenced by the large-scale typological patterns proposed in Talmy’s (2000)... more Is motion cognition influenced by the large-scale typological patterns proposed in Talmy’s (2000) two-way distinction between verb-framed (V) and satellite-framed (S) languages? Previous studies investigating this question have been limited to comparing two or three languages at a time and have come to conflicting results. We present the largest cross-linguistic study on this question to date, drawing on data from nineteen genealogically diverse languages, all investigated in the same behavioral paradigm and using the same stimuli. After controlling for the different dependencies in the data by means of multilevel regression models, we find no evidence that S- vs. V-framing affects nonverbal categorization of motion events. At the same time, statistical simulations suggest that our study and previous work within the same behavioral paradigm suffer from insufficient statistical power. We discuss these findings in the light of the great variability between participants, which suggests...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 2012
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Style, 2015
This essay discusses rhyme and rhythm in sylabo-accentual verse, in which the term "rhythm&q... more This essay discusses rhyme and rhythm in sylabo-accentual verse, in which the term "rhythm" refers to stress patterning within the line. Rhyme and rhythm have been investigated in isolation, yet no studies exist that provide a rigorous framework for correlating their effects. This essay shows, based on a thorough statistical analysis of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, that rhythm of individual lines can mimic rhyming structures within the stanza. In addition, we trace the evolution of the Onegin stanze in the Russian literary tradition uncovering the ways in which covert transformations of poetic form reflect shifts in literary history from late Romanticism to Modernism.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 2015
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Linguistic Research on the Expression of Spatial Relations and Motion in Ancient Languages, 2013
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Anthropological Linguistics, 2012
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Greek Linguistics, 2013
In traditional Ancient Greek grammar, the term constructio praegnans refers to an apparent syntac... more In traditional Ancient Greek grammar, the term constructio praegnans refers to an apparent syntactic anomaly whereby the idea of motion is missing from either the verb or the prepositional phrase: a verb that does not express motion is combined with a directional prepositional phrase (e.g., ‘slaughter into a container’) or a motion verb combines with a static prepositional phrase describing a goal of motion (e.g., ‘throw in the fire’). This study explores such usages in the period from Archaic to Classical Greek and argues against treating constructio praegnans as a unitary phenomenon. The seemingly aberrant combinations of the verb’s meaning and the type of prepositional phrase are shown to be motivated by four independent factors: 1) lexical (some individual non-motion verbs select for a directional argument); 2) aspectual (static encoding of endpoints is allowed with perfect participles); 3) the encoding of results with change of state verbs; and 4) the archaic use of static prep...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
by Natalia Kuznetsova, Sergey Say, Valentin Vydrin, Maxim Kisilier, Maria Kholodilova, Maria Konoshenko, Liza Kushnir, Мехмед Муслимов, Alexander Novik, Tatiana Nikitina, and Maksim Fedotov
В. Ф. Выдрин, Н. В. Кузнецова (отв. ред.). СПб.: ИЛИ РАН, Греческий институт Филологического факультета СПбГУ. 486 c., 2014
"From Bikin to Banbaluma, from the Varangians to the Greeks. Field-inspired essays in honour of E... more "From Bikin to Banbaluma, from the Varangians to the Greeks. Field-inspired essays in honour of Elena V. Perekhvalskaya / Ed. by Valentin F. Vydrin and Natalia V. Kuznetsova. St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoria, 2014, 486 p." A volume in Russian with English abstracts is dedicated to E. Perekhvalskaya’s 60th anniversary and contains papers on Altaic, Greek, Balkan, African, Finnic languages, as well as on language contacts and general theoretical problems.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Linguistics 59(3), 2021
The distinction between direct and indirect speech has long been known not to reflect the cross-l... more The distinction between direct and indirect speech has long been known not to reflect the cross-linguistic diversity of speech reporting strategies. Yet prominent typological approaches remain firmly grounded in that traditional distinction and look to place language-specific strategies on a universal continuum, treating them as deviations from the “direct” and “indirect” ideals. We argue that despite their methodological attractiveness, continuum approaches do not provide a solid basis for cross-linguistic comparison. We aim at presenting an alternative by exploring the syntax of logophoric speech, which has been commonly treated in the literature as representative of “semi-direct” discourse. Based on data from two unrelated languages, Wan (Mande) and Ainu (isolate), we show that certain varieties of logophoric speech share a number of syntactic properties with direct speech, and none with indirect speech. Many of the properties of indirect speech that are traditionally described in terms of perspective follow from its syntactically subordinate status. Constructions involving direct and logophoric speech, on the other hand, belong to a separate, universal type of structure. Our findings suggest that the alleged indirect/direct continuum conflates two independent aspects of speech reporting: the syntactic configuration in which the report is integrated, and language-specific meaning of indexical elements.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
![Research paper thumbnail of [In Russian] Отклонения от канонического порядка слов в устных башкирских текстах](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/52609477/thumbnails/1.jpg)
]( Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The study addresses the diachronic relationship between locative marking and the marking of goals... more The study addresses the diachronic relationship between locative marking and the marking of goals and sources of motion. In ancient Indo-European languages, and in some modern ones, static spatial relations can be described by means of inherently dynamic expressions, which are normally used for encoding goals and sources (as in to the left of the door). I suggest that this strategy presents an alternative to the use of rich systems of spatial prepositions specialized for encoding particular configurations. Its use pre-dates the development of basic spatial prepositions, which came to replace, in Indo-European languages, directional adverbs (sometimes also described as particles). The directional adverbs played a prominent role in the encoding of spatial notions in ancient languages. After they were reanalyzed as spatial prepositions and verbal prefixes, the directional strategy continued to be used for the expression of peripheral spatial meanings, for which no prepositional expression had developed. I illustrate this phenomenon with data from Ancient Greek and modern Russian, and discuss how it can explain the data commonly described by the somewhat mysterious term “ablative-locative transfer”.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Space is a fundamental dimension of human life and is pervasive in human experience. Research on ... more Space is a fundamental dimension of human life and is pervasive in human experience. Research on space has highlighted the possible asymmetrical nature of spatial relations. Differences in the encoding of goals and sources of motion are a case in point, and cross-linguistic coding tendencies show that path is less frequently flagged by a dedicated case than goal, source/origin, and (static) location (locative). Interestingly, such asymmetries may correlate with certain types of landmark, as in the case of toponyms or of animate entities. Even though these issues have been focused upon both in typological and psycholinguistic research, they remain largely open. The papers in this collection aim to show that a diachronic approach may shed light on the way in which asymmetries in the space domain come about over time, thus contributing to the clarification of synchronically puzzling facts.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Понятия, идеи, конструкции: очерки сравнительной исторической семантики, 39-85 , 2019
Translation (into Russian) of Antoine Meillet, “Comment let mots changent de sens” (with Tatiana... more Translation (into Russian) of Antoine Meillet, “Comment let mots changent de sens” (with Tatiana Nikitina) In: Poniatiia, idei, konstruktsii:
ocherki sravnitel’noi istoricheskoi semantiki, 39-85.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact