Ronald Feldstein - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Ronald Feldstein

Analyzes the invariants of Jakobson's accentually marked and unmarked verbal stems.

This paper deals with the behavior and typology of simplex verb stems in Russian—particularly dua... more This paper deals with the behavior and typology of simplex verb stems in Russian—particularly dual simplexes and their derivatives. A simplex stem is an unprefixed non-derived verb stem, found in such basic infinitives as Russian работать, писать, ставить, стать, which have the simplex stems rabotaj-, pisa-, stavi-, stan-. Besides the simplex stem, I will also be interested in two more types of stems, based on two possible things you can do to the simplex: prefix it and suffix it. If we take the simplex stem (again, like rabotaj-, pisa-, stavi-), which is almost always imperfective, and add a prefix, we regularly derive a new perfective verb which shall be referred to as a prefixed perfective; for example, using the prefix pere- for consistency: переработать, переписать, переставить. This can be seen in Table 1, going from the first to the second line. Table 1. One simplex and one prefixed perfective with a given prefix. 1A. With a derived imperfective.

Andrej A. Zaliznjak's recent book, Drevnerusskie ènklitiki, explains the need for a book about Ol... more Andrej A. Zaliznjak's recent book, Drevnerusskie ènklitiki, explains the need for a book about Old Russian enclitics by stating that while the enclitics of the South and West Slavic languages have attracted great interest, those of Old Russian have been largely ignored. Very little literature on the subject exists, and Zaliznjak cites only two studies, both dating from 1935: Gunnarsson's study of sę and Jakobson's small article about the Slavic enclitics as a whole. In Zaliznjak's opinion, this lack of interest has been caused by the absence of good sources for colloquial Old Russian speech, until the discovery of the Novgorod birch bark documents in 1951. The author also notes that histories of the Russian language do not contain chapters on the enclitics of Old Russian. Thus, the present study has the goal of providing the first modern, comprehensive study of Old Russian enclitics, in which the sources of Old Russian colloquial speech are fully taken into account. In addition to the author's use of the birch bark documents, he also makes extensive use of all the instances of direct speech, found in the Kievan letopis', since this also provides good evidence about colloquial uses of Old Russian. This book is intended as a complete and comprehensive expansion of the author's earlier 1993 article on the birch bark documents. It also draws from the author's 1985 book on the history of Slavic accentuation. The author makes the important statement that the goal of the book is not the comparison of Old Russian enclitics with those of other Indo-European languages or with the South and West Slavic languages. It appears that this statement was made for the purpose of explaining the absence of a discussion of the many recent studies of Slavic enclitics which have appeared in recent years, since it has become a topic of great interest to Slavists. At first glance, it seemed surprising that the references about Slavic enclitics are little more than the two 1935 sources mentioned above. One does not find such recent work as the Handbook of Slavic Clitics (Franks and King, 2000), or the large number of clitic references that one can find in their bibliography (pp. 377-392). One might have expected a bit more about the current literature on the subject, although Zaliznjak's position is understandable. After all, his book is the first to bring the enclitics of the birch bark documents and many other Old Russian manuscripts into the field of scholarly study. As the author mentions, the study of clitics has both phonological and syntactic aspects. Further, he states that "practically the only Old Russian manuscript from which one could directly extract information about enclitic accentuation" (p. 11) is the Čudov New Testament, due to the fact that it is accented. Therefore, in order to utilize the birch bark documents and other colloquial sources, it is necessary to use unaccented sources. Thus, accentological analysis plays only a secondary role, and the syntactic position of clitics is the main basis for judgements about their behavior. In fact, the central concept of this entire book is the explanation and prediction of those instances of Old Russian enclitics which do not conform to Wackernagel's Law, which specifies that enclitics must occupy the second position in a sentence. Therefore, every possible instance of a non-second place location of enclitics is analyzed by the author on the basis of many parameters, which constitute the chapters of this book. I will now give a brief account of the book's contents and how each chapter relates to the main theme of explaining how deviations from Wackernagel's Law might be explained. The first chapter, devoted to the main rules of enclitic behavior, introduces the most important concepts and parameters which are in constant use throughout the book. If one looks at enclitic order (i.e. "ranking"), the first five ranks of enclitics to occur-že, li, bo, ti (not the dative pronoun), and by-are considered to be the older and more stable group, and also can be called the "strong clitics" (p. 51). Conversely, the latter three ranks (dative pronouns mi, si, ti, accusative pronouns mę, sę, tę, and the copula) are the "weak clitics," although there is a descending scale of strength within each group.

I. Simplexes, prefixation, and suffixation. This paper deals with the behavior and typology of si... more I. Simplexes, prefixation, and suffixation. This paper deals with the behavior and typology of simplex verb stems in Russian—particularly dual simplexes and their derivatives. A simplex stem is an unprefixed non-derived verb stem, found in such basic infinitives as Russian работать, писать, ставить, стать, which have the simplex stems rabotaj-, pisa-, stavi-, stan-. Besides the simplex stem, I will also be interested in two more types of stems, based on two possible operations that can be performed on the simplex: prefixation and suffixation. When we prefix the simplex stem (e.g. rabotaj-, pisa-, stavi-), which is almost imperfective, we regularly derive a new perfective verb, which shall be referred to as a prefixed perfective; for example, using the prefix pere- for consistency: pererabotaj-, perepisa-, perestavi-. This can be seen in Table 1, going from the first to the second line.

Classifies Ukrainian nominal stress patterns. Concludes that each major gender type has its own s... more Classifies Ukrainian nominal stress patterns. Concludes that each major gender type has its own special pattern of stress shift, in addition to the pattern of immobile stress.

The concept of accentual paradigm has played a major role in accentual studies of stress and othe... more The concept of accentual paradigm has played a major role in accentual studies of stress and other prosodic phenomena in the Slavic languages. It has been productively used by such scholars of accentology as Stang (1957), Illic-Svityc (1963), Dybo (1962, 1981, etc.), Garde (1976: 19), and Zaliznjak (1967). There also has been an important modification of the concept of accentual paradigm, called the accentual subparadigm (Fedjanina 1976, Zaliznjak 1985). This paper intends to examine the precise definition of the accentual paradigm and subparadigm. It will be seen that the concept of subparadigm can be greatly expanded beyond the limited scope of accentual subparadigms which already exists. In addition, it can be shown that certain highly interesting accentual discoveries of linguists such as Roman Jakobson really stem from the implicit use of novel accentual paradigms. Our goal is to obtain more rigorous definitions of such subparadigms, with the ultimate goal of using them to illu...

The goal of this paper is to show that the Common Slavic monophthongization of diphthongs was a m... more The goal of this paper is to show that the Common Slavic monophthongization of diphthongs was a much more uniform process than has been thought. There are two main types of rules, depending on whether the two moraic components of the diphthong have a pure sonority contrast (±consonantal or ±high) or a sonority contrast in addition to one of nasality or front/back. In the case of the pure sonority contrast, one of the input moras becomes the moraic unit of the new two-mora monophthong. The question of whether it is the first or second mora depends on the sonority distance between the diphthongal components; in the unmarked case of lesser sonority distance, the second component is generalized in the monophthong, but a greater sonority distance causes the first component to become the moraic unit of the monophthong. When the diphthongal contrast involves sonority plus nasality or front/back, the non-nasal or back component first experiences assimilation to nasality or frontness and the...

The rhythmic law, a unique rule which applies to both the Slovak standard language and the Centra... more The rhythmic law, a unique rule which applies to both the Slovak standard language and the Central Slovak dialects, has been of importance to scholars who have attempted to establish the properties which distinguish Slovak from the other Slavic languages and, more narrowly, Central Slovak from the Western and Eastern Slovak dialects. The rhythmic law specifies that two long vowels may not occur in two consecutive syllables of a single word; whenever two phonemically long elements are joined to each other, the second one automatically shortens (Krajčovič 1975:62-63). This is most easily observed in adjectives. The long nominative singular feminine ending-á can occur as such after a short root, e.g. nová, but if a long root vowel occurs in the syllable which immediately precedes the-á, then the ending itself shortens to-a (e.g. krásna). Diphthongs behave as do long vowels for the purposes of the rhythmic law; they shorten from two components to their second component only in those cases where long monophthongs shorten. This simply implies that the law came into effect before the rise of the specifically Slovak diphthongs, so that the diphthongs only arose in those positions where long vowels once stood. See table 1 for illustrations of the rhythmic law. 3 nov + á = nová, but krásn + á--> krásna When first syllable is a diphthong: biel + á--> biela When second syllable is a diphthong: ulic + iach = uliciach, but prác + iach--> prácach Table 1. An illustration of the rhythmic law in Slovak.

Accent Matters, 2011

Examines the conversion of Common Slavic accentual paradigms into quantitative paradigms of West ... more Examines the conversion of Common Slavic accentual paradigms into quantitative paradigms of West Slavic. New restrictions on prosodic mobility are indicated, showing why morphological, and not phonological rules, determine many quantitative reflexes of the modern languages. Quantitative alternations generally had to be linked to new vowel~zero alternations.

Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 2019

Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics, 1996

Slovene Studies Journal, 1987

Slovene Studies Journal, 1982

Slovene Studies Journal, 1983

The Slavic and East European Journal, 1990

An analysis of the stress patterns of the Bulgarian noun, indicating how ambiguous stress can be ... more An analysis of the stress patterns of the Bulgarian noun, indicating how ambiguous stress can be resolved by using non-ambiguous forms.

The Slavic and East European Journal, 1987

Demonstrates that accentual complexity decreases as word-length and morpheme complexity increase ... more Demonstrates that accentual complexity decreases as word-length and morpheme complexity increase in Russian verb forms.

The Slavic and East European Journal, 1984

Lingua, 1980

Abstract The Polish dispalatalization of vowels was the change of nonhigh front vowels to back vo... more Abstract The Polish dispalatalization of vowels was the change of nonhigh front vowels to back vowels when followed by a nonpalatalized dental consonant. This highly unusual environment has never been adequately explained. This paper proposes that the solution may be found in the transfer of synharmonic redundancy from syllabic initial to syllabic final in order to save incipient dental palatalization from extinction. This suggests a new relative chronology, according to which Polish dispalatalization of vowels occurred only after the dispalatalization of final labial consonants, which in turn followed jer-loss. The distinctive feature system of Fundamentals of language , together with a new synharmony feature, are shown to best represent this process in distinctive features.

Lingua, 1976

This paper represents an attempt to simplify the treatment of the evolution of Slavic liquid diph... more This paper represents an attempt to simplify the treatment of the evolution of Slavic liquid diphthongs, both low (dr) and high (ur). This is done by positing two isoglosses, which specify metathesis and liquid desyilabification. The relative order of these isoglosses varies from area to area within Slavic and is a crucial factor in deriving the correct forms. The desy!labification of liquids is Linked with an epenthetic mora caused by regressive compensation. This epenthesis can be structurally linked with the prosodic phenomenon of leftward accent spread.