On the mechanisms of the grammaticalization of comitative and instrumental categories in Slavic (original) (raw)
2015, Journal of historical linguistics
This article critically assesses probabilistic predictions on the theory of contactinduced grammaticalization of the comitative-instrumental polysemy in those Slavic languages which have had a history of long and intense interaction with either German or Italian. Having provided extensive dialectal data, I argue instead that there are no grounds for positing a direct correlation between the introduction of the comitative preposition to instrumental in "high-contact" Slavic languages and the history of language contact with German or Italian. I propose to distinguish between the grammaticalization of the comitative-instrumental polysemy due to analytic simplification and the grammaticalization of the instrumental-comitative polysemy due to synthetic simplification. The comitative marking for instrumentals in Slavic is likely to develop in places of prolonged multilingual contacts, not necessarily with German or Italian. Under these conditions one can predict the development of convergent analytic features in closely related or even areally contingent languages (dialects), as is the case of the Circum-Baltic area.
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This article critically assesses probabilistic predictions on the theory of contactinduced grammaticalization of the comitative-instrumental polysemy in those Slavic languages which have had a history of long and intense interaction with either German or Italian. Having provided extensive dialectal data, I argue instead that there are no grounds for positing a direct correlation between the introduction of the comitative preposition to instrumental in "high-contact" Slavic languages and the history of language contact with German or Italian. I propose to distinguish between the grammaticalization of the comitative-instrumental polysemy due to analytic simplification and the grammaticalization of the instrumental-comitative polysemy due to synthetic simplification. The comitative marking for instrumentals in Slavic is likely to develop in places of prolonged multilingual contacts, not necessarily with German or Italian. Under these conditions one can predict the development of convergent analytic features in closely related or even areally contingent languages (dialects), as is the case of the Circum-Baltic area.
Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 2015
Reviewed by Krzysztof E. Borowski and Alexandra Fisher The 26th volume of Slavic Eurasian studies considers language contact between Slavic and German. The articles in this volume deal with the influence of German on topics ranging from clitics to morphology to the verbal system to the lexicon. The contributors and editors are to be applauded for their effort to examine not only the commonly recognized standard Slavic languages but also languages which do not enjoy the same status within the Slavic family: Burgenland Croatian, Kashubian (with data from extinct Slovincian), and Silesian. The opening article by Andreja Žele and Eva Sicherl represents an attempt at a contrastive description of the relationship between prefixes and prepositions occurring with verbs (including their valency structure) in Slovenian and German. A new classification of prefixed verbs based on transformations is introduced. The classification includes prefixed verbs in which (i) the prefix has adverbial meaning, (ii) the prefix can be derived from a similarly-sounding preposition, and (iii) there is a prepositional phrase with a paraphrase of the main verb in the semantic structure. It is often the case that German translations of such verbs are also prefixed and allow for similarly structured para phrases. Consequently, a similar classification of German prefixed verbs is possible as well. Along with the analysis, abundant examples in both German and Slovenian are provided. Similarities between South and West Slavic material (e.g., Slvn položiti na mizo 'to put back in its place' Pol położyć na miejsce, Slvn prenočiti v koči 'to spend the night in a cabin' Pol przenocować w chacie, etc.) open the door to a broader and contrastive study of relations between prefixed and prepositional verbs in Slavic and German. Motoki Nomachi, exploring Germanic influence on Kashubian, argues that it possesses four of the five characteristics of non-pro-drop languages, while all other Slavic languages, with the exception of Rus
Prepositions and Verbal Prefixes: The Case of Slavic
This monograph is concerned with prepositional elements in Slavic languages, prepositions, verbal prefixes and functional elements of prepositional nature. It argues that verbal prefixes are incorporated prepositions projecting its argument structure in the complement position of the verbal root. The meaning of prefixes is based on the two-argument meaning of prepositions, which is enriched with the CAUSE operator, which conjoins the state denoted by the prepositional phrase and the event expressed by the verbal root. This accounts for various effects of prefixation. The book investigates idiomaticity in the realm of prefixed verbs and proposes a novel analysis of non-compositional prefixed verbs. The non-compositional interpretation arises inter alia because of the fact that either the meaning of the verbal part or the meaning of the prepositional part is shifted by means of Nunberg’s (1995) predicate transfer in the course of the derivation. This study also offers a uniform analysis of cases: prepositional as well as non-prepositional cases are treated as a reflection of the operation Agree between Tense-features and phi-features. It presents a new model of prepositional case assignment, in which the type of prepositional case is determined by semantic properties of particular heads of the decomposed preposition. Furthermore, it investigates prepositional movement from diachronic perspective. It is shown that prepositions can be grammaticalised as a functional element of the higher clausal structure.
On the grammaticalization of the -(v)ši- resultative in North Slavic
Historical Linguistics 2017 Selected papers from the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, San Antonio, Texas, 31 July – 4 August 2017/John Benjamins Publishing Company , 2020
It is commonly accepted that the-(v)ši-resultatives in North Slavic are a product of the areal diffusion of a similar resultative formation in-vęs-(< *-ṷes-) from Baltic. The author argues that the anterior grammaticalization of the-(v)ši-re-sultative in North Slavic has been largely an internally motivated process. The analysis is premised on the distinction of spoken vs. written discourse which preconditions the parallel use of finite and non-finite predication, including the re-sultative structures, in the history and dialects of North Slavic. The author argues that language contact was but one of several factors influencing the convergent tendencies in the use of resultatives in the Circum-Baltic zone and well beyond.
On Predicting Contact-induced Grammatical Change: Evidence from Slavic Languages
Journal of Historical Linguistics, 2011
For good reasons, linguists are highly skeptical when it comes to predicting linguistic change, As has been argued in (Heine 2003: 598-599), based on observations on some regularities of grammatical change made within the framework of grammaticalization theory, however, it seems possible to propose at least some probabilistic predictions on what is a possible grammatical change and what is not. In the present article it is argued that this also applied to grammatical change that takes place in situations of language contact.
The delimitative prefix po-, durative adverbials, and Slavic aspectual composition
Proceedings of ConSOLE XXX, 2022
The paper examines perfective verbs with the delimitative prefix po-(podel) combining with durative adverbials (DurAds) in Slavic, primarily based on examples from Serbian. Since DurAds are standardly assumed to diagnose atelicity, such examples constitute the main argument for separating Slavic perfectivity from telicity (e.g. Borik 2006), and pose the major obstacle for the view that perfectives in Slavic are telic (e.g. Łazorczyk 2010). I propose that DurAds are generated in the QP (a telicity projection), while podel combines with the QP, specifiying a telic predicate for singularity. Consequently, all prefixed perfective verbs in Slavic are necessarily telic.
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