The importance of not belonging: Paradigmaticity and loan nominalizations in Serbo-Croatian (original) (raw)

The importance of not belonging: Paradigmaticity and Latinate nominalizations in Serbo-Croatian

In a number of Slavic and Germanic languages, various derivational affixes and morphological patterns of Latin origin are relatively common, and bear effects as abstract as deriving event nouns from verbs and property nouns from adjectives. This seems to contradict the general observation that abstract morphology typically is not subject to borrowing. We discuss the status of two Serbo-Croatian (S-C) nominalizing Latinate suffixes, -cija and -itet, which display relatively high values of productivity and frequency. On our analysis, these are not borrowed suffixes and derivational patterns, in the sense that they were present in another language and got copied into S-C, but rather suffixes and patterns which emerged within S-C, more specifically in the Latinate stratum of the S-C lexicon. In other words, we argue that members of these two classes of nominalizations were first borrowed as simplex words. After demonstrating that the sequences -cija and -itet display quantitative patterns characteristic of the productive native suffixes, we argue that these quantitative effects, in conspiracy with the shared semantic properties of the nouns ending in these sequences, have led to a reanalysis of the initial simplex borrowed forms as derived nouns involving a stem and the suffix -cija or -itet, respectively. Pragmatic, phonotactic and prosodic constraints apply to these derivations to the effect that the suffixes that have emerged in the borrowed domain of the lexicon never enter a competition with the native nominalization patterns.

Regular and honorary membership: On two kinds of deverbal nouns in Serbo-Croatian

We examine two types of deverbal nominalisations in Serbo-Croatian, both derived by the same suffix -VV.je (suffix -je which lengthens the final syllable of the stem). One type is derived from imperfective verbs; it involves productive nominalizations with gerund semantics, and it is characterized by a prosodic pattern matching at least one paradigmatic form of the verb. The other is derived from perfective verbs; it involves idiosyncratic nominalisations, both in terms of the verbs which can or cannot derive them, and in terms of the semantic interpretation, and they are characterized by a prosodic pattern that never fits any of the forms in the paradigm of the verb: the high tone on the two final syllables, and the stress on the penultimate. We propose that the notion of paradigm should be defined as the domain of systematic productivity of a stem, under full semantic transparency. Our analysis of the facts observed is that members of the paradigm - in our case the imperfective nominalisations - are subject to Steriade's Lexical Conservatism, which presses them to use a prosodic pattern available within the paradigm. When the result of the morphological process (adding the suffix -VV.je to the stem) is a new stem with an own paradigm, the new stem is fused and treated as a simplex without a prosodic specification in the lexicon. While it has been shown that the post-lexical, i.e. default, prosodic pattern in S-C is that with the high tone on the initial syllable (Zec 1999, Simonović 2012), we argue that lexical items with a long vowel select for a different post-lexical default, namely the one with the high tone on the final syllable. The surface prosody is then the result of the general rule of tone spreading in S-C (e.g. Zec 1999). We argue that this picture fits well a more general view that the lexicon has the structure of a coconut: a soft core with productive elements deriving large paradigms connected by shared lexical prosodic shapes, a hard outer layer of extreme idiosyncratic items in respect of productivity, semantics and prosody, and a middle semi-hardened layer of derived words exiled from the paradigms of their stems, with both semantics and prosody somewhere between the two extremes.

Extrametricality and Suffixation in Serbian, Conference FDSL 7, Leipzig 2007, Abstract

The view of Serbian (Neoštokavian) accents expressed in this paper is very different from the dominant one according to which the rising accents in Serbian may take any position in the word except the last one (Lehiste and Ivić 1986). This view may look plausible if we consider all possible words; we however get a very different picture if we consider only monomorphemic words, not distorted by concatenation of different words and affixes. I consider that only the accentuation of monomorphemic words can show what are the basic accentuation rules because these rules may not applay at successive lexical levels. Even a cursory survey of monomorphemic nouns in Deanović and Jernej (1989) shows a picture of distibution of the rising accents very different from the generally accepted one. It is not difficult to show that the rising accent is generally limited to the penult and antepenult in monomorphemic nouns. The accent further left than the antepenult is the result of affixation and compounding. The extrametrical suffix –ija regularly produces nouns with the accent on the fourth syllable from the end (e.g. mèlōdija ’melody’, gìmnāzija ’high school’), and the neutral suffix –nica can derive nouns with the accent on the fifth syllable from the end (slàtičārnica ’pastry shop’). It is even possible to get the accent further left with the help of some prefixes, although such words are not very common.

Borrowing of Morphology: With a case study of Baltic and Slavic verbal prefixes

Peter Ackema, Sabrina Bendjaballah, Eulàlia Bonet & Antonio Fábregas (eds),The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology. , 2023

This is a survey of the domain of morphological borrowing complemented with a case-study of contact-induced phenomena in the domain of verbal prefixes in Baltic, Slavic and neighboring languages. Section 2 presents a concise overview of the main divisions and analytical problems of morphological borrowing, focusing on the distinction between matter borrowing and pattern borrowing, on the one hand, and on the borrowing of different types of morphology (e.g. derivation vs. inflection, affixes vs. processes etc.). Section 3 further illustrates these issues on the data of the borrowing phenomena involving verbal prefixes in Baltic and Slavic, such as borrowing of individual prefixes from Slavic into Baltic dialects and of whole systems of prefixes from Slavic into Romani and Istro-Romanian and from Baltic into Livonian, or cases of pattern replication involving verbal prefixes in Lithuanian, Yiddish and Romani. Borrowability of the Slavic and Baltic verbal aspect expressed by means of prefixation is also discussed, and it is shown that the aspectual values of borrowed prefixes are never exact copies of their counterparts in the source languages.

2008. The Slavic Word: Suffix Order and Parsability

homepage.univie.ac.at, 2008

In this paper, I test the Parsability Hypothesis (PH) against data from Slavic languages. I demonstrate an intricate relationship between derivation and inflection in the sense that inflectional suffixes serve to identify derivational suffixes but the two types of suffixes differ in respect to further suffixation, and thus suffixes should be distinguished according to their position either in the derivational or inflectional word slot. Based on synchronic and diachronic evidence, I contend that in Slavic languages, parsability holds for inflection, provided that a language stacks suffixes in the inflectional word slot, but not for derivation, though parsability may be used as a supporting criterion for establishing the +/-closing character of a suffix in the derivational word-slot. I show that different stages in the diachronic development of a language exhibit different degrees of parsability, i.e. parsability is not a constant but a tendency. I conclude that in order to account adequately for Slavic word structure, PH requires some revisions: to consider the role of the word-length and assume two different domains of parsability -derivational and inflectional, as well as to allow the same suffix to apply recursively in derivation and to undermine the role of phonotactics in derivational morphology. initial suffixes and do not blur the morpheme boundary via phonological and morphonological alternations. Thus parsability depends on different factors and occurs by gradations, which allows affixes to be ordered hierarchically according to their ability to parse.

The inflected noun system in Serbo-Croatian: Lexical representation of morphological structure

1987

Repetition priming is examined for alternating and nonalternating morphologically related inflected nouns. In Experiments 1 and 2, latencies to targets in nominative and dativellocative cases, respectively, were invariant over case of prime. In Experiment 3, latencies to nominativecase nouns were the same whether the nouns were primed by forms in which the spelling and pronunciation of the common stem were shared (nonalternating) or not (alternating) with the nominative form. Results are interpreted 88 reflecting lexical organization among the members of a noun system. In Experiments 1 and 2, the pattern of latencies to primes suggests a satellite organization in which nominative forms are more strongly linked to oblique forms than oblique forms are to each other. In Experiment 3, atypical cases of alternating forms showed a different pattern of prime latencies, suggesting .that the organization within a noun system may differ for alternating and nonalternating forms.

THE SYNCHRONY AND DIACHRONY OF BOSNIAN-CROATIAN-SERBIAN ADJECTIVAL LONG-FORM ALLOMORPHY (ALFA)

In Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), the gentive (G) and dative/locative (DL) cases exhibit adjectival long-form allomorphy (ALFA). The genitive –og ~ -oga and the DL – om ~ -ome ~ -omu stand in free variation, inasmuch as when one form is substituted for another the truth value of an utterance remains unchanged. Some sociolinguists (particularly Milroy & Gordon 2003) have held the view that while morphosyntactic free variation is possible it is much harder to analyze from the sociolinguistic perspective. While it is undoubtedly true that phonological variables occur much more frequently than so-called ―higher-level‖ variables, many valuable contributions to sociolinguistics (Labov 1969, Wolfram 1969, Rickford et al. 1991, Mufwene 1998, Poplack and Tagliamonte 2001, and many others) have focused on morphosyntactic variables, and consequently have revealed important patterns of morphosyntactic variation in speech communities. Surprisingly, this sort of research has rarely been conducted on the South Slavic languages, especially BCS, which exhibits an incredible amount of morphosyntactic variation, given that Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian have shared dialect continua for centuries and are mutually intelligible, but now stand at odds with one another due to changes in language policy stemming from the breakup of the Former Yugoslavia (Greenberg 2004). This dissertation is a fundamental rejection of the notion that is still being proffered (at least in Croatian grammars, cf. Barić 2007, Raguţ 2010) that there are contextually based rules or tendencies for ALFA usage in Contemporary BCS. While previous grammars may have stated the facts accurately for their synchronic period of BCS, many contemporary grammars have essentially ―piggy-backed‖ on these prior grammars (e.g Shirokov & Gudkov 1977, Browne & Alt 2004), which viewed these ALFAs as adding a sense of ―definiteness‖, and subsequently have neglected the possibility of language change. Alexander (2006) is the first to propose that ALFAs are more common in Croatian than in Bosnian or Serbian. My sociolinguistic questionnaire and analysis of the Croatian Language Repository, the Croatian National Corpus, and Wikipedia have all verified that ALFAs are more common in Croatian, although they can be heard rarely in Serbian (only for possessives and demonstratives), and slightly more frequently in Bosnian. Furthermore, the empirical studies conducted in this investigation have informed the diachronic origin of ALFAs. It can certainly be said that ALFAs occur infrequently with descriptive adjectives, but exhibit strong patterns of variation for possessives and demonstratives. Moreover, for monosyllabic possessives and demonstratives (which are still monosyllabic after the addition of G and DL base forms –og and –om), when a preposition precedes the adjectival phrase the ALFAs are overwhelmingly preferred. I v link this tendency to pronominal prepositional phrases which require long forms, e.g. o meni, but *o mi. This can be viewed as a ―two-syllable‖ (or ―two-footed‖) constraint, which then spread to all prepositional phrases in the language via analogy. This ―twosyllable‖ rule can be viewed as a restatement of ―Wackernagel‘s position‖, which can be either prosodic or syntactic (Serbian vs. Croatian, for example), in syllabic terms, although it is possible that this process could have begun on the moric level o vās, but *o vas. In the absence of a noun this element either had already took on, or developed an anaphoric relationship to a following noun, and thus was reinterpreted as a marker of definiteness. Subsequent analogies spread ALFAs to the descriptive, although the ―twosyllable‖ constraint would never have been violated for descriptive, given that all descriptive roots after the addition of ALFA bases would have at minimum two syllables already. Finally, the lack of ALFAs in Western Štokavian (one of the historical predecessors of modern-day Croatian) pre-19th century and their early attestation in 15th century Eastern Štokavian (the historical predecessor of modern-day Serbian) points to a Serbian import of ALFAs to Croatian lands. Ivić (1972) has demonstrated that the political and economic repercussions of the Ottoman occupation of Serbia led many Serbs to seek asylum with their Christian neighbors. As repeated migrations of Serbs brought to Croatian dialects characteristic Serbian features, such as: the neo-Štokavian stress retraction, the da complementizer, etc., the linguistic conformance behind the Vienna Literary Agreement of 1850 would have viewed the presence of these features as ―unifying‖ elements. vi Therefore, the statement made by Greenberg (2004) that the ALFAs were reintroduced as ―puristic‖ elements in Croatian post-1991 can be considered an ironic twist in Croatian language policy, inasmuch as, from the diachronic perspective, ALFAs have been shown to be characteristic of 15th century Serbian, and then later Croatian.

Verb prefixation of the Slavic type in terms of concord and relativization

2010

The empirical base of this paper is the system of verb prefixes in Slavic languages, with a focus on Serbo-Croatian (SC). The paper especially targets the asymmetries between the so-called external and internal (or superlexical and lexical) prefixes, but it eventually proposes a general analysis for the verbal prefixation in SC.