Connectivity Matters! Social, Environmental and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies, 2022
In this study, we discuss the ways in which linguistics and archaeology approach and investigate ... more In this study, we discuss the ways in which linguistics and archaeology approach and investigate identity, focusing on potential areas of overlap between the two disciplines as a possible research program for future collaborative studies. Although the two disciplines may appear quite removed from one another at first sight, both deal with cultural items-whether material or linguistic-which are intrinsic to what it means to be human and which have an inherent function both as a means of communication and in their symbolic dimensions. Our ultimate goal here is to develop an interdisciplinary approach to identity as a specific field of human connectivity which can yield deeper insights into the topic than those achieved within the individual disciplines thus far and for which such a joint approach could be especially fruitful. Introduction: Identity as a platform of social and cultural connectivity Identity is an inherently relational concept, as someone or something can only be similar to or different from someone or something else (Assmann 1992). As such,
Efficiency is central to understanding the communicative and cognitive underpinnings of language.... more Efficiency is central to understanding the communicative and cognitive underpinnings of language. However, efficiency management is a complex mechanism in which different efficiency effects-such as articulatory, processing and planning ease, mental accessibility, and informativity, online and offline efficiency effects-conspire to yield the coding of linguistic signs. While we do not yet exactly understand the interactional mechanism of these different effects, we argue that universal attractors are an important component of any dynamic theory of efficiency that would be aimed at predicting efficiency effects across languages. Attractors are defined as universal states around which language evolution revolves. Methodologically, we approach efficiency from a cross-linguistic perspective on the basis of a worldwide sample of 383 languages from 53 families, balancing all six macro-areas (Eurasia, North and South America, Australia, Africa, and Oceania). We focus on the grammatical domain of verbal person-number subject indexes. We claim that there is an attractor state in this domain to which languages tend to develop and tend not to leave if they happen to comply with the attractor in their earlier stages of evolution. The attractor is characterized by different lengths for each person and number combination, structured along Zipf's predictions. Moreover, the attractor strongly prefers noncompositional, cumulative coding of person and number. On the basis of these and other properties of the attractor, we conclude that there are two domains in which efficiency pressures are most powerful: strive towards less processing and articulatory effort. The latter, however, is overridden by constant information flow. Strive towards lower lexicon complexity and memory costs are weaker efficiency pressures for this grammatical category due to its order of frequency.
This paper sets out to disentangle the natural developments leading away from encoding semantic r... more This paper sets out to disentangle the natural developments leading away from encoding semantic relations by inflectional case towards encoding them by means of prepositions, on the one hand, and the impact of the Attistic language ideology on the development of prepositions on the other. Our aim is to describe the major standardisation trends in the grammar of prepositions in a corpus-based study. While the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods are characterised by the natural expansion of prepositional patterns across various semantic and syntactic domains, the language of Postclassical Greek is subject to different standardisation processes and ideological influences. Already by the Hellenistic period, we observe the tendency towards consolidation of variation in prepositional usage, being an effect of adopting some of the standards of Koiné. The Roman period, by contrast, again increases variation: Different authors and texts imitate the ideals of the Archaic and Classical periods to varying degrees (Atticism). Accordingly, we refer to the Roman period as a period of creative standardisation. The conventionalisation of a set of Attistic patterns takes place only from the Early to Late Byzantine periods. The Late Byzantine period attests more than twice as little variation than the Roman period. Finally, we argue that the expansion of prepositions is not only determined by language change and Atticism but that genres channel the expansion of prepositional patterns. Historians and early religious texts are the most progressive and less amenable for imitating earlier periods. By contrast, writers of poetry and orators are much more conservative, more resistant to language change and tend to imitate the earlier language layers more faithfully.
Partitive Determiners, Partitive Pronouns and Partitive Case, 2021
The present paper investigates diachronic developments that partitives undergo over the course of... more The present paper investigates diachronic developments that partitives undergo over the course of time. First, it is shown that true-partitives (part-whole-relation partitives) encoded by adpositional strategies are not stable cross-linguistically and tend to develop into pseudo-partitives, which are defined as constructions that encode simple quantification but retain the morphology of true-partitives. Secondly, the frequency bias towards indefiniteness drives the emergence of generalized partitives-partitives with no explicit realization of the subset referent. Generalized partitives tend to undergo a closer relationship with the verb. Moreover, generalized partitives may develop into markers (co-)expressing such predicate-level functions as aspectuality (the delimitative meaning) and discontinuous predicate negation, as well as hypothetical events, as well as develop into differential object markers.
Standard typological methods are designed to test hypotheses on strong universals that broadly ov... more Standard typological methods are designed to test hypotheses on strong universals that broadly override all other competing universal and language-specific forces. In this paper I argue that there are also weak universal forces. Weak universal forces systematically operate in the course of development but then interact with, or are even subsequently overridden by, other processes such as analogical extension, persistence effects from the source function, etc. This, in turn, means that there can be statistically significant evidence for violations at the synchronic level and, accordingly, only a weak positive statistical signal. But crucially, the absence of statistical prima-facie evidence for such forces does not amount to evidence for their absence. The assumption that there are also weak universal forces that affect language evolution goes in line with the view that human cognition in general and language acquisition in particular are constrained by probabilistic biases ranging from weak to strong (cf. Thompson et al. 2016). By way of example, the present paper claims that the discriminatory function of case in differential object marking (DOM) systems is a weak universal: It keeps appearing in historically, synchronically and typologically very divergent constellations but is often overridden by other processes in further developments and is, therefore, not any significant at the synchronic level in a large sample.
The source-oriented explanation in typology-recently popularized by a number of typologists-chall... more The source-oriented explanation in typology-recently popularized by a number of typologists-challenges a number of well-established universals, including the well-known correlational universals of harmonic ordering of heads and dependents across different domains of grammar. It suspends with any functional or cognitive explanations of these universals by Occam's razor because harmonic orders may allegedly be explained as historical accidents, i.e. simply due to etymological relatedness of harmonic orders (i.e. one order emerging from the other). In this paper we provide twofold evidence against this approach. We detail the development of prepositions and prepositional phrases and discuss the rise of the verb-object word order in Postclassical Greek. First, we argue that the development of the two harmonic, head-dependent word orders in Postclassical Greek can hardly be considered a historical coincidence because they largely match chronologically and, at the same time, are entirely unrelated etymologically. Neither of these two developments had a bias for ordering heads before dependents in its respective historical source. Secondly, we provide evidence for the reverse case as well: cross-linguistically dispreferred properties of prepositional phrases inherited from their source are abandoned in the course of the development by the time of Postclassical Greek. In other words, while cross-linguistically preferred structures (harmonic orders) emerged with no precondition in the source, cross-linguistically dispreferred structures disappear despite being inherited. Although the evidence from just one language might appear not to be strong enough, the fact that very different processes of restructuring and abandoning of inherited properties align to cross-linguistically preferred structures is revealing.
In this introductory article we provide an overview of the range of the phenomena that can be ref... more In this introductory article we provide an overview of the range of the phenomena that can be referred to as differential argument marking (DAM). We begin with an overview of the existing terminology and give a broad definition of the DAM to cover the phenomena discussed in the present volume and in the literature under this heading. We then consider various types of the phenomenon which figured prominently in studies of DAM in various traditions. First, we differentiate between arguments of the same predicate form and arguments of different predicate forms. Within the first type we discuss DAM systems triggered by inherent lexical argument properties and the ones triggered by non-inherent, discourse-based argument properties, as well as some minor types. It is this first type that traditionally constitutes the core of the phenomenon and falls under our narrow definition of DAM. The second type of DAM is conditioned by the larger syntactic environment , such as the clause properties (e.g. main vs. embedded) or properties of the predicate (e.g. its TAM characteristics). Then, we also discuss the restrictions that may constrain the occurrence of DAM cross-linguistically, other typical features of DAM systems pertaining to the morphological realization (symmetric vs. asym-metric) or to the degree of optionality of DAM. Finally, we provide a brief overview over functional explanations of DAM.
In this article we consider the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition, a well-known example o... more In this article we consider the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition, a well-known example of viewpoint aspect which establishes a classificatory grammatical category by means of stem derivation. Although Slavic languages are not unique in having developed a classificatory aspect system, a survey of such systems shows that the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition is a particularly rare subcase of such systems, first of all because it combines prefixing with suffixing patterns of derivation. We therefore explore the morphology involved, tracing its development from Proto-Indo-European into Early Slavic. The emergence of Slavic aspect is atypical for grammatical categories, and it deviates considerably from mainstream instances of grammaticalization in many respects. We show that there is a strong tendency (i) towards abandonment of highly lexically conditioned and versatile suffix choices in Proto-Indo-European and in Common Slavic, which led to fewer and more transparent suffixes, and (ii) towards concatenation, away from originally non-concatenative (fusional) schemata. Furthermore, we compare Slavic with some other Indo-European languages and inquire as to why in Europe no other Indo-European group beyond Slavic went so far as to productively exploit newly developed prefixes (or verb particles) merely for use as aspectual modifiers of stems and to combine them with a (partially inherited, partially remodelled) stock of suffixes to yield a classificatory aspect system. The Slavic system, thus, appears quite unique not only from a typological point of view, but also in diachronic-genealogical terms. Based on this background, amplified by some inner-Slavic biases in the productivity of patterns of stem derivation, we pose the provocative question as to whether the rise and consolidation of the stem-derivational perfective/imperfective opposition in Slavic was favoured by direct and indirect contacts with Uralic (Finno-Ugric) and Altaic (Turkic) populations at different periods since at least the time of the Great Migrations.
There seems to be no construction that would code specifically the possession relation of externa... more There seems to be no construction that would code specifically the possession relation of external possessors. Instead, various host constructions such as the free-affectee construction (a subtype of which is the free-dative construction), monotransitive or applicative construction can – to a different degree – accommodate participants that are bound by a possession relation. The binding procedure identifying the possessor operates at the pragmatic-semantic interface and takes into account the semantic roles of the event participants, their discourse saliency and lexical properties (such as animacy), world knowledge, properties of the possessum (such as the degree of (in)alienability), etc. The external-possession relation and the meaning of the hosting construction are orthogonal to each other, but there is a strong interplay between them. Positing a dedicated external-possessor construction faces the following problems: the same binding procedure is found in other constructions as well (such as the monotransitive or ditransitive constructions); at the same time, the very possession relation is only inconsistently found in constructions referred to as external-possessor constructions, and, what is more, the possession relation may sometimes be canceled (even if it is inalienable). To account for this terminologically, I introduce the term non-thematic affectee construction, a subtype of which is the free (non-thematic) affectee construction particularly spread in European languages. The latter is found with different types of coding (accusative, dative, different prepositional phrases) which have different diachronic sources.
The paper provides a historical and areal investigation of the North Russian perfect, often refer... more The paper provides a historical and areal investigation of the North Russian perfect, often referred to as the ''possessive perfect''. This perfect is encoded by a periphrastic predication consisting of a copular auxiliary and a past passive participle in an invariant form; the non-prototypical subject is case-marked with an adessive-like PP while the object is assigned the nominative or, in some varieties, accusative case; contrary to several scholars there is no trace of ergativity. As to the diachrony, the paper represents a case study on the rise of non-prototypical subjects and the development from subjects to objects. The historical investigation of the perfect reveals that etymologically it is neither related to the possessive construction of the mihi est type (as has been commonly assumed before) nor to a passive. Instead, the development out of a patient-oriented resultative construction based on the copula with a predicative resultative participle is suggested. The adessive-like PP (often functioning as a new dative in East Slavic) enters this construction as an adverbial referring to a participant that is physically or mentally affected by the resultant state but develops later exclusively the meaning of the agent of the preceding action and, subsequently, acquires behavioral subject properties. The areal perspective of the investigation reveals two hotbeds of expansion. First, the early sequence of changes leading from the patient-oriented resultative construction to the impersonal perfect with a number of syntactic active properties, and encompassing such languages as Polish, all East Slavic, Baltic and Fennic languages, seems to have been influenced by Polish. Second, the later developments consisting of the incorporation of the free-dative-like adverbial into the construction, the acquisition of agent meaning, and subsequently, subject properties has been instigated by North Russian. From North Russian dialect area this construction spread to such languages as Standard Russian, Estonian, Karelian, Votian and Latvian with a decreasing degree of grammaticalization. Both areal and diachronic perspectives allow equilibrating areal and internal triggers for the described developments.
The present paper investigates the NP-triggered Differential Argument Marking phenomena (DAM) fou... more The present paper investigates the NP-triggered Differential Argument Marking phenomena (DAM) found in the debitive construction of Latvian. There are two perspectives: the synchronic perspective aims at providing a coherent description of the DAM in Contemporary Latvian, while comparison with data from Old and Early Modern Latvian allows for a diachronic perspective. The arguments of the debitive, A/S and P, are marked non-canonically by the dative and nominative case, respectively. The emergence of new, canonical case-marking strategies, namely, acc on the P argument and occasionally nom on the S argument, has created differential marking for the S (dat/nom) and for the P argument (nom/acc). We claim that the appearance of these new case-marking strategies is the result of the increasing degree of grammaticalization of the debitive as well as the pressure of the canonical case-assignment patterns. Thus, the debitive incipiently and gradually loses its original lexical properties such as the own case frame (stemming from the possessive predicate) in favor of the case frame of the embedded lexical verb, thereby becoming similar to an auxiliary. In turn, the appearance and spread of the new case-marking strategies is conditioned by various factors and constraints that are established through a multifactorial analysis. Thus, acc marking proceeds along the accessibility scale starting from the most-accessible NP types, and is additionally conditioned by linear position, animacy and the semantic class of the lexical verb embedded under the debitive. In contrast, the sporadic appearance of the nom marking on S, i.e. the failure of the underlying nom to be turned into the dat otherwise required by the debitive, is found with NPs with low-individuated referents and may appear with existential verbs only. The postverbal position is an additional attracting factor here. 200 Ilja A. Seržant and Jana Taperte
The paper is a semasiological study of the nominative case in Baltic languages, including morphol... more The paper is a semasiological study of the nominative case in Baltic languages, including morphological and primarily syntactic and semantic-pragmatic aspects. Morphologically, the Baltic nominative case is marked in almost all declensions and numbers by dedicated affixes. Syntactically, the nominative marking is a necessary but not sufficient condition to claim subjecthood; in fact, different nominative NP types correlate with subjecthood to different degrees in Baltic. Except for locutor (i.e. first and second person) pronouns, only the combination of the nominative marking with verbal agreement justifies analyzing an NP as a subject. In addition to subjects, the nominative case also codes " direct " nominative objects and nominative time adverbials. Pragmatically, (overt) nom-inative NPs are predominantly used in the subject position to signal emphasis (e.g. in terms of contrastive topic or topic shift, focus/new information), i.e. to signal that the subject referent is unexpected on the background of the set of the discursively salient alternative referents. With time adverbials, the nominative case encodes emphasis on the time value referred to by the adverbial against the set of contextually potential alternatives. Semantically, the correlation of the nominative case with agenthood and/or volitionality/control parallels emphasis in that agenthood can be viewed as prominence on the level of semantic roles whereas emphasis as prominence in terms of pragmatics.
1. Introductory remarks The aim of this introductory chapter is to provide uptodate insights in... more 1. Introductory remarks The aim of this introductory chapter is to provide uptodate insights into East Slavic dialectological tradition against a background of dialectologi cal traditions and areal linguistics in Western Europe. We have also tried to take insights from areal typology and theorizing on language contact into account. Because of this perspective, we have tried to keep sight of the chronology of approaches and goals in dialectological research since the nineteenth century, and we focus in particular on the evolution of dialect geography, as we consider it to be a kind of linkage between dia lectology and areal linguistics (and typology). The main idea behind this paper and the volume in general is to foster the integration of dialectol ogy into other linguistic subdisciplines. We will argue below that (areal) typology, theory of language contact, historical linguistics and various approaches to grammar may considerably benefit from dialectology and, of course, vice versa. The structure of this introduction is as follows. We start with a sketch of the main lines along which dialectology in Western Europe (1.1–1.2) and in East Slavic countries (1.3) has been developing. This sketch is also meant to highlight the ideological orientations and more global research endeavours within which dialectology has been embedded. The first sec tion ends with a critical assessment of one of the most neglected fields of dialectology, namely dialectal syntax (1.4), emphasizing the importance of annotated dialectal corpora for progress in contemporary dialecto logical research.
The present paper aims to investigate the main semantic-functional and discursive properties of p... more The present paper aims to investigate the main semantic-functional and discursive properties of parti-tives on the bases of the bare (independent) partitive genitive in Ancient Greek. Contrary to previous views that the bare partitive genitive (b-PG) primarily encodes the part-of-relation I claim that this meaning of the b-PG has been lost in Ancient Greek. Instead, I claim that the b-PG encodes undeter-mined instantiations of a set descriptive and restrictive in nature and compatible with kind-or subkind-referring NPs/DPs. It allows the speaker to make no commitment as to the quantity, referentiality and semantic role of these instantiation(s); this/these instantiation(s) have inherently narrow scope (e.g. with negation). These semantic properties determine the discursive function of the b-PG. I claim that the b-PG detracts the focus of attention from the actual participant and links it to the descriptive set or kind/subkind this participant belongs to; the actual participant is extremely backgrounded and its reference is never stored in the discourse model. The b-PG allows the speaker to zoom out from the actual participant and view it schematically in terms of one of its hypercategories (subkind, kind, characterizing/descriptive set). This function of the b-PG explains its frequent occurrence with the verbs of consumption or desire. It explains, furthermore, its use in the predicative position and in headings. As to the diachronic perspective, it is claimed that the foregroundedness of the respective hypercategory and extreme backgroundedness of the subset indicate that the b-PG develops semantically towards pseudo-partitivity.
The aim of the paper is to give a semantic description of the independent or bare partitive genit... more The aim of the paper is to give a semantic description of the independent or bare partitive genitive (IPG) in Lithuanian in rather neutral, functional terms. The IPG is a multi-faceted category that bears on the domains of quantification and (in)definiteness. On its quantificational reading, the IPG encodes an implicit quantifier, arbitrary in its value. I have used the notion of (un)boundedness (reintroduced d in Paul Kiparsky's (1998) seminal paper on the partitive case in Finnish. NP-internally, the IPG has two main readings: unbounded and bounded reading. The first reading provides the concept of the participant rather than 'zooming in' on particular instantiations. It is extremely weak referentially, probably the weakest option available in Lithuanian. This reading is restricted to those verbs in Lithuanian that allow their arguments to be kind-referring NPs (e.g., the subject of the existential to be, or object of to know). On the bounded reading, in turn, the IPG encodes an undetermined but delimited set, the reading is existential and resembles indefinite plurals. The individuals introduced by this reading are stored in the discourse model and may be picked up by ana-phoric pronouns in the following discourse. They never constitute primary or foregrounded information of the message, though. Furthermore, I have claimed that the incremental-theme verbs and verbs of transfer in East Lithuanian interact with the IPG-marked object with respect to their aspectual properties. Here only the bounded reading of the IPG is available. This explains the ban on the occurrence of IPG in imperfective contexts in Lithuanian (such as progressive, which has no grammatical marking in Lithuanian, generic and iterated atelics) with incremental-theme verbs, because the imperfective interpretation induces an inherently unbounded event which is not compatible with the bounded reading of the IPG. Both bounded and unbounded values are assumed to be originally two different readings of the same implicit quantifier that have, however , acquired different distributions in the course of time.
Connectivity Matters! Social, Environmental and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies, 2022
In this study, we discuss the ways in which linguistics and archaeology approach and investigate ... more In this study, we discuss the ways in which linguistics and archaeology approach and investigate identity, focusing on potential areas of overlap between the two disciplines as a possible research program for future collaborative studies. Although the two disciplines may appear quite removed from one another at first sight, both deal with cultural items-whether material or linguistic-which are intrinsic to what it means to be human and which have an inherent function both as a means of communication and in their symbolic dimensions. Our ultimate goal here is to develop an interdisciplinary approach to identity as a specific field of human connectivity which can yield deeper insights into the topic than those achieved within the individual disciplines thus far and for which such a joint approach could be especially fruitful. Introduction: Identity as a platform of social and cultural connectivity Identity is an inherently relational concept, as someone or something can only be similar to or different from someone or something else (Assmann 1992). As such,
Efficiency is central to understanding the communicative and cognitive underpinnings of language.... more Efficiency is central to understanding the communicative and cognitive underpinnings of language. However, efficiency management is a complex mechanism in which different efficiency effects-such as articulatory, processing and planning ease, mental accessibility, and informativity, online and offline efficiency effects-conspire to yield the coding of linguistic signs. While we do not yet exactly understand the interactional mechanism of these different effects, we argue that universal attractors are an important component of any dynamic theory of efficiency that would be aimed at predicting efficiency effects across languages. Attractors are defined as universal states around which language evolution revolves. Methodologically, we approach efficiency from a cross-linguistic perspective on the basis of a worldwide sample of 383 languages from 53 families, balancing all six macro-areas (Eurasia, North and South America, Australia, Africa, and Oceania). We focus on the grammatical domain of verbal person-number subject indexes. We claim that there is an attractor state in this domain to which languages tend to develop and tend not to leave if they happen to comply with the attractor in their earlier stages of evolution. The attractor is characterized by different lengths for each person and number combination, structured along Zipf's predictions. Moreover, the attractor strongly prefers noncompositional, cumulative coding of person and number. On the basis of these and other properties of the attractor, we conclude that there are two domains in which efficiency pressures are most powerful: strive towards less processing and articulatory effort. The latter, however, is overridden by constant information flow. Strive towards lower lexicon complexity and memory costs are weaker efficiency pressures for this grammatical category due to its order of frequency.
This paper sets out to disentangle the natural developments leading away from encoding semantic r... more This paper sets out to disentangle the natural developments leading away from encoding semantic relations by inflectional case towards encoding them by means of prepositions, on the one hand, and the impact of the Attistic language ideology on the development of prepositions on the other. Our aim is to describe the major standardisation trends in the grammar of prepositions in a corpus-based study. While the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods are characterised by the natural expansion of prepositional patterns across various semantic and syntactic domains, the language of Postclassical Greek is subject to different standardisation processes and ideological influences. Already by the Hellenistic period, we observe the tendency towards consolidation of variation in prepositional usage, being an effect of adopting some of the standards of Koiné. The Roman period, by contrast, again increases variation: Different authors and texts imitate the ideals of the Archaic and Classical periods to varying degrees (Atticism). Accordingly, we refer to the Roman period as a period of creative standardisation. The conventionalisation of a set of Attistic patterns takes place only from the Early to Late Byzantine periods. The Late Byzantine period attests more than twice as little variation than the Roman period. Finally, we argue that the expansion of prepositions is not only determined by language change and Atticism but that genres channel the expansion of prepositional patterns. Historians and early religious texts are the most progressive and less amenable for imitating earlier periods. By contrast, writers of poetry and orators are much more conservative, more resistant to language change and tend to imitate the earlier language layers more faithfully.
Partitive Determiners, Partitive Pronouns and Partitive Case, 2021
The present paper investigates diachronic developments that partitives undergo over the course of... more The present paper investigates diachronic developments that partitives undergo over the course of time. First, it is shown that true-partitives (part-whole-relation partitives) encoded by adpositional strategies are not stable cross-linguistically and tend to develop into pseudo-partitives, which are defined as constructions that encode simple quantification but retain the morphology of true-partitives. Secondly, the frequency bias towards indefiniteness drives the emergence of generalized partitives-partitives with no explicit realization of the subset referent. Generalized partitives tend to undergo a closer relationship with the verb. Moreover, generalized partitives may develop into markers (co-)expressing such predicate-level functions as aspectuality (the delimitative meaning) and discontinuous predicate negation, as well as hypothetical events, as well as develop into differential object markers.
Standard typological methods are designed to test hypotheses on strong universals that broadly ov... more Standard typological methods are designed to test hypotheses on strong universals that broadly override all other competing universal and language-specific forces. In this paper I argue that there are also weak universal forces. Weak universal forces systematically operate in the course of development but then interact with, or are even subsequently overridden by, other processes such as analogical extension, persistence effects from the source function, etc. This, in turn, means that there can be statistically significant evidence for violations at the synchronic level and, accordingly, only a weak positive statistical signal. But crucially, the absence of statistical prima-facie evidence for such forces does not amount to evidence for their absence. The assumption that there are also weak universal forces that affect language evolution goes in line with the view that human cognition in general and language acquisition in particular are constrained by probabilistic biases ranging from weak to strong (cf. Thompson et al. 2016). By way of example, the present paper claims that the discriminatory function of case in differential object marking (DOM) systems is a weak universal: It keeps appearing in historically, synchronically and typologically very divergent constellations but is often overridden by other processes in further developments and is, therefore, not any significant at the synchronic level in a large sample.
The source-oriented explanation in typology-recently popularized by a number of typologists-chall... more The source-oriented explanation in typology-recently popularized by a number of typologists-challenges a number of well-established universals, including the well-known correlational universals of harmonic ordering of heads and dependents across different domains of grammar. It suspends with any functional or cognitive explanations of these universals by Occam's razor because harmonic orders may allegedly be explained as historical accidents, i.e. simply due to etymological relatedness of harmonic orders (i.e. one order emerging from the other). In this paper we provide twofold evidence against this approach. We detail the development of prepositions and prepositional phrases and discuss the rise of the verb-object word order in Postclassical Greek. First, we argue that the development of the two harmonic, head-dependent word orders in Postclassical Greek can hardly be considered a historical coincidence because they largely match chronologically and, at the same time, are entirely unrelated etymologically. Neither of these two developments had a bias for ordering heads before dependents in its respective historical source. Secondly, we provide evidence for the reverse case as well: cross-linguistically dispreferred properties of prepositional phrases inherited from their source are abandoned in the course of the development by the time of Postclassical Greek. In other words, while cross-linguistically preferred structures (harmonic orders) emerged with no precondition in the source, cross-linguistically dispreferred structures disappear despite being inherited. Although the evidence from just one language might appear not to be strong enough, the fact that very different processes of restructuring and abandoning of inherited properties align to cross-linguistically preferred structures is revealing.
In this introductory article we provide an overview of the range of the phenomena that can be ref... more In this introductory article we provide an overview of the range of the phenomena that can be referred to as differential argument marking (DAM). We begin with an overview of the existing terminology and give a broad definition of the DAM to cover the phenomena discussed in the present volume and in the literature under this heading. We then consider various types of the phenomenon which figured prominently in studies of DAM in various traditions. First, we differentiate between arguments of the same predicate form and arguments of different predicate forms. Within the first type we discuss DAM systems triggered by inherent lexical argument properties and the ones triggered by non-inherent, discourse-based argument properties, as well as some minor types. It is this first type that traditionally constitutes the core of the phenomenon and falls under our narrow definition of DAM. The second type of DAM is conditioned by the larger syntactic environment , such as the clause properties (e.g. main vs. embedded) or properties of the predicate (e.g. its TAM characteristics). Then, we also discuss the restrictions that may constrain the occurrence of DAM cross-linguistically, other typical features of DAM systems pertaining to the morphological realization (symmetric vs. asym-metric) or to the degree of optionality of DAM. Finally, we provide a brief overview over functional explanations of DAM.
In this article we consider the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition, a well-known example o... more In this article we consider the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition, a well-known example of viewpoint aspect which establishes a classificatory grammatical category by means of stem derivation. Although Slavic languages are not unique in having developed a classificatory aspect system, a survey of such systems shows that the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition is a particularly rare subcase of such systems, first of all because it combines prefixing with suffixing patterns of derivation. We therefore explore the morphology involved, tracing its development from Proto-Indo-European into Early Slavic. The emergence of Slavic aspect is atypical for grammatical categories, and it deviates considerably from mainstream instances of grammaticalization in many respects. We show that there is a strong tendency (i) towards abandonment of highly lexically conditioned and versatile suffix choices in Proto-Indo-European and in Common Slavic, which led to fewer and more transparent suffixes, and (ii) towards concatenation, away from originally non-concatenative (fusional) schemata. Furthermore, we compare Slavic with some other Indo-European languages and inquire as to why in Europe no other Indo-European group beyond Slavic went so far as to productively exploit newly developed prefixes (or verb particles) merely for use as aspectual modifiers of stems and to combine them with a (partially inherited, partially remodelled) stock of suffixes to yield a classificatory aspect system. The Slavic system, thus, appears quite unique not only from a typological point of view, but also in diachronic-genealogical terms. Based on this background, amplified by some inner-Slavic biases in the productivity of patterns of stem derivation, we pose the provocative question as to whether the rise and consolidation of the stem-derivational perfective/imperfective opposition in Slavic was favoured by direct and indirect contacts with Uralic (Finno-Ugric) and Altaic (Turkic) populations at different periods since at least the time of the Great Migrations.
There seems to be no construction that would code specifically the possession relation of externa... more There seems to be no construction that would code specifically the possession relation of external possessors. Instead, various host constructions such as the free-affectee construction (a subtype of which is the free-dative construction), monotransitive or applicative construction can – to a different degree – accommodate participants that are bound by a possession relation. The binding procedure identifying the possessor operates at the pragmatic-semantic interface and takes into account the semantic roles of the event participants, their discourse saliency and lexical properties (such as animacy), world knowledge, properties of the possessum (such as the degree of (in)alienability), etc. The external-possession relation and the meaning of the hosting construction are orthogonal to each other, but there is a strong interplay between them. Positing a dedicated external-possessor construction faces the following problems: the same binding procedure is found in other constructions as well (such as the monotransitive or ditransitive constructions); at the same time, the very possession relation is only inconsistently found in constructions referred to as external-possessor constructions, and, what is more, the possession relation may sometimes be canceled (even if it is inalienable). To account for this terminologically, I introduce the term non-thematic affectee construction, a subtype of which is the free (non-thematic) affectee construction particularly spread in European languages. The latter is found with different types of coding (accusative, dative, different prepositional phrases) which have different diachronic sources.
The paper provides a historical and areal investigation of the North Russian perfect, often refer... more The paper provides a historical and areal investigation of the North Russian perfect, often referred to as the ''possessive perfect''. This perfect is encoded by a periphrastic predication consisting of a copular auxiliary and a past passive participle in an invariant form; the non-prototypical subject is case-marked with an adessive-like PP while the object is assigned the nominative or, in some varieties, accusative case; contrary to several scholars there is no trace of ergativity. As to the diachrony, the paper represents a case study on the rise of non-prototypical subjects and the development from subjects to objects. The historical investigation of the perfect reveals that etymologically it is neither related to the possessive construction of the mihi est type (as has been commonly assumed before) nor to a passive. Instead, the development out of a patient-oriented resultative construction based on the copula with a predicative resultative participle is suggested. The adessive-like PP (often functioning as a new dative in East Slavic) enters this construction as an adverbial referring to a participant that is physically or mentally affected by the resultant state but develops later exclusively the meaning of the agent of the preceding action and, subsequently, acquires behavioral subject properties. The areal perspective of the investigation reveals two hotbeds of expansion. First, the early sequence of changes leading from the patient-oriented resultative construction to the impersonal perfect with a number of syntactic active properties, and encompassing such languages as Polish, all East Slavic, Baltic and Fennic languages, seems to have been influenced by Polish. Second, the later developments consisting of the incorporation of the free-dative-like adverbial into the construction, the acquisition of agent meaning, and subsequently, subject properties has been instigated by North Russian. From North Russian dialect area this construction spread to such languages as Standard Russian, Estonian, Karelian, Votian and Latvian with a decreasing degree of grammaticalization. Both areal and diachronic perspectives allow equilibrating areal and internal triggers for the described developments.
The present paper investigates the NP-triggered Differential Argument Marking phenomena (DAM) fou... more The present paper investigates the NP-triggered Differential Argument Marking phenomena (DAM) found in the debitive construction of Latvian. There are two perspectives: the synchronic perspective aims at providing a coherent description of the DAM in Contemporary Latvian, while comparison with data from Old and Early Modern Latvian allows for a diachronic perspective. The arguments of the debitive, A/S and P, are marked non-canonically by the dative and nominative case, respectively. The emergence of new, canonical case-marking strategies, namely, acc on the P argument and occasionally nom on the S argument, has created differential marking for the S (dat/nom) and for the P argument (nom/acc). We claim that the appearance of these new case-marking strategies is the result of the increasing degree of grammaticalization of the debitive as well as the pressure of the canonical case-assignment patterns. Thus, the debitive incipiently and gradually loses its original lexical properties such as the own case frame (stemming from the possessive predicate) in favor of the case frame of the embedded lexical verb, thereby becoming similar to an auxiliary. In turn, the appearance and spread of the new case-marking strategies is conditioned by various factors and constraints that are established through a multifactorial analysis. Thus, acc marking proceeds along the accessibility scale starting from the most-accessible NP types, and is additionally conditioned by linear position, animacy and the semantic class of the lexical verb embedded under the debitive. In contrast, the sporadic appearance of the nom marking on S, i.e. the failure of the underlying nom to be turned into the dat otherwise required by the debitive, is found with NPs with low-individuated referents and may appear with existential verbs only. The postverbal position is an additional attracting factor here. 200 Ilja A. Seržant and Jana Taperte
The paper is a semasiological study of the nominative case in Baltic languages, including morphol... more The paper is a semasiological study of the nominative case in Baltic languages, including morphological and primarily syntactic and semantic-pragmatic aspects. Morphologically, the Baltic nominative case is marked in almost all declensions and numbers by dedicated affixes. Syntactically, the nominative marking is a necessary but not sufficient condition to claim subjecthood; in fact, different nominative NP types correlate with subjecthood to different degrees in Baltic. Except for locutor (i.e. first and second person) pronouns, only the combination of the nominative marking with verbal agreement justifies analyzing an NP as a subject. In addition to subjects, the nominative case also codes " direct " nominative objects and nominative time adverbials. Pragmatically, (overt) nom-inative NPs are predominantly used in the subject position to signal emphasis (e.g. in terms of contrastive topic or topic shift, focus/new information), i.e. to signal that the subject referent is unexpected on the background of the set of the discursively salient alternative referents. With time adverbials, the nominative case encodes emphasis on the time value referred to by the adverbial against the set of contextually potential alternatives. Semantically, the correlation of the nominative case with agenthood and/or volitionality/control parallels emphasis in that agenthood can be viewed as prominence on the level of semantic roles whereas emphasis as prominence in terms of pragmatics.
1. Introductory remarks The aim of this introductory chapter is to provide uptodate insights in... more 1. Introductory remarks The aim of this introductory chapter is to provide uptodate insights into East Slavic dialectological tradition against a background of dialectologi cal traditions and areal linguistics in Western Europe. We have also tried to take insights from areal typology and theorizing on language contact into account. Because of this perspective, we have tried to keep sight of the chronology of approaches and goals in dialectological research since the nineteenth century, and we focus in particular on the evolution of dialect geography, as we consider it to be a kind of linkage between dia lectology and areal linguistics (and typology). The main idea behind this paper and the volume in general is to foster the integration of dialectol ogy into other linguistic subdisciplines. We will argue below that (areal) typology, theory of language contact, historical linguistics and various approaches to grammar may considerably benefit from dialectology and, of course, vice versa. The structure of this introduction is as follows. We start with a sketch of the main lines along which dialectology in Western Europe (1.1–1.2) and in East Slavic countries (1.3) has been developing. This sketch is also meant to highlight the ideological orientations and more global research endeavours within which dialectology has been embedded. The first sec tion ends with a critical assessment of one of the most neglected fields of dialectology, namely dialectal syntax (1.4), emphasizing the importance of annotated dialectal corpora for progress in contemporary dialecto logical research.
The present paper aims to investigate the main semantic-functional and discursive properties of p... more The present paper aims to investigate the main semantic-functional and discursive properties of parti-tives on the bases of the bare (independent) partitive genitive in Ancient Greek. Contrary to previous views that the bare partitive genitive (b-PG) primarily encodes the part-of-relation I claim that this meaning of the b-PG has been lost in Ancient Greek. Instead, I claim that the b-PG encodes undeter-mined instantiations of a set descriptive and restrictive in nature and compatible with kind-or subkind-referring NPs/DPs. It allows the speaker to make no commitment as to the quantity, referentiality and semantic role of these instantiation(s); this/these instantiation(s) have inherently narrow scope (e.g. with negation). These semantic properties determine the discursive function of the b-PG. I claim that the b-PG detracts the focus of attention from the actual participant and links it to the descriptive set or kind/subkind this participant belongs to; the actual participant is extremely backgrounded and its reference is never stored in the discourse model. The b-PG allows the speaker to zoom out from the actual participant and view it schematically in terms of one of its hypercategories (subkind, kind, characterizing/descriptive set). This function of the b-PG explains its frequent occurrence with the verbs of consumption or desire. It explains, furthermore, its use in the predicative position and in headings. As to the diachronic perspective, it is claimed that the foregroundedness of the respective hypercategory and extreme backgroundedness of the subset indicate that the b-PG develops semantically towards pseudo-partitivity.
The aim of the paper is to give a semantic description of the independent or bare partitive genit... more The aim of the paper is to give a semantic description of the independent or bare partitive genitive (IPG) in Lithuanian in rather neutral, functional terms. The IPG is a multi-faceted category that bears on the domains of quantification and (in)definiteness. On its quantificational reading, the IPG encodes an implicit quantifier, arbitrary in its value. I have used the notion of (un)boundedness (reintroduced d in Paul Kiparsky's (1998) seminal paper on the partitive case in Finnish. NP-internally, the IPG has two main readings: unbounded and bounded reading. The first reading provides the concept of the participant rather than 'zooming in' on particular instantiations. It is extremely weak referentially, probably the weakest option available in Lithuanian. This reading is restricted to those verbs in Lithuanian that allow their arguments to be kind-referring NPs (e.g., the subject of the existential to be, or object of to know). On the bounded reading, in turn, the IPG encodes an undetermined but delimited set, the reading is existential and resembles indefinite plurals. The individuals introduced by this reading are stored in the discourse model and may be picked up by ana-phoric pronouns in the following discourse. They never constitute primary or foregrounded information of the message, though. Furthermore, I have claimed that the incremental-theme verbs and verbs of transfer in East Lithuanian interact with the IPG-marked object with respect to their aspectual properties. Here only the bounded reading of the IPG is available. This explains the ban on the occurrence of IPG in imperfective contexts in Lithuanian (such as progressive, which has no grammatical marking in Lithuanian, generic and iterated atelics) with incremental-theme verbs, because the imperfective interpretation induces an inherently unbounded event which is not compatible with the bounded reading of the IPG. Both bounded and unbounded values are assumed to be originally two different readings of the same implicit quantifier that have, however , acquired different distributions in the course of time.
In this pilot study, we examine the variation in the flagging patterns across 10 modern Slavic la... more In this pilot study, we examine the variation in the flagging patterns across 10 modern Slavic languagescovering all three major Slavic branches: South, West and East Slavicand Old Church Slavic. We rely on a database that comprises 825 entries and is based on translation tasks with 46 verb meanings that target verbs with middle-level transitivity prominence. We analyze three main factors: the ratio of flagging alternations (vs. rigid government), transitivity prominence and ratio of nominative marking. We argue that despite high homogeneity in this domain across Slavic, there are clear genealogical and areal trends that explain the distribution of different flagging patterns across Slavic. Thus, when it comes to transitivity prominence, we detected an areal trend that splits Slavic languages into Northeast Slavic (Belarusian, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian) and Southwest Slavic (all other languages), such that the former group shows relatively low and the latter high transitivity prominence. The same split is also seen in the ratio of nominative marking of the subject(-like) arguments, albeit to a minor degree. Here too, Northeast Slavic languages have a lower ratio than the Southwest ones. Finally, we compared Slavic languages to each other with regard to their flagging patterns for the same verb meanings in a cluster analysis based on Jaccard similarity in order to see how Slavic languages relate to each other in this domain. We found that, although, the genealogical relations still largely determine similarities in argument flagging, language contact must have played an important role here as well. Having said this, our sample was not large enough to reach statistical significance for the results obtained and a more large-scale study is necessary to corroborate our findings. For this reason we corroborated our quantitative findings with the qualitative evidence.
This paper discusses the emergence and demise of verbal person-number indexes on the basis of 310... more This paper discusses the emergence and demise of verbal person-number indexes on the basis of 310 languages. First, qualitative evidence is provided to show that there are different ways in which indexes may emerge, and that anaphoric pronouns are not the only possible source. Second, quantitative evidence is provided against the claim of “predictable demise via phonological attrition” (Givón 1976: 172) of indexes. A considerable degree of demise is not a universally likely process, but rather a major restructuring process that requires additional – areal – triggers in order to come about. Thus, 92% of the languages of my sample do not show any strong tendency toward losing their indexes, and the degree of demise of the indexes is persistently low when compared to the proto-forms. This is despite the fact that indexes constantly change over time, and the phonetic shape found in the proto-languages is never faithfully preserved in the modern languages. Finally, those few languages that exhibit a relatively high degree of demise are not randomly distributed across the world, but are clustered in the following areas: Northwestern Europe, Eastern South East Asia with Oceania and, possibly, Mid Africa as well Northern South America.
Frequency asymmetries within a minimal grammatical domain create offline associations that langua... more Frequency asymmetries within a minimal grammatical domain create offline associations that languages tend to exploit for more efficient encoding, i.e., encoding with less articulatory effort: the more frequent combinations create default associations and may be left unmarked. In this paper, we explore cross-linguistic coding patterns of antipassive constructions. We first argue that antipassive markers tend to have the properties of derivational markers. Secondly, we show that the antipassive construction is considerably rarer than the basic transitive construction. Its low frequency correlates with the length of coding: the antipassive construction tends to be coded with longer forms than transitive verbs in the basic transitive construction. Thirdly, we explore frequency associations of different lexical input types with object demotion. We find that the rare input types tend to select the marked antipassive for object demotion while the frequent types tend to rely on A-lability. For example, we find that those transitive verbs that often occur in A-preserving (A > S) intransitive constructions often lack any overt marking in these constructions (A-lability). By contrast, verbs that are most frequently found in the transitive use tend to select the antipassive (and thus overt marking) for the A-preserving intransitive use. We show furthermore that the rarer argument types and argument scenarios correlate more strongly with antipassives than the more frequent argument types and scenarios. The latter tend to co-occur with an unmarked verb or with a verb that bears a shorter (antipassive) marker. Finally, we argue that semantic explanations for these coding asymmetries – although they make accurate predictions in many respects – are still less advantageous than the frequency-based account that we offer in this paper.
Proceedings of the 19th International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories, 2020
Using data from the World Atlas of Language Structures and the Universal Dependencies tree-banks,... more Using data from the World Atlas of Language Structures and the Universal Dependencies tree-banks, we provide converging evidence from linguistic typology and comparative corpus linguistics for an efficiency-based trade-off in the encoding of referentially accessible subjects. Specifically , when familiar subjects are marked as bound elements attaching to the verb, the chances of having obligatory independent subject pronouns decrease significantly across the world's languages. At the same time, there is a trend against not encoding the subject at all, leading us to postulate an overall tendency to encode familiar subjects once and only once in a neutral topic-comment utterance. This tendency is mirrored in more fine-grained corpus data from Slavic: East Slavic languages, in contrast to the other members of the genus, have past forms without verbal subject encoding, and it is precisely with these (former participle) forms that the use of independent subject pronouns is significantly higher than with other, non-participial verb forms. By contrast, the occurrence of independent subject pronouns does not differ across various verb forms in other Slavic languages, as none of them has been affected by a loss of verbal subject encoding.
This paper seeks to identify causal factors constraining the diachronic dynamics of particular mo... more This paper seeks to identify causal factors constraining the diachronic dynamics of particular morphosyntactic categories of Slavic. It is suggested that the modern inventory of Slavic languages is not simply a result of accumulation of historically accidental changes and non-changes. Instead, it is argued that macro-areal pressures constrained by the geographic location and the particular language-contact configuration determine the selection of inherited features for either retention or loss and, subsequently, innovation. I primarily provide evidence from two categories: verbal person-number indexes (subject agreement markers) and partitivity markers and I also briefly discuss some other fusional categories.
This paper explores the coding patterns of partitives and their functional extensions, based on a... more This paper explores the coding patterns of partitives and their functional extensions, based on a convenience sample of 138 languages from 46 families from all macroareas. Partitives are defined as constructions that may express the proportional relation of a subset to a superset (the true-partitive relation). First, it is demonstrated that, cross-linguistically, partitive constructions vary as to their syntactic properties and morphological marking. Syntactically, there is a cline from loose – possibly less grammaticalized – structures to partitives with rigid head-dependent relations and, finally, to morphologically integrated one-word partitives. Furthermore, partitives may be encoded NP-internally (mostly via an adposition) or pronominally. Morphologically, partitives primarily involve markers syncretic with separative, locative or possessive meanings. Finally, a number of languages employ no partive marker at all. Secondly, these different strategies are not evenly distributed in the globe, with, for example, Eurasia being biased for the separative stragey. Thirdly, on the functional side, partitives may have functions in the following domains in addition to the true-partitive relation: plain quantification (pseudo-partitives), hypothetical events, predicate negation and aspectuality. I claim that the ability to encode plain quantification is the prerequisite for the other domains. Finally, it is argued that there is a universal preference towards syncretism of two semantically distinct concepts: the proportional, true-partitive relation (some of the books) and plain quantification (some books).
This paper summarizes the major linguistic properties of Postclassical Greek that are distinct fr... more This paper summarizes the major linguistic properties of Postclassical Greek that are distinct from Classical Greek. It discusses innovations in phonetics, morphology and syntax and gives an overview over diatopic and diastratic variation observed across different periods of Postclassical Greek.
While there are languages that code a particular grammatical role (e.g. subject or direct object)... more While there are languages that code a particular grammatical role (e.g. subject or direct object) in one and the same way across the board, many more languages code the same grammatical roles differentially. The variables which condition the differential argument marking (or DAM) pertain to various properties of the NP (such as animacy or definiteness) or to event semantics or various properties of the clause. While the main line of current research on DAM is mainly synchronic the volume tackles the diachronic perspective. The tenet is that the emergence and the development of differential marking systems provide a different kind of evidence for the understanding of the phenomenon. The present volume consists of 18 chapters and primarily brings together diachronic case studies on particular languages or language groups including e.g. Finno-Ugric, Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages. The volume also includes a position paper, which provides an overview of the typology of different subtypes of DAM systems, a chapter on computer simulation of the emergence of DAM and a chapter devoted to the cross-linguistic effects of referential hierarchies on DAM.
Uploads
Papers by Ilja Seržant