Bi-weekly linguistic talks on zoom. From fall 2024 onwards the timeslot will be Thursdays 16:15-17:45 [CET], and some presentations will be co-organised by colleagues from the University of Verona.
Please send a mail to berit.gehrke AT hu-berlin.de if you want to be on the mailing list (which is how the zoom-link is distributed) and/or if you have suggestions for speakers to invite (or want to present something).
April 24, 2025 [hybrid: Berlin & zoom]
Marcin Wągiel (Brno/Wrocław/ZAS): -oj! There are so many things to count with Slavic complex numeral expressions
May 22, 2025 [zoom]
Atle Grønn (Oslo): Particles and prefixes in Ukrainian and Russian: A contrastive approach
June 5, 2025 [zoom]
Natalia Mitrofanova & Serge Minor (Tromsø): Is crosslinguistic influence from the societal language into the heritage language always stronger? Grammatical case and aspect processing by German-Russian and Spanish-Russian bilinguals vs monolingual controls
June 19, 2025 [zoom]
Rok Žaucer (Nova Gorica): The role of morphosyntactic features in the acquisition of Slovenian pronominal clitics
June 26, 2025 [hybrid: Berlin & zoom]
Mihaela Chirpanlieva (HU Berlin): Negation, czy, and evidential bias in Polish polar questions: An acceptability rating study
July 3, 2025 [hybrid: Berlin & zoom]
Mariia Onoeva (Prague/HU Berlin) & Mariia Razguliaeva (HU Berlin): Polar questions in Russian: Experimental considerations
July 10, 2025 [hybrid: Berlin & zoom]
Andreas Blümel (HU Berlin): A stab at nominal concord: A comparative perspective
April 10, 2025: Beatrice Bernasconi (Turin): Russian particles as discourse constructions: the case of čto li
According to Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006), the basic unit of a language is a construction, namely, a form-meaning pairing that is conventionalized and entrenched in the speakers’ mind. Within the constructionist community, however, what kind of linguistic and extra-linguistic information should be included in the description of a construction is still a matter of debate (Boas et al. 2024), and this discussion regards, among other issues, pragmatic and discourse information too (Östman 2005; Cappelle 2017; Leclercq 2020). Another relevant question constructionists often face regards the role and usefulness of a formalism within CxG (Boas et al. 2024).Drawing from the work of Östman (2005), Fried & Östman (2005), and Fried (2009, 2021), I will address these two questions through a case-study that illustrates how the Russian particle čto li can be analysed in constructional terms taking into account its semantic, pragmatic, and discourse properties in spoken language. My analysis is based on the data of the Multimedia subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus and exploits both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The results show that čto li is not only used in polar (often rethorical) questions, but also in declaratives to express uncertainty and in imperatives to express urgency. I motivate this polyfunctionality both semantically and pragmatically discussing the particle’s semantic encoding of “non-exclusion of factuality” (Pietrandrea 2007, 2012) and its behaviour as a modal particle (Diewald 2006; Fischer 2006; Fischer & Heide 2018). From the discoursive point of view, factors such as the relationship between participants and the discourse setting are considered to provide a thorough description of the čto li constructions, which are translated into Construction Grammar formalism (Fried & Östman 2004) to better highlight their overlaps.April 3, 2025: Lukáš Žoha (Brno): Nanosyntactic explanation of syncretism in Polish pseudo-partitive and counting contexts
[abstract]
March 27, 2025: Luca Molinari (Venice / Warsaw): Many functions but ONE destiny: The case of единъ 'one' in Old Church Slavonic
Several philologists have observed that edinъ ‘one’ could carry out indefinite functions already in Old Church Slavonic (OCS) (Vaillant 1962; Georgiev 1978; Haralampiev 2001 a.o.). This observation, however, is not accompanied by fine-grained studies which look at all the occurrences of this lexeme in a particular manuscript. In this talk, I report the results of a detailed analysis of all the instances of edinъ in four OCS manuscripts. Since these texts are translations of the Greek New Testament, I also consider the corresponding Greek semantic units that edinъ translates. The outcome is that edinъ had a wide array of functions, encompassing both numeral and non-strictly-numeral ones. Furthermore, the indefinite use of edinъ is not widespread in all the analyzed manuscripts, but variation with the indefinite eterъ ‘some’ is found, pointing at an incipient stage of grammaticalization and/or to a specialization of the two lexemes for different registers.This analysis bridges the discussion on the origin of edinъ as a unique lexeme, derived via univerbation of *ed- (probably meaning ‘only’) and *jьnъ (< I.E. oynos ‘one’) (Vaillant 1962; Comrie 1992; Blažek 1999). I propose a possible reason to account for this process, as a combination of a semantic and a syntactic process. Semantically, the weakening of the upper bound of *jьnъ ‘one’ (given its atomicity core meaning) which lead to the need to strengthen it via the addition of *ed-. Syntactically, the univerbation of the two lexemes is justifiable as the result of a process of rebracketing and relabeling (Weiß 2019).February 27, 2025: Magdalena Kaltseis (Innsbruck): Unveiling Language Ideologies in the Classroom: Insights from Interviews with Teachers of Russian and Ukrainian
Language ideologies are commonly understood as “any sets of beliefs about language articulated by users” (Silverstein 1979) and various studies show that these ideologies play a crucial role in (language) teaching. In my presentation, I will share the results of my interview study with teachers of Russian and Ukrainian and unveil their language ideologies. In particular, I will focus on the teachers’ concept of the ‘native speaker’ and the ideological assumptions that this concept contains and conveys.February 13, 2025: Tatsiana Maiko (Milan): Russian Spoken Learner Corpus: Design, compilation, and applications
Learner corpus research for Russian as a second language is a relatively new field that has emerged only within the last decade (Kisselev 2023). This presentation will offer a concise overview of existing Russian learner corpora and surveys current corpus-based studies in L2 Russian acquisition. It will introduce an ongoing project aimed at constructing a spoken learner corpus of Russian (RuSLC, Maiko 2023). The corpus consists of both longitudinal and pseudo-longitudinal oral data produced by L1 Italian learners. In the longitudinal part of the project, data collection is conducted twice a year within the same group of students throughout their three/five-year study program. The pseudo-longitudinal subcorpus includes data produced by students across different proficiency levels, from A1 to C1. In addition to learner data, the corpus also includes two reference subcorpora. One subcorpus contains interviews with native speakers of Russian, while the other one consists of interviews with bilingual (Italian-Russian) speakers. The interviews are transcribed following explicit conventions. The database contains audio files, their transcripts, and detailed metadata about the interviewee, the interviewer, and the tasks. This talk will provide an overview of the corpus's design, metadata structure, and its potential applications in the field of language acquisition research.February 6, 2025: Lidija Tasić (Niš): A formal-semantic account of (particularized) implicatures: Towards a unified account of implicatures
Criticism of the Gricean conception of implicatures as non-truth-conditional contributions to the meaning of an utterance has inspired the development of grammatical theories for scalar (Chierchia 2004; Chierchia et al. 2012; Marty 2017), conventional (Potts 2005), and ignorance implicatures (Fox 2007; Meyer 2013). However, despite evidence that speakers commit themselves to the truth of particularized implicatures as well (Weiner 2006; Carston 2002), particularized implicatures remain the only type of implicature still analyzed purely in terms of pragmatic inference (Sperber & Wilson 1986; Van Rooij & Schulz 2007; Zeevat & Winterstein 2023). This talk proposes a formal-semantic account of particularized implicatures that is rooted in grammar. The core idea is that particularized implicatures typically emerge from assertions (what is said) as stereotypical answers to explicit or implicit questions in the specific context (what is meant). I argue that the meaning of particularized implicatures can be formally modeled through a speaker-oriented contextual modal base (following Bianchi et al. 2016), a stereotypical ordering source function (following Yalcin 2014; Kratzer 2012), a Best function (as proposed by Jozina & Hohous 2020), and an implicit or explicit question under discussion (following Büring 2003). I also suggest that they are introduced in grammar by a covert assertion operator (Chierchia 2006). A preliminary model of their meaning will be proposed and illustrated with examples. Time permitting, the possibility of extending this model to other types of implicatures will also be discussed.January 16, 2025: Mariia Privizentseva (Potsdam): Split constructions by base generation: Evidence from reciprocals, NCIs, and indefinites in Russian
Cross-linguistically reciprocals often consist of two parts that may be placed next to each other or split by further material. Analyses differ in whether the split is derived by movement (Sigurðsson et al. 2022, Landau 2024, Messick & Harðarson 2024) or by base generation (Paparounas & Salzmann 2024). This research brings to light novel data on split reciprocals in Russian and shows that splitting in Russian is very restrictive in that only a subset of the prepositions can appear between the two parts of the reciprocal. I then demonstrate that there are two other phenomena that allow the same type of splitting: negative concord items and indefinite pronouns. On the basis of interpretative differences attested for negative concord items, I argue that split forms in all three constructions are derived by base generation. I then suggest that prepositions that allow splitting are part of the nominal extended projections and that the notion of extended projection is best formalized by inheritance of features from the base to the top (see Grimshaw 1991, Keine 2020).December 19, 2024: Clara McMahon (CUNY), Valeriia Modina (CUNY) & Dorota Klimek-Jankowska (Wrocław): Aspect, Negation, and the Visual World Paradigm: An investigation into Russian and Polish
In Russian, an interaction between aspect and negation is reported in the theoretical semantics and pragmatics literature (Zinova & Filip, 2014a,b). When an imperfective verb is negated, the entire event is negated; however, when the perfective aspect is under negation in Russian, only a subpart of the event (the result) is denied as a result of pragmatic implicature. This study aims to investigate this hypothesized interaction using the Visual World Paradigm (VWP). We examine aspect (perfective vs. imperfective) and negation (affirmative vs. negated sentences) in Russian and Polish. This study additionally introduces a novel psycholinguistic task: a visual variant of a Likert scale. The visual Likert scale will display images corresponding to Ramchand (2008)’s syntactic decomposition of an event. Using a visual depiction of the full event structure will allow us to collect more fine-grained information in real-time about the interpretations of grammatical aspect, as well as about the processing of events more generally.December 05, 2024: Maria Martynova (HU Berlin): Postradal Nikto 'Nobody Got Hurt': Negative Concord in Heritage Russian in Germany and the US
This talk explores the dynamics of Negative Concord (NC) in Heritage Russian spoken in Germany and the United States. Negative Concord, characterized by multiple negative elements yielding a single semantic negation, is a well-documented feature of standard Russian grammar. However, its realization in heritage speakers presents an intriguing interplay between linguistic structures and the impact of limited input and contact with majority languages, such as English and German, which do not feature NC. Using experimental data, this study investigates the roles of syntactic factors in NC production. It further examines how this phenomenon is influenced by the linguistic environment of heritage speakers. The analysis utilizes Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMM) to account for variability across participants and linguistic contexts. The findings aim to contribute to our understanding of NC as a complex phenomenon in language contact situations and its broader implications for theories of bilingualism, syntactic transfer, and language change.December 12, 2024: Zorica Puškar-Gallien (ZAS): Explorations of the case and agreement systems of heritage Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian
This talk will present an overview of the current state of formal research on Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS) spoken as a heritage language (by second-generation speakers) in Germany. A special focus will be put on agreement and case, as phenomena that encode a relationship between two constituents, which show a great degree of variation in heritage languages. Despite the vast knowledge gained over the years, the literature still harbours a great amount of disagreement on how agreement and case should be analysed even in monolingual systems: do they involve syntactic or postsyntactic operations; are features copied/valued/shared/checked; are features primitive, binary, or hierarchical; are case and agreement a result of a single operation, or different operations or processes? BCMS presents an especially fertile ground for the exploration of such issues due to great variability present in its agreement patterns (see e.g. Wechsler and Zlatić 2003, Corbett 1979, Willer-Gold et al. 2016, Despic 2017, Puškar 2017, Arsenijević 2021). In the grammars of heritage speakers, these phenomena have been identified as vulnerable, showing properties such as loss of inflectional morphology, overmarking or overregularization, due to language contact at macrolevel (between two languages) and at microlevel (between two grammars in a single speaker’s mind). Taking a heritage language as a system in its own right instead of treating it as somehow simplified or incomplete (Domínguez et al. 2019 vs. Bayram et al. 2019; Cabo and Rothman 2012), and treating a heritage speaker as a native speaker (Kupisch 2013; Rothman and Treffers-Daller 2014; Kupisch and Rothman 2018; Tsehaye et al. 2021;Wiese et al. 2021), the novel research project outlined in this talk will aim at identifying non-canonical patterns of agreement and case present in heritage BCMS, asking the question whether bilingual grammars differ from monolingual ones and how they can be formally modelled. Through identifying factors that affect agreement and case, I will explore the causes of variation under language contact through the lens of The Interface Hypothesis (Sorace 2011) and language-specific and global Complexity (Polinsky, Putnam & Salmons 2024). In sum, I will present a project that looks at heritage grammars as providing an enrichment of insights into syntactic theory and explores the extent to which natural grammar can or cannot generate particular constructions.November 7, 2024: Luka Szucsich (HU Berlin): Why okza me ‘for me’ but *od me ‘from me’: Are there PP-internal clitics in Burgenland-Croatian?
In contrast to other Slavic languages (Abels 2003, 2012), Burgenland Croatian seems to allow clitics within PPs: za me ‘for me’, na te ‘on you’. I will show that these clitic-like pronouns are in fact strong, morphophonologically truncated pronouns, which also exhibit stress and tone retraction.However, truncation of pronouns, which is accompanied by stress and tone retraction, is only possible with 1.sg and 2.sg in the accusative. With all other accusative pronouns, there is no truncation, and one can observe either stress and tone retraction (zá njega ‘for him’: associated stress shift), or there is only a retraction of the stress (zà nās ‘for us’: dissociated stress shift). In this talk, I will discuss the conditions for these processes and propose an analysis that makes use of morphosyntactic locality conditions.October 24, 2024: Matěj Kundrát (Tromsø) & Jeffrey Parrott (Zlín): The Czech high front vowel(s) ‘i/y’: A phonemic difference without a phonetic distinction
We discuss the (morpho)phonology of the Czech high front vowel(s), typically but not always spelled 'i/y', which despite having an identical phonetic realization [i], nonetheless trigger asymmetric patterns of palatalization and variable dipthongization. Using evidence from these alternations, as well as apparent counterexamples, we argue in favor of strict modularity and against phonetics-based theories of (morpho)phonology.July 10, 2024: Ksenia Zanon (Cambridge): (Coordinated) non-canonical imperatives
AbstractJuly 3, 2024, 12:30-14
Jelena Živojinović (Udine/Verona), Jelena Simić (Graz), Alberto Frasson (Wrocław): Beyond the suffix: Examining imperfectivization strategies in L2 and heritage BCMS in Italy [zoom]
There are numerous studies addressing various aspectual issues in heritage and L2 Slavic, particularly when it comes to Russian (Laleko 2008, 2010a,b; Mikhaylova 2011; Pereltsvaig 2002, 2004, 2008; Polinsky 1995, 1996, 1997, 2008; Polinsky & Scontras 2019, among others). Previous studies on Russian heritage with English dominant show some notable difference in the aspectual system between heritage and non-heritage Russian speakers. In her study on low proficiency adult heritage speakers of Russian, Polinsky (2008) claims that heritage spekers overgeneralize the suffixal imperfectives in -Vva- in spontaneous production. Moreover, there is a general disappearance of the perfective/present stem distinctions in verbs and the expression of aspect through the use of analytical forms with the light verbs “be”, “become”, “do” instead of through affixes.In this talk, we present the results of an experimental study on heritage and L2 BCMS in Italy, with Italian dominant. We argue that proficient heritage speakers behave as target-like monolinguals as predicted by the Interface hypothesis (cf. Sorace 2011), whereas L2 learners diverge from both monolinguals and heritage speakers, showing a general preference for non-suffixal experimental items. We propose that the access to the syntax-morphology interface in L2 learners exhibits an effect of L1 input, resulting in divergent imperfectivization strategies.June 5, 2024: Olga Buchmüller (HU Berlin): Registers in Russian: A multidimensional study
Abstract: Perhaps one of the most important contributions to quantitative register research was made by Douglas Biber in 1988. This multidimensional analysis (MDA) identified five distinctive registers in English, based on the distribution and co-occurrence of 64 linguistic features. After decades of register research, in 2020 the field was further enriched by an MDA of Czech (Cvrček et al., 2020). This study applied a comprehensive feature set that encompassed the characteristics of the Slavic language, resulting in eight dimensions of linguistic variation.May 22, 2024: Bartosz Wiland (Poznań): Polish prefix stacking redux
Polish verbal aspectual prefixes like in (1), can stack together on the verb stem, as in (2) (where CUML stands for 'cumulative' and DIST for 'distributive').(1) a. na-zrywać jabłek CUML-pick.INF apples ‘pick apples in bulk’b. po-zrywać jabłka DIST-pick.INF apples ‘pick apples one by one’(2) po-na-zrywać jabłek DIST-CUML-pick.INF apples ‘pick apples in bulk one by one’In the talk, I formulate the constraints on multiple prefixation in Polish verbs and derive the attested prefix orders with a strictly syntactic (lexicalization-driven) complex left branch formation mechanism proposed in recent work in Nanosyntax.May 15, 2024: Edoardo Cavirani & Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (Leuven): A representational analysis of Czech patalalization
The abstract can be found via this link.April 24, 2024: Evan Bleakly & Simon Blum (Cottbus): Die (Un)Sichtbarkeit der niedersorbischen Sprache in Südbrandenburg: Ein Linguistic-Landscape-Projekt des Sorbischen Instituts / (Nie)widobnosć serbskeje rěcy w pódpołdnjowej Bramborskej: Pśedstajenje Projekta Serbskego instituta k temje linguistic landscape
January 24, 2024: Sławomir Zdziebko (Lublin): There is no escape from abstract representations. Containment, faithfulness and Polish palatalizations
The presentation offers a comprehensive overview of the palatalization processes attested in Polish. It also argues for the following set of theoretically relevant points:January 17, 2024: , Mojmír Dočekal, Michaela Hulmanová & Aviv Schoenfeld (Brno & Tel Aviv): Slavic episodic and generic sorting: Experimental evidence from Slovak
In this talk, we report on an experimental study of the sorting in Slovak episodic and generic sentences. The experiment shows that Slovak sorting is very much constrained, unlike the previously reported universal sorter in English (see Bunt, 1985 a.o.: *fuels* meaning 'kinds of fuel', e.g.).Based on the suggestions from the previous literature, we tested both verbal and nominal factors that might influence the availability of sorting. The results show that the sorting is influenced by the type of the predicate (episodic vs. generic) but also by the count/mass/object-mass denotation of the noun.The inferential statistics of the experiment suggest which factors are more important than others. Finally, we discuss some possible reasons for the observed differences between Slovak and English sorting.January 10, 2024: Mariia Razguliaeva, Maria Onoeva, Radek Šimík & Roland Meyer (HU Berlin & Prague): Polar question meaning in Slavic: Visual world eye-tracking evidence
Polar questions (PQs) have traditionally been analyzed as denoting the set of their two possible answers (Hamblin 1973) or the corresponding bipartition of possible worlds (Groenendijk & Stokhof 1984). Setting important technical details aside, a PQ like "Is it raining?" would denote the set {it is raining, it is not raining}, or {p, ~p} with p=[[it is raining]]. This simplistic view has recently been challenged from various angles. First, there is growing evidence that the baseline semantics is crucially complemented by PQ bias - a preference for one of the two answers, based either in the speaker's beliefs or in the contextual evidence (Büring & Gunlogson 2000; Romero & Han 2004; Sudo 2013; Goodhue 2022; a.o.). Second, some authors have questioned the very idea that PQs denote a set of two propositions. Biezma & Rawlins (2012) argue that a polar question denotes a singleton set {p} with the relevance of the other alternative being merely implicated.We aim to shed light on the meaning of PQs by investigating their online processing using an eye-tracking visual world experiment. Building on Tian et al.'s (2016, 2021) work on English and French, we look at the processing of Russian and Czech PQs and assertions. We ran a number of closely parallel visual world eye-tracking experiments in the two language mutations. All stimuli were short prerecorded dialogues starting with the target utterance containing a transitive verb, its subject and object, and an adverbial, followed by a brief response of the form `I think that yes/no'. In the target utternace, we manipulated several variables: 1) force (question vs. statement); 2) polarity (affirmative vs. negative); 3) verb position (sentece-initial or medial); 4) presence or absence of a particle (razve in Russian, snad and asi in Czech). Simultaneously with the auditory linguistic stimulus, participants were presented with four pictures on a screen, two corresponding to the two alternatives p and ~p, and two showing unrelated distractors. We measured the durations of fixations to p and ~p images during different parts of the utterance. Our results corroborate Tian et al.'s findings with new evidence from Slavic languages, and provide support for Biezma & Rawlins' (2012) singleton-based analysis of PQs, as well as preliminary evidence for the presence of positive epistemic bias in negative PQs.December 20, 2023: Karolina Zuchewicz (Leipzig): Aspect and pragmatics in Polish
In this talk, I contribute to the discussion on the meaning of the Polish perfective by analyzing the so-called general-factual contexts, i.e., contexts that refer to completed events. In Slavic, both perfective and imperfective aspect can be used in order to refer to such events, but the exact distribution of the two aspectual alternatives is language-specific (Dickey 2000, Grønn 2004, Altshuler 2014, Mueller-Reichau 2018, Klimek-Jankowska 2020, 2022, Gehrke 2022, 2023 among many others). Whereas in East Slavic languages, imperfective aspect is strongly preferred in general-factual contexts, in West Slavic languages, there is a competition between imperfective and perfective forms. This talk discusses the role of pragmatics in aspect choice in general-factual contexts in Polish. It shows that the presence or absence of pragmatic contract between the interlocutors (cf. Israeli 1996 for Russian) systematically disambiguates between the preference for the perfective (former case) and the imperfective (latter case). I view the presence of pragmatic contract as an instance of uniqueness and argue for the strong pragmatic force of the Polish perfective.November 22, 2023: Metodi Efremov (Nova Gorica/Leipzig): The semantics of the Macedonian definite articles
Macedonian seems to have three definite articles (Tomic, 2012; Minova-Gjurkova, 1994; Koneski, 2004).1. Kucheto si igra.November 15, 2023: Jan Chromý (Prag): What do we recall immediately after reading a sentence?
Der Vortrag basiert auf dem folgenden Artikel:November 1, 2023: Olga Borik (UNED, Madrid): Commitment datives (joint work with Ismael Iván Teomiro García)
In this talk, we focus on a specific use of the dative case – commitment dative – and put forward the hypothesis that these datives can be used to overtly express commitment of the speaker or the hearer. We argue that this type of datives cannot be easily explained by applicative-based analyses (see Cuervo 2020 for an overview) without radically changing the semantics of the applicative because they are restricted to particular types of speech acts, namely, commissives and directives. Instead, we rely on the proposal of Geurts (2019), who offers a commitment-based analysis for basic speech acts, including commissives and directives. Drawing on empirical data from Russian and Spanish, we argue that the main contribution of commitment datives is to overtly mark the commitment of the speaker to the goal of making the proposition expressed by the sentence true (Geurts 2019).October 25, 2023: Vesela Simeonova (Graz): Modals for the present and for the past in Bulgarian
The interactions of tense and epistemic modals have been subject to a great deal of interest since Condoravdi's (2002) seminal work. Condoravdi argues that past tense can project either higher or lower than the modal, giving rise to epistemic and counterfactual (CF) readings, respectively (and not in both positions). This is illustrated in (1).July 12, 2023: Luca Molinari (Venice): A number that doesn’t count: grammaticalization and use of indefinite ‘one’ in three Slavic languages
Russian, Polish, and Bulgarian, taken as representatives of the three subgroups of Slavic languages (Eastern, Western, and Southern respectively), share the use of the numeral ‘one’ to express indefiniteness (despite their individual differences). The talk is going to address a couple of issues related to the use of this item: (i) the grammaticalization that leads ‘one’ form being a numeral to becoming an indefinite marker, and (ii) the debated semantic import of this element when used to mark indefiniteness. Concerning (i), I will propose a syntax-based path for the grammaticalization process of ‘one’. As for (ii), I will show the challenges of empirically investigating the semantics of ‘one’ as an indefinite determiner in the languages at issue.June 28, 2023: Marco Biasio (Modena e Reggio Emilia): Three Puzzles about nel’zja in Contemporary Russian
This talk seeks to provide a unified solution for three structural puzzles involving the phi-invariant operator nel’zja in negative deontic utterances in Contemporary Russian. These include: a) the deontic-anankastic mismatch assigned to imperfective infinitive forms headed, respectively, by nel’zja (Mne nel’zja vstavat’ rano ‘I must not wake up early’) and a (presumably) null modal head (Mne ne vstavat’ rano ‘I don’t have to wake up early’); b) the identity reading contextually activated with generalized, non-referential Holders (Nel’zja perevestiPF / perevodit’IPF celyj tekst ‘It is impossible / forbidden to translate the whole text’ ≈ Ne perevestiPF / perevodit’IPF celyj tekst); and c) modal-aspectual mismatches where an aspectual infinitive head is wired with a set of apparently inconsistent accessibility relations, i.e., circumstantial with IPF (instead of PF) and strong deontic with PF (instead of IPF). It will be argued that these ‘puzzles’ do not run counter any theory of semantic composition, since they can be explained via non-trivial interaction of two main parameters, i.e., on the one hand, the quantificational force specified in the extended denotation of each aspectual operator and, on the other, the grammatically relevant distinction between primary and secondary ordering sources for both overt and covert modal operators. If time permits, a syntactic account of these semantic facts will be accordingly provided.May 17, 2023: Cem Keskin (Potsdam): Blended subordination in Balkan Turkic induced by Slavic contact
The Turkic varieties of the Balkans use two main diametrically opposed subordination strategies: (i) the Turkic model, where typical subordinate clauses are prepositive, nonfinite, contain clause-final subordinators, etc. and (ii) the Indo-European model, where typical subordinate clauses are postpositive, finite, contain clause-initial subordinators, etc. In this talk, I will present several additional kinds of subordinate clause that Balkan Turkic uses, which allow for problematic mixtures of these two models (‘X-clauses’). Spread over a spectrum between the Turkic and Indo-European extremes, X-clauses can, for instance, be prepositive but contain clause initial subordinators. I will, then, hypothesize that X-clauses emerge due to uncertainties in the structural parameters of the Balkan Turkic subordination system. Such uncertainties are typical of complex systems undergoing change and arise in the present case due to the shift in Balkan Turkic away from Turkic towards Indo-European subordination in contact with Slavic languages.May 3, 2023: Ora Matushansky (CNRS-Paris 8/Utrecht): On the complexity of becoming feminine in Russian
Russian feminitive formation is systematically suprasegmental on the basis of diminutive and agentive suffixes. Thus the most productive suffix [k]/[ok] is segmentally identical to the diminutive [k]/[ok] with a stress shift to the left (Halle 1973, Beard 1987), and gendered pairs of agentive suffixes (-nik-/-nic-, -ščik- (-čik-)/ -ščic- (-čic-), -ec-/-ic-, etc.) involve the same stress shift in the feminine, concurrent with a change in the vowel and/or the consonant of the suffix. I will argue that this phenomenon can be handled by the assumption that these suffixes are internally complex. I will show that this approach also explains why Russian feminitives cannot be formed by the change in the noun class (unlike, e.g., sirviente/sirvienta ‘servant.M/F’ in Spanish) and provides an indication when feminine formation is agglutinative (e.g., učítelʲ/učítelʲnica ‘a teacher’) with potential affix telescoping (Haspelmath 1995) and when, substitutive (e.g., učeník/učeníca ‘a student’).February 10, 2023: Nina Adam (Potsdam): Head-argument order and its consequences: How typically VO is West Slavic?
Slavic languages are traditionally mostly classified as VO, based on the neutrality and frequency of that order. However, comparisons with Germanic and Romance VO languages have yielded some striking structural differences, for example as described recently in Haider & Szucsich (2022). In my talk, I present our ongoing project Consequences of Head-Argument Order for Syntax, which collects crosslinguistic data to test hypotheses of correlations with VO/OV order. Part of the project is a case study on West Slavic, in line with Šimík and Jasinskaja’s (2022) claim that the Slavic languages need to be investigated individually, since they adhere to VO properties to different degrees. I present a set of features and their occurrence in Czech and Polish, and provide an outlook to an investigation of Upper Sorbian, which is unusual in being classified as OV, thereby complementing the sample.December 9, 2022: Berit Gehrke (HU Berlin), Marcin Wągiel (Brno & Wrocław) & Radek Šimík (Prague): Non-conservative construals with proportional quantifiers: Theoretical and experimental considerations
Expressions involving percentage quantifiers (e.g. fifty percent) can give rise to conservative as well as non-conservative readings (e.g. The company hired fifty percent of the women. vs. The company hired fifty percent women.). While in languages with articles this distinction correlates with a morphosyntactic distinction (of the women vs. women), in languages without articles, such as most Slavic languages, there is no morphosyntactic difference (e.g. Czech padesát procent žen). Gehrke & Wągiel (to appear) argue that the main means to differentiate between the two readings in Slavic is by word order: non-conservative percentage quantifiers have to appear VP-internal, even when they are in subject position (e.g. Ve společnosti Spedex pracuje padesát procent žen. ‘There are fifty percent women working at the company Spedex.’). In an alternative account of the non-conservative reading (in German and other languages), Sauerland & Pasternak (2022) propose that it necessarily involves focus within the NP that the percentage quantifier combines with. In this talk, we present experiments on Czech which tested different hypotheses that these two accounts make.November 23, 2022: Ilja Seržant (Potsdam): Diachronic tendencies in argument flagging patterns of Slavic
Abstract : I will present the preliminary results from our joint work in Seržant et al. (2022). In this pilot study, we explore the variation in the flagging patterns across 10 modern Slavic languages – covering all three major Slavic branches: South, West and East Slavic – and Old Church Slavic. The database comprises 825 entries and is based on translation tasks with 46 verb meanings that target verbs with middle-level transitivity prominence (Seržant et al. 2021). I analyze three main factors: the ratio of flagging alternations (vs. rigid government), transitivity prominence and ratio of nominative marking. I 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.November 18, 2022: Petra Charvátová (Olomouc) & Jeffrey Parrott (Zlín): Toward a typology of pronominal case and variation in Slavic
This talk will introduce a novel theoretically motivated research project on Bulgarian, a pronominal-case-only (‘pro-case’) language of the Slavic family. We propose to initiate fieldwork in Bulgaria starting in early 2023. Our goal in the presentation is to sketch the empirical landscape, point out some theoretical issues at stake, outline key hypotheses, and lay out our plans for the fieldwork.November 4, 2022: Johannes Rothert (Potsdam): An experimental investigation of the case matching requirement in Polish ATB movement and RNR
Abstract: I will present the results of an acceptability rating study that investigated the case matching requirement in Polish sharing constructions (SCs). I obtained judgments from native speakers on Polish examples of across-the-board (ATB) topicalization and right node raising (RNR) where the shared DP bore either (i) a matching case form, (ii) a syncretic case form, (iii) a case form unambiguously indicating the case assigned by the verb in the adjacent conjunct, or (iv) a case form unambiguously indicating the case assigned by the verb in the distant conjunct. The three main findings of the study can be summarized as follows: First, both constructions show the same pattern of acceptability ratings across the four investigated case patterns. Second, both constructions exhibit a case syncretism effect (i.e., syncretic case forms obviate the ungrammaticality of SCs with case mismatches). Third, both constructions also exhibit a case proximity effect (i.e., case forms only matching the case requirements of the verb in the linearly closest conjunct also obviate the ungrammaticality of SCs with case mismatches). Based on the results of my study, I argue that there is no case matching requirement restricting the range of well-formed SCs. Furthermore, I claim that ATB movement and RNR require the same kind of derivation. Of the theoretical approaches to the syntax of SCs discussed in the literature, the ellipsis approach is most compatible with the results of my study.July 6, 2022: Irina Burukina (ELTE/ELKH, Budapest): On the syntax of the control verbs ‘help’ and ‘hinder’ in Russian: Ditransitives with a silent Theme
I discuss sentences with the verbs pomoč' ‘help’ and pomešat’ ‘hinder’ in Russian and demonstrate that, although they are usually listed among object control predicates, these verbs appear in a wide range of constructions that cannot be accounted for by a straightforward control analysis. I argue that pomoč' and pomešat’ are, in essence, ditransitive, similarly to ‘give’ or ‘send’: they require a Patient (a person or a situation that will be helped/hindered) and a Theme headed by a silent noun HELP/HINDRANCE. The Patient and the Theme are projected by the low applicative head that denotes the relation “to-the-possession”, as per Pylkkänen (2008). A saturated clausal dependent, when present, should be analysed as a Patient. A property-type clausal dependent is merged as a modifier within the Theme NP. The approach is extended to control collocations such as ‘give a chance’ and further offers an opportunity to develop a uniform structural representation for various control verbs with a dative dependent that will reduce the differences between them to particular properties of the Theme.June 24 2022: Jiří Milička (Prague): Measuring lexical diversity: The influence of lemmatization
There is no clear choice how lexical diversity should be measured – there are dozens of metrics and several methods of text-length normalization. While these options are vastly discussed in literature, little is known about the influence of lemmatization. As recent studies suggest that the lexical diversity indices of lemmatized texts better represent some intuitive subjective notion of lexical diversity (Jarvis – Hazhangmoto, 2021), we aim to explore the topic in both English (representing typologically analytical languages) and Czech (representing morphologically rich Slavic languages).June 15, 2022: Nerea Madariaga Pisano (UPV/EHU, Vitoria-Gasteiz): Parameters and diachrony: Why pro-drop in Brazilian Portuguese and Russian became similar but not identical
In this work, I argue in favor of a parametric view on pro-drop, by showing that the differences between languages that correspond to a single parametric setting can be accounted for independently. More specifically, I explore a way to account for the differences between Partial Null Subject (PNS) languages, which do not display identical properties. I show that the contingent nature of diachronic change is one of the reasons for the slight differences between PNS languages. Modern Russian (MR) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) are two PNS languages that developed from Consistent Null Subject antecessors (Old Russian and Early Brazilian = European Portuguese) independently from each other. I account for the change in pro-drop experienced by these two languages, analyzing the properties usually related to the null subject parameter (verbal inflection, clitics, null objects, embedded null subjects, and arbitrary null subjects), and show that the final parametric setting in both MR and BP was almost identical, with small differences that can be attributed to the different initial conditions for the change.June 3, 2022: Marija Brašić (Nova Gorica): Distributed Agreement Account for Gender Resolution in Sandwiched Coordination: Evidence from Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian
AbstractMay 25, 2022: Maria Martynova, Yulia Zuban, Luka Szucsich & Natalia Gagarina (HU Berlin / Stuttgart / ZAS): OV/VO placement in heritage Russian in Germany and the U.S.: Internal Change vs. Transfer
AbstractMay 13, 2022: Nina Adam (Potsdam): How to optimally place your clitics — Czech clitic syntax in a constraint-based model
This talk deals with a subtype of second-position phenoma: the placement of auxiliary and pronominal clitics in Czech. I propose that clitics behave unlike other auxiliaries and pronouns because they belong to a distinct class. Their surface position is conditioned by a clitic-specific requirement to appear as close to TP’s left edge as possible. I will also argue that a second constraint on clitic positioning results from a general ban on information-structurally weak elements from the left CP edge. Combined with an OT version of phase impenetrability, this captures the clitic climbing patterns found in Czech.The fact that conflicting constraints guide clitic placement makes it unnecessary to posit a specific syntactic position for clitics, and thereby accommodates deviations from the second-position pattern without any additional assumptions.April 22, 2022: Justyna Kosecka (Warsaw): Exceptionality in Kashubian Velar Palatalization
The distribution of Kashubian velar stops is almost completely exceptionalness. They are disallowed before the front vowels /i/ and /ɛ/. Instead, in a vast majority of cases soft palato-alveolar affricates [ʧj ʤj] appear in these contexts, as in words ksążk-a (nom.sg.) – ksążcz-i (nom.pl., gen.sg., acc.pl) ‘book’ or dôk-a – dôcz-i ‘fog’. The alternations are examples of the phonological process of Velar Palatalization, spreading the feature [−back] from the front vowel onto the preceding velar segment. However, the adjectival paradigms reveal an intriguing puzzle. The assumed trigger of Velar Palatalization, front vowel /i/ is only front when preceded by underlyingly soft palato-alveolars, as in snôż-i ‘beautiful’ or palato-alveolars derived via Velar Palatalization, as in drodż-i ‘expensive’. Elsewhere, i.e. after hard coronals, labials, and the velar fricative, the suffix-initial vowel appears as the central vowel /ɨ/, as in words bògat-i ‘rich’, głëp-y ‘stupid’ or głëch-y ‘deaf’. It thus follows that the front suffix vowel /i/ stands only after a soft-palato alveolar segment that is either underlying or will have been derived due to the vowel’s quality. The aim of this presentation is to present possible solutions to the puzzle of self-destructive feeding of Velar Palatalization by analysing the underlying representations of the adjectival suffixes, postulating exceptions to the rule of Velar Palatalization, and shortly discussing alternative approaches.April 13, 2022: Vesela Simeonova (Graz): A variable modal in questions
The force of epistemic futures in Slavic, Balkan, and Romance languages has been debated: some propose it is variable (Condoravdi, 2003; Rivero, 2014; Rivero and Simeonova, 2014; Rivero and Sheppard, 2016), others that it is fixed and strong (Fălăuş, 2014; Fălăuş & Laca, 2014; Giannakidou and Mari, 2018; Mihoc et al., 2019). This talk shows how interrogative environments can inform the epistemic future's force, capitalizing on the special properties of standard epistemic modals in questions giving rise to so-called 'reflective' questions (Giannakidou & Mari 2019). The empirical focus is on Bulgarian. The results reject a strong force hypothesis and provide novel support for the variable force hypothesis. The formal account is based on Yanovich (2016) on Old English *motan, from which an intriguing explanation of the relationship between futurity and epistemicity can be gleaned.March 11, 2022: Daria Seres (HU Berlin/UAB): Speakers' choice of nominal forms in Russian as compared to Catalan - An experimental investigation
AbstractFebruary 18, 2022: Anna Bondaruk & Anna Prażmowska (Lublin): Dative possessor with unaccusative verbs in Polish
This paper examines the syntax of dative possessors found with existential unaccusative verbs in Polish expressing addition, lack, loss, sufficiency, etc., called lack-type verbs here. Lack-type verbs in Polish do not represent dyadic unaccusatives, because the dative possessor they contain behaves like an external argument in that it can bind subject-oriented anaphors. The dative possessor is thus different from items introduced in the specifier of either a high or a low ApplP in Polish, which can never serve as anaphor binders. The unaccusativity of lack-type verbs and the external argument status of the dative possessor are reconciled by claiming that the dative possessor is merged in the specifier of VoiceP, the position typical of external arguments, which is nonetheless non-thematic (viz. expletive). Adopting Myler’s (2016, 2018) approach to predicative possession, we argue that the possessor role of the dative DP does not come from the lack-type verb itself, but is mediated by the possessed DP, denoting the relation between the possessor and the possessee. The dative, nonetheless, does not merge within the DP, but it saturates the possessor theta role via Delayed Gratification, once the DP is merged in the specifier of expletive VoiceP. Consequently, lack-type verbs in Polish have a structure similar to reflexive anticausatives, which also host expletive Voice. The dative possessor, in turn, resembles dative experiencers which likewise function as external arguments in Polish.February 9, 2022: Jelena Stojković (Leipzig): CV-alternations in Polish locatives reveal complex representations
The locative/vocative marker for masculine and neuter nouns has two realisations in Standard Polish. The morpheme consists of a single vowel, which surfaces as [e] if the final consonant is coronal, causing it to turn to prepalatal, but surfaces as [u] after a velar or an underlying palatal. This allomorphy is specific to locative marking (Czaplicki 2013) and was therefore earlier referred to as an argument for co-occurence constraints such as *[+back][-back] / PAL, joined with cyclic analyses (Rubach 1984, 2003) and morpheme-specific phonological grammars, with different kinds of lexical indexation (Łubowicz 2003, 2016; Gussmann 2007). This talk offers an alternative analysis in Autosegmental Coloured Containment (van Oostendorp 2006, Trommer and Zimmermann 2014, Zimmermann 2017, Zaleska 2018, Paschen 2018), a version of OT which lifts up the restrictions on underlying representations. By adopting these views and assuming that there is a single morph for LOC.M/N.SG, specified as front and back simultaneously, palatalisation becomes a realisation of frontness, velarisation and dissimilation -- realisations of backness. The approach straightforwardly extends to the allomorphy of infinitive suffix -ić/-yć. This way the need for lexical indexation, special co-occurence constraints and operations like dissimilation and palatalisation is removed from the UG. From the empirical point of view, the crucial advantage is in predicting the CV-interaction based on the underlying representation: morphemes with a complex UR induce a change on the stem because they are over- or underspecified, while morphemes with a simple UR (fully specified, e.g. for INS.SG -em) do not because their well-formedness is underlying.January 28, 2022: Florian Wandl (Zürich): Reconstructing and visualizing relative chronology in linguistics
AbstractJanuary 19, 2022: Dagmara Grabska & Klaus Abels (UCL): The direct object is always low: the structure of ditransitive VPs in Polish
In this talk we propose a structural analysis of Polish ditransitive VPs according to which the direct object (DO) is generated lower than the indirect object (IO) regardless of the linear order between the two arguments and stays low. Using evidence from focus projection, predicate clefts and idioms, we support the view that IO-DO is the neutral order of Polish ditransitives and that it is associated with a rightward descending verbal shell structure (contra Bailyn’s 2010 account of Russian ditransitives and in accordance with Wiland’s 2009 and Łęska’s 2019 account of Polish ditransitives). Unlike Wiland and Łęska, who analyse the DO-IO order as being derived from IO-DO by leftward movement of the DO, we entertain a simple rightward ascending structure for this order. Preliminary evidence for this structure comes from quantifier scope interactions, as well as the order and scope of adverbs.December 15, 2021: Tomasz Łuszczek (Warsaw): Opacity and Podhale Goralian
AbstractNovember 24, 2021: Marcin Wągiel (Brno): Part-whole structures across domains: Slavic derived spatial and social collective nouns
In this paper, I examine two types of Slavic derived collective nouns, namely spatial collectives such as Polish kwiecie `clump of flowers, blossom' and social collectives like duchowieństwo `collective of priests, clergy'. While the former refer to collections of objects perceived as coherent spatial configurations, the latter denote groups of human individuals performing a salient social role. Building on Grimm (2012) and Zobel (2017), I propose an analysis that treats the Slavic derived collective nouns in question as predicates true of spatial and social clusters, respectively. The proposal extends mereotopology to the abstract domain of social roles.November 12, 2021: Björn Wiemer, Joanna Wrzesień-Kwiatkowska & Alexander Rostovtsev-Popiel (Mainz): Grammatical integration of n/t-participles of secondary imperfectives in Polish and Russian
Abstract (initially planned for the FDSL-14 Workshop 'Secondary Imperfectives in Slavic')November 3, 2021: Ora Matushansky (CNRS/Paris 8): On the theme of Russian deverbal nouns
Any hypothesis linking Russian verbal theme vowels to v, be it the functional head introducing the event argument of the verb or that contributing the external argument, predicts some correlation between its presence in deverbal nominalizations (ing- and er-nouns) and their semantics. My goal in this talk is to provide some discussion of this prediction.October 22, 2021: Marco Biasio (Padua): Control, Discourse Participants, and Tempo-Aspectual Fluctuations in Slavic Performatives
Abstract
June 30, 2021: Edyta Jurkiewicz-Rohrbacher (Regensburg): When does Polish like infinitives? Accusative controllers in Polish
The starting point is the article of Dziwirek (2000) who claims that accusative object control with infinitive complements is not possible in Polish beyond the verb nauczyć ‘to teach’ (and presumably other verbs with the root ucz*). Słodowicz (2008) who examines a sample of Polish control verbs distinguishes a group of inherent object control verbs including 2 more verbal roots allowing for accusative controllers with infinitive complements. The inspection of modern Polish dictionaries and corpus data shows that the group of accusative controllers allowing for infinitive complements is in fact slightly bigger. However, some of its members are “hidden” because infinitive complementation occurs mostly in the passive. In the talk, I discuss the syntactic and semantic properties of such verbs. I motivate their particular behavior referring to modality and causativity.References: Dziwirek, Katarzyna. 2000. Why Polish doesn’t like infinitives. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 8: 57-82. Słodowicz, Szymon. 2008. Control in Polish complement clauses. Munich: Sagner.June 18, 2021: Masha Esipova (Oslo): Semantics of situations and pragmatics of prevention
In my talk, I will inspect two types of readings that emerge in a range of environments (e.g., in negated imperatives, under 'not want', under 'fear', etc.): (i) ABSTAIN readings, implying willingness to prevent someone from intentionally engaging in an activity, and (ii) AVOID readings, implying willingness to prevent a potentially unintended outcome. The ABSTAIN vs. AVOID distinction has a variety of grammatical reflexes cross-linguistically, e.g., (anti-)licensing of some-indefinites in English (Don't call anyone! vs. Don't call someone!). I will focus on perfective vs. imperfective aspect and (anti-)licensing of certain types of indefinites in Russian. I will argue that the relevant complements in ABSTAIN vs. AVOID cases have distinct compositional structures: there is a situation layer in AVOID, but not in ABSTAIN cases. This explains the relevant Russian facts about aspect and indefinites. The choice between the two compositional structures in the environments at hand is, in turn, driven by global pragmatic considerations about preventing unwanted scenarios. This explains the inferences arising in the two cases.June 9, 2021: Pavel Caha (Brno), Karen De Clercq (CNRS, LLF - UMR 7110) & Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (KU Leuven): Causative-inchoative alternations of deadjectival verbs in Czech
We analyze various patterns of the inchoative/causative alternation of de-adjectival verbs in Czech. Following Ramchand (2008), we assume that de-adjectival causatives contain three parts: the adjective denoting a state, a change-of-state component proc, and a causative component init. Adopting a Nanosyntax approach, we propose that various roots spell out a different number of these abstract heads, which then leads to different patterns of formation.May 28, 2021: Hagen Pitsch (Göttingen): The analytical conditional in Slavic and the particle/auxiliary distinction
The talk explores the cross-Slavic variation in analytic conditional forms (COND). There seem to be two major patterns: (i) COND with auxiliary verbs showing person/number agreement; and (ii) COND with auxiliary particles lacking agreement. However, Polish and East Slavic languages – belonging to group (i) and (ii), respectively – stand out in that their COND allow for infinitives and further impersonal forms excluded in the remaining Slavic languages. The talk offers a tentative formal syntactic account with a focus on the distinction between auxiliary verbs and particles.May 19, 2021: Vesela Simeonova (Tübingen): Locative and non-locative 'where' in Bulgarian
This talk explores the many uses of 'where' in Bulgarian. While there are some targeted studies (Rudin 2007 on multiple relatives, Krapova 2010 and Simeonova 2015 on 'where' as a complementizer in emotive factive and relative clauses, Rudin and Franks 2014 on concessives), a large part of the spectrum of readings that 'where' has (and doesn't have, cf. Wojciech Guz & Łukasz Jędrzejowski's talk from May 5!) and their theoretical implications remains undocumented. This talk begins to fill that gap.May 5, 2021: Wojciech Guz (Lublin) & Łukasz Jędrzejowski (Cologne): Subordinate clauses as ActP modifiers. Evidence from concessive clauses in Polish
In this talk, we examine the syntax of concessive clauses in Polish introduced by the wh-word gdzie ‘where’, and compare their properties with those of adverbial clauses headed by the inherent concessive complementizer chociaż ‘although’. We argue that i) gdzie is base-generated as a concessive head in ActP in Krifka’s (to appear) terms, and that no movement from a lower position is involved, ii) concessive gdzie-clauses should be analyzed as disintegrated adverbial clauses adjoining outside the matrix clause structure, and iii) although concessive gdzie-clauses exhibit properties of subordinate clauses, they are syntactically not embedded and possess their own illocutionary force.April 28, 2021: Dorota Klimek-Jankowska (Wrocław) Variation in aspect choices in general factual contexts in Polish, Czech and Russian (and other Slavic languages)
I will present the results of my quantitative research testing the variation in aspect choices in the so called general factual contexts in Polish, Czech and Russian. My goal in this research is to verify the micro-typology of Slavic aspect proposed by Dickey (2000 and subsequent works) on the basis of replicable procedures and a rich set of data elicited from native speakers. To this goal, I conducted a series of scenario-based online questionnaires in almost all Slavic languages (here I will focus mainly on Polish, Czech and Russian). I manipulated the type of context, rhetorical relations and information structure. I will propose a formal account of the observed patterns based on Ramchand (2008) formal theory of aspect and temporality but I will also point to some problems that still await explanation. Time-permitting, I will also mention the preliminary results of my questionnaires for other Slavic languages.April 7, 2021: Ewelina Mokrosz & Sławomir Zdziebko (Lublin): The structural size of Reduced Relative Clauses: Insights from Polish
There is an almost unanimous agreement among researchers that participial Reduced Relative Clauses project at most as high as IP/TP. The evidence for such a state of affairs comes from the illocutionary dependence of RRCs, absence of overt or covert relativizing elements, unavailability of Topicalization/Focalization and the absence of tense marking within RRCs.At the same time the literature usually points out to certain differences in the size of participial RRCs both within a single language and across languages (see e.g. Siloni 1995, Marvin 2002, Belikova 2008, Cinque 2020). Such works usually focus on the differences in the availability of aspectual and argument-structure related projections in participial RRCs of different kind and provenance.It is our general aim to show that cross-linguistic differences in the size of participial RRCs may also include the presence versus the absence of the layers of structure associated with the broadly understood syntactic left periphery. In this talk we will focus on the evidence pointing to the availability of certain left-peripheral layers of structure in Polish.In particular we will address:March 26, 2021: Arkadiusz Kwapiszewski (Oxford): The morphosyntax of secondary imperfectives: A fusion-based account
AbstractMarch 17, 2021: Izabela Jordanoska (Villejuif (LLACAN)): The five 'buts' of Macedonian and the typology of adversative coordinators
In this talk I compare the amount of variation in lexical items for adversative coordinators cross-linguistically. On the one hand of the spectrum, there are languages like English, which express every type of adversative coordination with the same lexical item, but. On the other hand, there are languages like Macedonian, which has separate lexical items for the four main uses that have been identified for adversative coordinators: tuku (corrective but), a (Semantic Opposition but), ama/no (Denial of Expecation / concessive but) and ama/ami (discourse marking but) (Lakoff 1971, Anscombre and Ducrot 1977, Jasinskaja 2012, Schiffrin 1987, Fielder 2008). Furthermore, the distribution of a in Macedonian (and other Slavic languages) partially overlaps with the distribution of and in English. Following the QUD-based approach in Jasinskaja and Zeevat (2008), I show that the choice of adversative conjunction cross-linguistically can depend on two factors: i) whether the polarity of the second conjunct is the same or different from the polarity of the QUD that conjunct answers to and ii) whether both QUDs have the same topic.March 5, 2021: Anna Bondaruk (Lublin) & Ewa Willim (Kraków): Active transitive impersonals and the typology of Voice
AbstractFebruary 24, 2021: Berit Gehrke (HU Berlin) & Marcin Wągiel (Brno): Non-conservative construals with percentages in Slavic
Recently, it has been observed that certain percentage quantifier (%Q) constructions give rise to conservative (C) as well as apparently non-conservative (NC) readings (Ahn & Sauerland 2015, 2017; A&S).(1) MIT hired 30% of the women last year. (conservative construal)(2) MIT hired 30% womenF last year. (non-conservative construal)February 17, 2021: Ljudmila Geist & Sophie Repp (Cologne): Yes- and No-responses to biased questions in Russian in comparison to German
AbstractFebruary 5, 2021: Teodora Radeva-Bork (Potsdam): Variable word order(s) in Slavic: Monolingual vs. heritage Bulgarian data
AbstractJanuary 27, 2021: Moreno Mitrović (ZAS Berlin): A grammar of li & question bias
This talk concerns a cross-modular investigation into the grammar of rhetorical questions (RQs) with a negative bias in Ser-Bo-Croatian (BCS). (Ex) Gdje (li) si? where (Q/κ) are “Where (the hell/the fuck) are you?”Several results are reported: (I) while the BCS particle -li has been traditionally and uniformly treated an instantiation of a Q(uestion)-operator (aka κ-superparticle) featuring in polar questions, which also builds the disjunctive marker I-li (Mitrović 2021, int. al.), empirically novel facts are reported that cannot be accounted using standard entries, (II) a syntactic analysis is argued for and mapped onto a compositional semantic/pragmatic analysis that derives the the relevant meanings. A prosodic study is reported which shows that focus associating wh-pronouns in RQs show significantly different contours.January 20, 2021: Karolina Zuchewicz (HU Berlin): Aspect-dependent interpretation of clause-embedding predicates in Polish
It has been widely discussed in the literature that (im)perfectivity can have an impact on the interpretation of both verbal events and nominal complements. Whether aspectual properties of predicates access the meaning of other elements within the verbal phrase depends on the semantic class a verb can be ascribed to. An incremental relation between the verb and its object was shown to play a special role in the above-mentioned transfer of reference. In my talk I will concentrate on the impact of (im)perfectivity on the meaning of clausal complements. I will assume incrementality for certain clause-embedding predicates and show their similarities to incremental theme verbs that combine with nouns.January 15, 2021: Petra Mišmaš & Marko Simonović (Nova Gorica & Graz): Why kl~kolj, br~ber, v~ved, but never kl~br or kolj~ber? Restrictions on the phonological shape of root allomorphs in Slovenian
Abstract (practice talk for OCP)January 8, 2021: Olga Kagan (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev): The singulative suffix -in in Russian
In this talk, I investigate the properties of morphological mass-to-count and count-to-mass operators, by considering three uses of the Russian suffix -in, illustrated below: (i) countizer: gorox - gorošina ‘pea (mass) - a pea’ (ii) singularizer: armjane - armjanin ‘Armenians - an Armenian’(iii) massifier: kon’ - konina ‘horse - horsemeat’ The first two uses are sometimes referred to in the literature as singulative (Corbett 2000, Acquaviva 2008, Musatov 2015, Nurmio 2019). The countizer creates count stems/nouns out of mass ones. The singularizer marks the noun in which it appears as (count) singular. The third use is not generally discussed in their context and is informally described as contributing a ‘meat’ meaning component (Shvedova et al. 1980:190); however, I propose that it functions as a count-to-mass operator and as such reverses the contribution of countizer -in (i).The talk puts forward a formal semantic analysis for each use of -in, raising the question of which instantiations of this suffix should be unified and which, on the opposite, have to be explicitly distinguished.December 18, 2020: Joanna Zaleska (HU Berlin): “Soft” and “hard” sequences in Polish: Insights from a language game experiment
The surface inventory of Polish contains two classes of segments that have each been claimed to have contextually determined variants standing in fully complementary distribution: (i) the so called “hard” and “soft” consonants (for example [p] and [pʲ]), and (ii) high unrounded vowels ([ɨ] and [i]). When segments from these two classes are put together into a consonant-vowel (CI) sequence, the quality of the consonant and the quality of the vowel have to match: sequences of “hard” consonants followed by [i] and of “soft” consonants followed by [ɨ] are disallowed. Thus, for example, [pʲi] and [pɨ] are well-formed, but [pʲɨ] or [pi] are not. In such sequences, the features representing the hardness/softness of the consonant and those differentiating between the two vowels are mutually dependent. This raises the question of which of the segments in the sequence is responsible for its quality. In this talk, I present a language game experiment aimed at identifying the locus of the hard–soft contrast in CI sequences and thus contributing to the long-standing debate concerning the phonemic status of the segments involved. The results of the study suggest that the quality of CI sequences is governed by the input quality of the vowel rather than that of the consonant: When “hard” sequences were separated, all segments were found to retain their quality; when “soft” sequences were separated, however, the consonants lost their softness. I conclude by discussing the utility of this methodology as a means of establishing phoneme inventories in light of theories of phonology that assume multiple levels of abstract representation.December 9, 2020: Mojmír Dočekal & Lucia Vlášková (Brno): Grammatical ingredients of telicity: Czech degree achievements and their prefixes
The telicity behavior of degree achievements has been a puzzling problem for many linguists. The most successful and currently standard theory (Kennedy & Levin 2008) treats them as degree expressions based on different types of scales, which in turn influence the resulting telic or atelic interpretation. While it may account for English, this theory does not hold up cross-linguistically. We challenge the scalar theory with new Slavic data and show that verbal prefixes influence the (a)telic interpretation of degree achievements more than their underlying scales do. We hypothesize that the atelic/telic interpretation of the prefixed degree achievements is related to the unbounded/bounded algebraic denotation of the prefixes (following Zwarts 2005 and his theory of prepositional aspect).November 27, 2020: Boban Arsenijević (Graz): How arbitrary / deterministic is the thematic vowel assignment? Quantitative insights from Serbo-Croatian (joint work with Marko Simonović, Petra Mišmaš, Stefan Milosavljević, Jelena Simić, Lanko Marušič, Rok Žaucer)
I will present preliminary results of joint research at the project Hyperspacing the verb, which investigates the interactions between syntactic, semantic, morphological and phonological properties of Serbo-Croatian (SC) and Slovenian verbs. The focus of the talk is on the assignment, i.e. realization, of thematic vowels in SC.SC verbs are specified for two thematic vowels. Based on a database developed within the project, which encompasses the most frequent 6000+ SC verbs annotated for over 30 properties, we tackle the question whether, in combination or apart, these thematic vowels correlate with any other property of the verb. A preliminary quantitative assessment is reported and discussed. The conclusion is that no strict correlation can be established, but once the non-productive combinations are excluded – the picture gets close to a clean match.November 11, 2020: Radek Šimík & Jakub Sláma (Prague): On evidential relative clauses: The case of Czech jak-relatives
Czech has a range of strategies of forming headed relative clauses – relying either on the use of relative pronouns (který, jaký, jenž) or on the use of a complementizer (co, jak) and an (optional) resumptive. In this talk, we focus on the least studied and understood species – the jak-relatives, e.g. Honil toho medvěda, jak furt utíkal na ten sever ‘He chased the bear that kept running away to the north’. Building on and revising the somewhat isolated observation of Poldauf (1955), namely that a nominal referent modified by jak-relatives needs to be sensorily or mnemonically “accesssible” to both the speaker and the hearer, we argue that a jak-relative does not semantically intersect with its nominal head, but rather denotes an “identifying property” which helps identify a referent whose existence is presupposed. The property has a hearer-oriented evidential component – the speaker assumes that the hearer has evidence (direct or indirect) that the property (jak-relative denotation) holds of the nominal referent (head of the relative clause). We discuss the empirical consequences of the analysis and present relevant corpus evidence.