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New case relations in Old Russian : syntactic change in grammar case| old_uid | 2580 |
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| title | New case relations in Old Russian : syntactic change in grammar case |
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| start_date | 2007/04/02 |
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| schedule | 10h-12h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | In this talk, I will analyse the rise and spreading of new case marking relations in several Old Russian constructions. These processes started with an initial stage of morphological-stylistic innovation, and then underwent reanalysis, giving rise to new structures, which eventually replaced the old ones.
First, I will briefly introduce the theoretical framework used for the analysis. Diachronic change is analysed from a generative perspective, present in most works of the DI(achronic) G(enerative) S(yntax) scholars. Supporting many of the DIGS works, I will show that the ‘difficulties’ in language processing during acquisition can be diachronically eliminated from a language or adapted to it [4, 5, 6].
The adaptation process involves either syntactic or semantic change of
the problematic structures. This work concentrates on syntactic adaptive changes, though sometimes semantic change is collateral to the syntactic processes studied.
Then, I will analyse an still on-going process of change related to the psych-verbs "bojat’sja" ‘to be afraid’ and "slushat'sja" 'to obey’, namely, change of case encoding of their objects in colloquial Present-day Russian. These objects have stopped showing up in genitive case and started valuing structural accusative case:
(1) a. Ja nichego ne bojus’.
INOM nothingGN not fear
‘I am not afraid of anything.’
b. On ne boitsja zhenu.
heNOM not fear wifeAC
‘He is not afraid of his wife.’
This change is similar to earlier changes that affected the group of verbs of ‘taking care’ in Russian around the 17th century [3]:(2) a. Pache zhe bljudi sloves jego. (Anthology of 1076, 15) moreover part. guard wordsGN his
‘And over all, observe his words.’(Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, 246)
b. Chistotoju devstvo sobljula. with-cleanliness virginity AC looked-after ‘She took care of her virginity by remaining chaste.’
Finally, I will review the changes that have taken place in the Russian system of non-verbal predication, namely, the triggering and spreading of the Slavic instrumental predicative case. The old pattern of predicate case marking is known as ‘second case encoding’, because the non-verbal predicate shows up in the same case as its antecedent in the sentence (3a). After the 12th century, instrumental encoding arose and spread in some Russian predicates [3] (3b). The crucial distribution of case encoding will be claimed to be morphological, as
is usual in non-verbal predicates [1, 2].
(3) a. Be Kain ratai, a Avel pastux. (Laurentian Chronicle, 29b) was Cain NOM farmer NOM and Abel NOM shepherd NOM‘Cain was a farmer and Abel, a shepherd.’
b. Volodimeru zhe velikim muzhem stvori togo i otca ego. (Laurentian Chr., 43) Vladimir part.[great man]INST.SG made this AC and fatherAC his ‘Vladimir turned him and his father into important men.’
The structures that underwent instrumental case encoding will be confronted with certain environments, which preserved the old case marking system in Present-day Russian, for example, the ones in (4):
(4) a. Li byla kitajanka / ??* kitajankoj.
Li NOM was Chinese NOM / ?? INST
b. Voda techet xolodnaja / *xolodnoj.
water NOM pours IMPF cold NOM / *INST
‘Water is flowing cold.’ |
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| responsibles | Aroui |
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