Anton Zimmerling

Pushkin State Russian Language Institute · Faculty of Philology

This study is addressed the problem of autoreferentiality, with focus on several constructions with non-agreeing nominal predicatives. Most Russian predicatives taking dative experiencer are autoreferential expressions oriented to the 1 p. Sg. present indicative. Some dative predicatives are oriented to the 2 p. (так и надо, полно, пусто, неладно)...

Published in: Iomdin, L., Milićević, J. & Polguère, A., eds. (2022). Lifetime linguistic inspirations: To Igor Mel'čuk from colleagues and friends for his 90th birthday [Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Sonderband 101 (2022). Peter Lang Verlag], 519 – 529. I compare language and text as research objects and discuss the status of text linguistics aka...

I discuss the relation of linguistics and semiotics on the basis of the Old Russian discourse particle TI1 ‘indeed’, ‘verily’, ‘truly’ discovered by Andrej A. Zaliznjak in 1993. Linguistics and semiotics are different research programmes: the first one deals with specific features of language structures, while the second one discusses general chara...

In this chapter we study the place of dative-predicative structures (DPS) in Russian and Bulgarian and their interaction with the syntax-semantics interface. We pay attention to the main distinctive features of predicatives from a formal and a semantic perspective, as well as to the properties and specifics of the interface between the form and con...

The current estimates for the period when the zero copula ‘BE’ was grammaticalized in the history of Russian, date this process to the 15th–18th centuries. This is a mistake inspired by not properly chosen text samples that do not capture its evolution in the Old Russian period. The zero copula existed already in Early Old Russian, the key is provi...

This presentation entitled "Semantics. Syntax. Ontologies" is prepared for the Seminar to be held at the Institute for Bulgarian Language, Bulgarian Academy of Science 29.11.2022. This short text has a twofold goal: 1) to outline prolegomena and basic notions in the field of natural language ontologies, with focus on the description of stative pred...

I discuss the foundations of predicate ontologies as grounded in two model notions – elementary states of affairs and events or eventualities, i.e. ordered pairs of initial and end states of affairs. Vendlerian classifications are oriented towards elementary states and tense logic, while Davidsonian classifications deal with eventualities and event...

I build a frequency list of Russian dative predicatives for a subcorpus of 2000–2021 texts and prove that most elements from this class are autoreferential expressions oriented towards describing the internal state of the speaker.

I discuss the methodology and conclusiveness of the corpus-based historical linguistics and analyze two formal models predicting the language-internal variation in Early Old Russian syntax. Linguistic models claiming a rigid distribution of grammatical features like ± overt realization of agreement markers activate hidden corpus characteristics suc...

P.Kosta & A.Zimmerling. Case Assignment. Prepared for: Jan Fellerer, & N. Bermel (Eds.), The Oxford Guide to the Slavonic Languages. Oxford University Press., 2022 This entry entitled "Case Assignment" (ch. 6.2.) is written by Peter Kosta and Anton Zimmerling for the volume: Jan Fellerer, & N. Bermel (Eds.), The Oxford Guide to the Slavonic Langua...

This entry entitled "Clitics" (ch. 6.5.) has been submitted for the volume: Jan Fellerer, & N. Bermel (Eds.), The Oxford Guide to the Slavonic Languages. Oxford University Press.

I discuss holistic and partial predicate ontologies, with focus on the realization of static spatiotemporal predicates in Russian and Bulgarian. I follow the distribution of three constructions with dative case marking on the semantic subject. I follow the distribution of three constructions with dative case marking on the semantic subject. Bulgari...

The world’s languages with clitic clusters pattern with four major types of the word order systems, depending on the presence or absence of the 2P condition and the parameter of clitic-verb adjacency. Bulgarian has a double-focus system of clitic placement (2P condition and clitic-verb adjacency), which has typological parallels outside Europe but...

This talk is addressed two problems of Slavic and comparative linguistics: 1) the semantic structure of the cultural term СКОТЪ lit. 'cattle', 'animal', 'movables', and, finally 'money'; 2) the origin of this term and its Germanic counterpart SKATT- (cf. Gothic SKATTS 'money', 'denarius', Old Icel. SKATTR 'tax, money' and the paths of the loan word...

I follow the distribution of constructions expressing the SLP semantics and introduce a distinction of internal SLP (SLP-INT) vs external SLP (SLP-INT). 1.The semantics of SLP-INT is expressed in Russian by a large class of lexical predicatives selecting a dative subject and licensing dative-predicative structures and by a different class of indecl...

Книга содержит работы по теоретической и исторической грамматике. Они разбиты на шесть разделов, носящие название «Теория. Метод. Доказательность», «Диахрония. Синхрония. Динамика», «Семантика в зеркале грамматики», «Делить на два. Неканонические подлежащие», «Порядок слов. Теория и типология» и «Текст и язык». Обсуждается соотношение частной и общ...

We discuss the semantic and syntactic structure of the predicative NEG-words ( BLG н-думи, RUS н-слова) like НЕЧЕГО (сказать), НЕГДЕ (спать) in Russian and their Bulgarian counterparts. Russian predicative NEG-words are syntactic agglomerates headed by a negative existential operator. They include a wh-element (BLG к-дума, RUS к-слово) and an infin...

This paper discusses the origin of the Circum-Baltic modal construction with the nominative case-marking on the infinitival object: the same verbs assign the accusative case to their object in finite clauses. Independent infinitival clauses with the NOM-INF pattern has the semantics of alethic (external) modality: either "p is necessary" or "p is p...

This talk entitled “CONSTRUCTIONS AND STRUCTURES: PREDICATIVES VERSUS INFINITIVES” was given on 26 June 2021 at the first Bulgarian-Russian seminar “The ontology of stative situations and linguistic modeling: Bulgarian and Russian”. I address general problems with identifying grammatical constructions and give a survey of some infinitival and copul...

The obligatory encoding of the experiencer by pronominal clitics in Bulgarian brings about a more rigid contrast of internal vs external states compared to Russian, despite the overt similarity of constructions with a dative experiencer. Several Bulgarian and Russian constructions project an event structure with a non-trivial proportion of stage-le...

Basing on the frequency dictionary of Russian predicatives, I measure the volume of the lexical class of nonagreeing predicatives licensing the productive dative-predicative sentence pattern, where the predicative assigns dative case to its animate subject. The tested vocabulary includes 422 elements. Their frequency rates are derived from the main...

This paper published in the Festschrift for professor Vadim Krysko discusses the evolution of two members of the present tense paradigm of the verb BE - historical 3SG ЕСТЬ and historical 3PL СУТЬ. In Old Russian, overt forms of the 3rd person of BE were primarily used as full verbs, while Middle Russian uses СУТЬ primarily as a copula. The spreadi...

We give a short survey of the clitic syntax and the placement of the general negation in Middle Bulgarian, with focus on Wallachian Bulgarian letters (ca. 1386 ―1509 AD). These issues are inter-dependent. The placement of the negation marker не in the clause has an impact over the clitic-internal ordering. Auxiliary clitics tend to be placed differ...

This paper discusses the interaction of syntactical and information-structural factors in the ordering of Bulgarian clauses with clitics. I define clitics as a subset of prosodically defective and communicatively restricted functional elements. The clitic elements cannot be highlighted by information-structural mechanisms, but clauses with clitics...

This paper offers a polemic linguistic and philological view on the scientific heritage of one of the most prominent linguists of the 20th century, Andrej A. Zaliznjak (1935—2017), who authored fundamental works on the Russian and Old Russian languages. In different years, Zaliznjak addressed issues in morphology, syntax, accentology, and historica...

Лингвистика автономная от филологии наука, а не часть филологии. Объект филологии текст как фиксированная вербальная форма и классификация жанров. Объект лингвистики механизмы языка, реализующиеся автоматически. Филология гуманитарная наука, лингвистика естественная. Максимальной единицей языка является предложение. Так называемая лингвистика текст...

This paper offers a corpus analysis of the Russian verb быть ‘be’ which has an abnormal present tense paradigm including a zero form ØBE.PRES and overt forms естьBE.PRES and сутьBE.PRES which do not discriminate person and number and are distributed syntactically. I discuss different approaches to the grammar of быть and argue that Apresjan’s model...

This paper discusses the syntax of the past tense auxiliaries in the vernacular Old Russian plusperfect construction of the type дал был, дал есми был. I prove that the past tense auxiliaries behaved as enclitics both with the order дал есми был and with the order дал был есми. The order of the pluperfect auxiliaries reflects different types of a c...

This is the presentation of the joint talk given by Elena Ivanova and me at the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" 29.10.2019. We render the notion of обобщенноличность (generalized subjects) in traditional and formal descriptions of Modern Bulgarian and Modern Russian. "Traditional" and "formal" are merely tags, since there seem to be differe...

This is a revised version of my talk given at the Seminar for Theoretical Semantics, Institute for the Information Transmission Problems (IITP) in Moscow, 26 April, 2019. I discuss the notion of Animacy as a relevant semantic (s-selective) feature in Modern Russian (and partly, in the history of Russian). I argue that two related but different noti...

Anton V. Zimmerling Количественные группы как контролеры согласования QPs as agreement controllers in Russian АННОТАЦИЯ: Доклад посвящен свойствам количественных групп как контролеров согласования. Доказывается, что возможность постановки сказуемого в ед.ч. при подлежащем, выраженном количественной группой, связана с подлежащным контролем и реализу...

This paper is to be published in the 2nd issue of the new peer-reviewed linguistic journal 'Типология морфосинтаксических параметров' (Typology of morphosyntactic parameters) established in 2018. The publisher is Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. The editor-in-chief is Professor Ekaterina Lyutikova. The paper is addressed the word order pa...

This paper discusses the methodology of the parametric description of the worlds’ languages. The present day linguistic typology aims at once at describing the language diversity and at predicting it: the notion of predictability plays the crucial role, since the typology addresses the eternal questions ‘why the languages are so different?’ and ‘wh...

The paper is addressed a number of morphosyntactic phenomena in Russian grammar, which can be explained as regular or occasional endoclitic insertion. The insertion of Russian prepositions in negative and reciprocal pronouns as well as in indefinite pronouns with кое-and the insertion of weak dative pronouns in the syntactic idiom так <Х-у> и надо...

This is a presentation of our joint talk with Dmitry Dahin given at the last "Typology of morphosyntactic parameters" conference, TMP 2018 (22-24 October, Moscow). The talk discusses the clustering of clitic/weak stress elements in the clause-internal position (2P/3P) in 5 Old Scandinavian languages. Each language in our research is represented by...

An introduction to clitic studies and a contrastive analysis of the Russian, Bulgarian and Old Russian clitic systems.

В русском и болгарском выделяется обширный класс несогласуемых предикативов («слов категории состояния» в терминах Л.В.Щербы), которые допускают оформление семантического субъекта дат.п. лица и реализуются в дативно-предикативной структуре (ДПС) в присвязочной позиции. Русская и болгарская конструкции ДПС были описаны в работах Н.С.Поспелова, Ю.С.М...

E LI or LI ŽE: discourse particles and clitic clusters in Late Old Russian This paper discusses the syntax and semantics of clustering discourse particles in Old Russian texts from the XVI-XVII centuries and early XVIII century. The cover term 'Late Old Russian' roughly corresponds to the label 'старорусский' in the Russian tradition. Previous rese...

I discuss the derivation of impersonal sentences in Old Slavic Languages and defend the so called 'Autonomy Hypothesis', an early version of the non-configurationality hypothesis. Old Russian lacked the distinction of impersonal vs personal verbs in the lexicon and probably licensed the derivation of impersonals from verbs of all groups, including...

Basing on a sample of languages including two dialects of Udi (Lezgic), Andi (Avar-Andic), Degema (Edoid), Gban, Yaure (both ― Mande), two dialects of Ossetic, Pashto, Sorani Kurdish (all ― Indo-Iranian), European Portuguese (Romance), Albanian, Old Czech (Slavic), Gothic (Germanic), Old Latin (Italic), I develop a parametric typology of endoclitic...

This paper is addressed the problem of parametric variation in Russian grammar, with focus on copular constructions with agreeing and non­-agreeing adjectival predicates. Basing on Russian National Corpus, I re­construct two dialects of Russian morphosyntax. They differ regarding the assignment of the predicative instrumental case, raising conditi...

This is a presentation of my guest lecture "Parametrizing language diversity" given 14 May 2018 at St.Petersburg State University. This lecture was part of my mini-course "Language in the Perspective of Parametric Grammar" (14-19 May, 2018) given at St.Petersburg State University. Gratitudes to the organizers. The support from the project "Parametr...

I analyse raising constructions in the context of predicative instrumental case in the so called non-standard varieties of Russian. I argue that these varieties instantiate a special dialect of Russian, which is characterized by increased possibilities of raising.

This paper discusses Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian non-agreeing predicatives licensing dative-predicative-structures (DPS) and compares the ontologies of the DPS construction in Old Church Slavonic vs Modern Russian. DPS sentences differ from dative-infinitive-structures, where the infinitive is the head, in three respects: a) they are stage-...

В статье рассматривается соотношение между семантикой и синтаксисом русских конструкций с несогласуемыми именными предикативами. Доказывается, что конструкции N DAT-V LINK-PRED (дативно-предикативные структуры, ДПС) и N NOM-V LINK-PRED ориентированы на выражение внутренних состояний, т.е. предикатов актуализованного признака, соотнесенных с одушевл...

В работе рассматривается проблема русско-скандинавского двуязычия в древней Руси X-XII вв. и обсуждаются два возможных случая синтаксического заимствования, связанных с особенностями употребления нескольких типов безличных конструкций. Ключевые слова: диглоссия, билингвизм, языковые контакты, древнерусский язык, древнескандинавский язык, фонетика,...

This paper analyzes two Russian constructions, verbal impersonals in 3Sg ~ 3Pl and dative-predicative structures with a non-agreeing predicative and discusses the problem of lexical-syntactic interface and the borderline between lexicon and grammar. Productive constructions are defined as bilateral units and analyzed in the perspective of selective...

This paper discusses the syntactic-semantic interface of Russian with focus on Russian constructions with non-agreeing nominal predicatives. I check the claims previously advanced by Nicolai S. Pospelov and Lev V. Shcherba about the correlation between the taxonomic semantics of these constructions and the absence of the subject-predicate agreement...

The paper addresses the role of semantics in modern linguistic typology. We argue that semantic analysis is essential for the parametrization of multifactorial morphosyntactic mechanisms.

This collective monograph is prepared by a group of Russian linguists sharing the interest to typology, formal models of grammar and interface phenomena. The authors aim at establishing universal and language-specific mechanisms of communicative marking and information ordering. We implement methods of parametric typology and aim at explaining comp...

The paper presents an overview of the current issues and tendencies in studies of differential argument marking (DAM). This research area is of topical interest in modern descriptive and theoretical linguistics, primarily in the context of the general methodological problem of modeling linguistic variation. Therefore, along with traditional issues...

Jens Nørgård-Sørensen (1954–2015) was an outstanding linguist, one of the most prominent academic leaders in Slavic studies, a dedicated teacher, an active organizer of educational and research networks, and a friend who we will dearly miss. Professor Jens Nørgård-Sørensen was born on 31 July 1954. He graduated from Aarhus University in 1976 and re...

This paper presents a formal detailed description of the dialogue management module for a mobile robot functioning as a guide. The module includes a propositional dialogue model, specification of speech acts and speech blocks as well as the inventory of speech patterns corresponding to all speech acts of the model. The dialogue model is implemented...

The paper presents dialogue management module for a mobile robot as a guide. The model of the dialog management is presented as a network of transitions between states depending on two factors: visual and communicative. Details of the dialogue management module are presented.

The paper offers a description of Slavic word order systems from the viewpoint of formal typology based on notions such as syntactic type, parametric settings, basic and derived order, linearization constraints, constituency, movement, spell-out, cliticity, clitic clusters, syntax-prosody interface, and grammaticalization.The aim is to classify Sla...

1. Имена варягов в списках послов (и примкнувших к ним лиц) 907, 911 и 944 г. указывают на достаточно поздние фонетические процессы, большинство из которых отражают восточно-скандинавские диалектные черты. 2. Передача скандинавских имен составителем ПВЛ следовала их реальному звучанию, т.е. была фонетической. 3. Ни один из списков ПВЛ не дает абс...

The paper discusses syntactic properties and distribution of non-nominative subjects in Russian. I distinguish two types of Dative subjects: one of them interferes with clausal subjects and expletive pronouns and may be referred to as "weak", the second one does not interfere with any other type of subjects and may be referred to as "strong". Moder...

В монографии дается полное описание синтаксиса порядка слов и синтаксиса субъектно-предикатных отношений в пяти современных языках скандинавской группы германской семьи - датском, норвежском, шведском, исландском, фарёрском, а также в языке древнейших скандинавских рукописных памятников и языке континентальных скандинавских текстов переходного пери...

This is an abstract of my 2001 talk "Синтаксис слабодарных элементов предложения в русском языке" (=The Syntax of Weak Stress Elements in Russian) given at the 2001 Congress "Русский язык: исторические судьбы и современность" (Lomonosov Moscow State University, 13-16 March 2001). Summary. Modern Russian has pronominal elements and particles that te...

The paper is devoted to Igor Mel'čuk's theory of zero lexemes and its applications in typology. The author accepts Mel'čuk's analysis of Modern Russian where postulating zero lexemes in the subject position is the best solution, but argues that some claims have to be modified if one turns to broader typological data. The notion of zero lexemes can...