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Chapter 10. Feature-based competition: A thousand years of Slavonic possessives
Abstract
Competition takes many forms. A newly identified type of competition involves the featural specification of one of the competitors as a key factor. In the particular instance treated here, whether a given item has a competitor depends on its number (and sometimes its person). We focus on the use of the genitive case versus adjective-like forms in possessive expressions (broadly understood). The data come primarily from the Slavonic languages, where a surprising original system of possessive pronouns competing with personal pronouns has played out rather differently through the family. We find a variety of outcomes, from conservative to highly innovative, with some instances of competitors settling into different niches.
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Linguistics, and typology in particular, can have a bright future. We justify this optimism by discussing comparability from two angles. First, we take the opportunity presented by this special issue of Linguistic Typology to pause for a moment and make explicit some of the logical underpinnings of typological sciences, linguistics included, which we believe are worth reminding ourselves of. Second, we give a brief illustration of comparison, and particularly measurement, within modern typology.
We present three case studies of the distribution of adjective + head noun (‘adjective’) vs. head noun + noun-genitive (‘genitive’) constructions based on datasets extracted from the Russian National Corpus. Each case study focuses on a different set of non-head referents: case study 1 examines non-heads that are country names (like ‘Norway’ as in norvežskij N vs. N Norvegii), case study 2 looks at non-heads that refer to leaders (like ‘president’ as in prezidentskij N vs. N prezidenta), and the focus of case study 3 is non-heads that are person names (like ‘Petja’ as in Petina N vs. N Peti). Head nouns in all three datasets were annotated for the same set of nine semantic categories representing an Individuation Hierarchy. This hierarchy accounts for only some of the patterns that we see across the case studies. Other patterns can be explained in terms of: ‘uniqueness’, which favors the genitive construction when the head noun is a unique entity; ‘salience’, which favors the genitive construction when the non-head is more salient than the head noun; and ‘obligatoriness’, which favors the genitive construction when the head is a relational noun that presupposes a specific non-head.
This paper examines the semantic factors involved in three crucial questions about suppletion in verbs: what verbs develop suppletion, what verbs contribute to suppletive paradigms, and how roots are distributed in suppletive paradigms. My analysis shows that the development of suppletion is more orderly than commonly believed. Specifically, semantic distance and other semantic factors facilitate explanations of suppletive patterns that earlier studies focusing on typological and morphological considerations could not account for. I apply semantic maps to well‐known cases of suppletion in addition to underreported and previously unreported patterns, including Hungarian data displaying a previously unknown type of suppletion—non‐aligned overlapping suppletion—where forms shared by separate lexemes belong to distinct parts of their paradigms. I contextualize semantic factors in the relationships between synchronic types and diachronic sources. My analysis refines our understanding of suppletion types and shows the logic behind suppletive distributions.
This article analyses two types of possessive constructions in Czech: pronominal attributive possession and adjectival attributive possession. By means of a usage-based approach to language, the aim of the present corpus investigation is to reveal relevant patterns of grammar and usage in order to explain the evolution of the concerned constructions. The main focus is put on spoken language. I analyse the given data from the Czech corpora of both spoken (ORAL2013) and written language (SYN2010). I test the hypotheses concerning different frequency distributions, and the position of the possessor on the prominence hierarchies. The results support functional explanations of emergence of the pronominal and adjectival constructions, based on the prominent status of the possessor.
The chapter addresses a set of semantic, syntactic, and categorial criteria for canonical attributive modification and canonical inalienable possession. Canonical attributive modification is expressed by a dedicated word class (adjective) denoting a property concept, while canonical possession is inalienable possession of a relation noun (kin term, (body) part). Irina Nikolaeva and Andrew Spencer argue that modification-by-noun and alienable possession constructions can be analysed as non-canonical variants of canonical modification and possession. In many languages the same morphosyntax is used to express various combinations of the four constructions and the authors explore some of the typological variation in terms of selective violations of canonical properties. © editorial matter and organization Dunstan Brown, Marina Chumakina, and Greville G. Corbett 2013. © the chapters their several authors 2013. All rights reserved.
In this cross-linguistic study we present parallels between (a) the stochastic patterns found in corpus studies of English prenominal possessives, and (b) the rule-governed, categorical features of a highly constrained prenominal possessive construction found in some Germanic, Slavic, and Romance languages. The well-known English tendency for prenominal possessor NPs to be low-weight, animate, and discourse-old or highly accessible corresponds to categorical requirements in what we call the Monolexemic Possessor Construction (MLP). This construction is recognizable by its pre-nominal, one-word, animate possessor that is highly accessible in the discourse context. We identify an accessibility hierarchy of nominal categories in which the MLP can be expressed. This hierarchy is consistent with all 17 languages with MLPs we have found. We show that this accessibility hierarchy (pronoun< proper noun< kinship term< common noun) is a function of the intrinsic discourse-pragmatic features of these nominal categories. While the categorical restriction to pronoun and proper noun possessors in Icelandic, German, and Russian may be largely grammaticized,
we show that the discourse-pragmatic constraint is recognizably active in Czech and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. These results complement studies that attempt
to understand how language structure responds to communicative forces and processing constraints.
A key notion in understanding language is ‘possible word (lexeme)’. While there are lexemes that are internally homogeneous and externally consistent, we find others with splits in their internal structure (morphological paradigm) and inconsistencies in their external behavior (syntactic requirements). I first explore the characteristics of the most straightforward lexemes, in order to establish a point in the theoretical space from which we can calibrate the real examples we find. I then schematize the interesting phenomena that deviate from this idealization, including suppletion, syncretism, deponency, and defectiveness. Next I analyze the different ways in which lexemes are ‘split’ by such phenomena. I set out a typology of possible splits, along four dimensions: splits that are (i) based on the composition/feature signature of the paradigm versus those based solely on morphological form; (ii) motivated (following a boundary motivated from outside the paradigm) versus purely morphology-internal (‘morphomic’); (iii) regular (extending across the lexicon) versus irregular (lexically specified); (iv) externally relevant versus irrelevant: we expect splits to be internal to the lexeme, but some have external relevance (they require different syntactic behaviors).
I identify instances of these four dimensions separately: they are orthogonal, and therefore not dependent on each other. Their interaction gives a substantial typology, and it proves to be surprisingly complete: the possibilities specified are all attested. The typology also allows for the unexpected patterns of behavior to overlap in particular lexemes, producing some remarkable examples. Such examples show that the notion ‘possible word’ is more challenging than many linguists have realized.
The approach of Canonical Typology has proved fruitful for investigating a range of problems in syntax, inflectional morphology and most recently in phonology. It is therefore logical to take a canonical approach to derivational morphology. It provides a new perspective on some old issues, showing how previous key ideas fit together. The criteria proposed prove to have some degree of external justification. And from the point of view of canonical typology the results are particularly promising, since the criteria are interestingly different from those proposed in other domains.
Sometimes languages present speakers with choices among rival forms, such as the Russian forms ostrič’ vs. obstrič’ ‘cut hair’ and proniknuv vs. pronikši ‘having penetrated’. The choice of a given form is often influenced by various considerations involving the meaning and the environment (syntax, morphology, phonology). Understanding the behavior of rival forms is crucial to understanding the form-meaning relationship of language, yet this topic has not received as much attention as it deserves. Given the variety of factors that can influence the choice of rival forms, it is necessary to use statistical models in order to accurately discover which factors are significant and to what extent. The traditional model for this kind of data is logistical regression, but recently two new models, called ‘tree & forest’ and ‘naive discriminative learning’ have emerged as alternatives. We compare the performance of logistical regression against the two new models on the basis of four datasets reflecting rival forms in Russian. We find that the three models generally provide converging analyses, with complementary advantages. After identifying the significant factors for each dataset, we show that different sets of rival forms occupy different regions in a space defined by variance in meaning and environment.
Sometimes dismissed as linguistically epiphenomenal, inflectional paradigms are, in reality, the interface of a language's morphology with its syntax and semantics. Drawing on abundant evidence from a wide range of languages (French, Hua, Hungarian, Kashmiri, Latin, Nepali, Noon, Old Norse, Sanskrit, Turkish, Twi and others), Stump examines a variety of mismatches between words' content and form, including morphomic patterns, defectiveness, overabundance, syncretism, suppletion, deponency and polyfunctionality. He demonstrates that such mismatches motivate a new grammatical architecture in which two kinds of paradigms are distinguished: content paradigms, which determine word forms' syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation, and form paradigms, which determine their inflectional realization. In this framework, the often nontrivial linkage between a lexeme's content paradigm and its stems' form paradigm is the nexus at which incongruities of content and form are resolved. Stump presents clear and precise analyses of a range of morphological phenomena in support of this theoretical innovation.
Overabundance is defined as the situation in which two (or more) inflectional forms are available to realize the same cell in an inflectional paradigm. The paper presents a general introduction to overabundance, using the Canonical Typology framework. After an overview of ways in which overabundance can occur in paradigms, several criteria are introduced and discussed that allow us to establish a canonical typology of overabundance. Furthermore, various types of conditions on the selection of one or another of the forms in a relation of overabundance are reviewed. Studies of several cases from different languages are used to illustrate more and less canonical, and more or less conditioned, cases of overabundance.
Complementary distribution is a consequence of a general principle of evolutionary biology, competitive exclusion, which further provides a uniform account of both allomorphic variation and the rivalry between affixes in terms of competition for distributional resources. The distribution of inflectional competitors is a type of spatial partitioning, restricted by the morphosyntactic system of a language, while derivational rivals benefit from having to name externally driven concepts. The English suffixes -ce, -cy, and -ntial are analyzed in detail as examples of competition for distribution.
Competition between alternative ways of realizing a certain category or concept, is a cross-sectional phenomenon and a perennial issue in linguistics. The present outline reviews approaches to competition in morphology across the history of linguistics, from Ancient Indian grammatical doctrines up to present-day morphological theories. After dealing with terminological and conceptual issues, the paper features the different guises in which rivalry of forms, rules, and schemas has been assessed in language theories and grammatical traditions from Greek and Roman antiquity up to the nineteenth century. It then focuses on structuralist and generative viewpoints, the notion of blocking, the organization of the lexicon, e.g., in inheritance-based models and in Optimality Theory, and the regularity-irregularity debate in psycholinguistics and computational linguistics. An overview of the contributions to the volume closes the paper.
In canonical typology, a phenomenon that involves several dimensions of potential variation is seen as subsuming a range of deviations from a canonical ideal based on the definitional extremes of those dimensions. The canonical case of morphotactic competition is one in which (i) two rules of affixation are both eligible to apply in the realization of some word form w; (ii) the set of morphosyntactic properties realized by one rule is a subset of that realized by the other rule; (iii) the two rules compete for the same position in the sequence of rule applications defining w’s morphology—that is, they belong to the same block of disjunctive rules; and (iv) the competition is resolved in favor of the rule with the narrower domain of application. One apparent deviation from this canonical pattern is the competition of a single rule application with that of a sequence of rules. In some such cases, the single rule application overrides that of the sequence of rules; in others, the sequence of rule applications overrides that of the single rule. Instances of both kinds are widely observable; Swahili verb inflection exemplifies both patterns. Various approaches to this sort of deviation can be shown to be stipulative or simply unworkable. By contrast, the independently motivated notion of rule conflation makes it possible to assimilate the apparently deviant patterns of morphotactic competition exemplified by Swahili to the canonical pattern.
The papers in this volume focus on the dynamics of one specific cell in morphological paradigms – the genitive. The high amount of diachronic and synchronic variation in all Germanic languages makes the genitive a particularly interesting phenomenon since it allows us, for example, to examine comparable but slightly different diachronic pathways, the relation of synchronic and diachronic variation, and the interplay of linguistic levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics). The findings in this book enhance our understanding of the genitive not only by describing its properties, but also by discussing its demarcation from functional competitors and related grammatical items. Under-researched aspects of well-described languages as well as from lesser-known languages (Faroese, Frisian, Luxembourgish, Yiddish) are examined. The papers included are methodologically diverse and the topics covered range from morphology, syntax, and semantics to the influence of (normative) grammars and the perception and prestige of grammatical items.
Canonical Old Church Slavonic (OCS) is the earliest attestation of Slavonic and our only evidence for many Common Slavonic features. Since virtually all of the texts are translations from Greek, separating Greek syntactic features from native Slavonic ones is not straightforward. This article sets out to examine how we can distinguish between native syntax and syntactic influence using statistical modelling (classification trees) and parallel data in two case studies, both extreme cases. The first case study deals with OCS word order, which is known to follow the Greek to a very great extent. The second one concerns adnominal possessive constructions, where OCS displays great independence and translates Greek adnominal genitives into at least five different constructions. In the first case study, we see that Greek word order outranks all other predictors in the statistical model. In the second case study we see that Greek morphosyntactic predictors are outranked by a number of semantic and pragmatic factors. The final classification model also provides a better understanding of the relative weight of these factors than the literature has previously provided. The differences between the results in the two case studies are encouraging: Similar models can be used to weigh language-external against language-internal factors in the less straightforward cases in between those two poles, if we have sufficiently large and sophisticated data sets.
Genitive is basically an adnominal case and in fact, a basic adnominal case. Its core function is to mark a nominal whose referent (possessor) is connected by a possessive relation to the individual expressed by the phrase within which the genitive phrase is embedded (possessum). Hence, genitive constructions are a kind of possessive construction (possessive) and any discussion of genitives requires a discussion of possessives in general. Possessive relations are usually induced from the context or the lexical semantics of the corresponding nominals. Since genitive marking is not uniform, it is convenient to begin its description with an excursion into formal types of possessives in general. Possessives utilise various means of marking, which can be classified according to numerous parameters, including the locus of marking, indexing, and the degree of synthesis. Genitive constructions often contrast with possessives of different kinds, which occasionally restricts the use of a genitive marker to certain classes of nominals. This article examines the functional varieties and polysemy patterns of the genitive case. © editorial matter and organization Andrej Malchukov and Andrew Spencer 2009, chapters their several authors 2009. All rights reserved.
This grammar provides a grammatical description of Palula, an Indo-Aryan language of the Shina group.
The language is spoken by about 10,000 people in the Chitral district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. This is the first extensive description of the formerly little-documented Palula language, and is one of only a few in-depth studies available for languages in the extremely multilingual Hindukush-Karakoram region. The grammar is based on original fieldwork data, collected over the course of about ten years, commencing in 1998. It is primarily in the form of recorded, mainly narrative, texts, but supplemented by targeted elicitation as well as notes of observed language use. All fieldwork was conducted in close collaboration with the Palula-speaking community, and a number of native speakers took active part in the process of data gathering, annotation and data management. The main areas covered are phonology, morphology and syntax, illustrated with a large number of example items and utterances, but also a few selected lexical topics of some prominence have received a more detailed treatment as part of the morphosyntactic structure. Suggestions for further research that should be undertaken are given throughout the grammar. The approach is theory-informed rather than theory-driven, but an underlying functional-typological framework is assumed. Diachronic development is taken into account, particularly in the area of morphology, and comparisons with other languages and references to areal phenomena are included insofar as they are motivated and available. The description also provides a brief introduction to the speaker community and their immediate environment.
Online access link: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/82
Features are a central concept in linguistic analysis. They are the basic building blocks of linguistic units, such as words. For many linguists they offer the most revealing way to explore the nature of language. Familiar features are Number (singular, plural, dual, …), Person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and Tense (present, past, …). Features have a major role in contemporary linguistics, from the most abstract theorizing to the most applied computational applications, yet little is firmly established about their status. They are used, but are little discussed and poorly understood. In this unique work, Corbett brings together two lines of research: how features vary between languages and how they work. As a result, the book is of great value to the broad range of perspectives of those who are interested in language.
The Oxford Handbook of Case provides a comprehensive account of research on case and the morphological and syntactic phenomena associated with it. The semantic roles and grammatical relations indicated by case are fundamental to the whole system of language and have long been a central concern of descriptive and theoretical linguistics. The book opens with an synoptic overview of the main lines of research in the field, which sets out the main issues, challenges, and debates. Articles then report on the state of play in theoretical, typological, diachronic, and psycholinguistic research. They assess cross-linguistic work on case and case systems and evaluate a variety of theoretical approaches. They also examine current issues and debates from historical, areal, socio-linguistic, and psycholinguistic perspectives. The final part of the book consists of a set of overview articles of case systems representative of some of the world's major language families. © editorial matter and organization Andrej Malchukov and Andrew Spencer 2009, chapters their several authors 2009. All rights reserved.
This article argues that the syntax of the word is distinct and informationally encapsulated from the syntax of phrases, and that this is responsible for a series of basic and robust effects. It also provides a careful criticism of the assumptions and analyses of a particular version of the Distributed Morphology view, showing that they cannot actually avoid the distinction between word-level and phrase-level syntax. Lexical Hypothesis suggests that the system of words in a language is independent of the system of phrases in a language in a particular way. The arguments against the Lexical Hypothesis consist in showing that there is some slippage between the different notions of word. The clitic/affix distinction under this hypothesis is addressed. © 2007 editorial matter and organization Gillian Ramchand and Charles Reiss the chapters their various authors. All rights reserved.
This book is a functional-typological study of possession splits in European languages. It shows that genetically and structurally diverse languages such as Icelandic, Welsh, and Maltese display possessive systems which are sensitive to semantically based distinctions reminiscent of the alienability correlation. These distinctions are grammatically relevant in many European languages because they require dedicated constructions. What makes these split possessive systems interesting for the linguist is the interaction of semantic criteria with pragmatics and syntax. Neutralisation of distinctions occurs under focus. The same happens if one of the constituents of a possessive construction is syntactically heavy. These effects can be observed in the majority of the 50 sample languages. Possessive splits are strong in those languages which are outside the Standard Average European group. The bulk of the European languages do not behave much differently from those non-European languages for which possession splits are reported. The book reveals interesting new facts about European languages and possession to typologists, universals researchers, and areal linguists.
The genitive case is commonly defined as a nominal inflectional category, mostly expressed by a suffix, which marks a dependency relationship of the noun phrase with respect to another noun phrase and conveys a possessive meaning. However, this is really only the prototype of what a ‘genitive’ can be, or maybe even the linguist’s prototype. The fifth volume of the series Case and Grammatical Relations across Languages, devoted to the genitive construction in Indo-European languages (Slavic: Russian; Germanic: German and Swedish; Romance: French and Romanian) and languages belonging to other branches (Niger-Congo: Bantu; Uralic, Finnic: Finnish, Andic, Northern-Caucasian: Northern Akhvakh), shows the ample cross-linguistic variation with respect to meaning, morphology syntax and even informational structure. It offers insight in the different ways these languages encode possession and adnominal relationships and is of interest for scholars in typological, comparative and historical linguistics as well as in morphosyntax and its semantic and pragmatic correlates.
This article discusses the niche role that the oblique genitive of the type the friend of John’s occupies in the context of genitive variation. The article shows that the oblique genitive should be considered an independent construction which competes marginally in two syntactic contexts with the s-genitive (as in John's friend) and the of-genitive (as in the friend of John). The first context is one in which all three constructions function as the predicative complement of the clause (e.g. He is a friend of John's / John's friend / a friend of John). Note that in this context the definiteness effect of the s-genitive is downplayed, so that competition is possible with indefiniteness of the other two constructions. The second context is one where the oblique genitive and the of-genitive are introduced by the determiner the. Contrary to the claim that oblique genitive constructions introduced by the definite article must receive restrictive modification of the head (see e.g. Barker 1998; Lyons 1986), the quantitative data presented in this article reveal that oblique genitives introduced by the determiner the are not confined to pre- or postmodification of the head but can occur, albeit rarely, without any modification as in the example the executor of Sir Ralph’s.The article further compares the oblique genitive, s-genitive and of-genitive with respect to the following five features: noun-headed vs pronoun dependent; animacy of the dependent; length of the noun-headed dependent; determiner of the head; and the semantic relations that can hold between head (e.g. friend) and dependent (e.g. John). The most intriguing theoretical conclusion is that the semantic relations available to head and dependent in the oblique genitive are a subset of those found in the s-genitive, which, again constitute a subset of those that exist in the of-genitive. This means that variation between all three constructions is not only restricted to the two syntactic contexts outlined above but also to a shared set of semantic relations.
This article is a survey of quantitative research on the choice between the s-genitive and the of-genitive in English. It provides a detailed and critical review of the methodological problems and advances as well as major findings and how these have been treated in theoretical frameworks. The article concludes with a discussion of objectives and challenges for future research. It is argued that research into English genitive variation not only enhances our knowledge of this specific case of syntactic variation but also helps us to further understand the mechanisms of syntactic alternations in general.
This paper presents a survey of syntactic contexts that favor a prenominal/postnominal placement of adjective attributes in Old Russian (focusing on possessives). The placement can be seen as being conditioned by adjacent words or by constructions in which a noun phrase participates (including prepositional phrases). Yet such analysis by no means excludes more traditional motivation in terms of information structure, but rather calls for further refinement of this motivation.
Аннотация
В статье рассматривается влияние синтаксического контекста на препозицию/постпозицию атрибутов в древнерусском языке (в основном на материале притяжательных местоимений). Позиция атрибута коррелирует с ближайшим контекстом или с конструкциями, в которые включена именная группа (в том числе предложная). Однако такой анализ не исключает более традиционных объяснений порядка слов в терминах информационной структуры, а скорее требует их дальнейшего уточнения.