Sussex R., Cubberley P. The Slavic Languages

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(3) Reflexive clitic suffix (postfix)

‘wash (oneself)’

East Slavic: Rus my

-sja Ukr my

ty-sja

West Slavic: Slk umyvat’ sa Sorb myc

South Slavic: B/C/S mı``ti se Blg mı

ja se

The stem, by definition, includes the root together with all its word-forming affixes,

but excluding inflexions and the reflexive. The form of both roots and affixes may

be modified, when certain elements are combined, for phonological (chapter 3) or

morphophonological (chapter 4) reasons.

The examples in (3) show that Slavic has important parallels with other

European languages of the ‘‘synthetic’’ morphological type (e.g. Latin, German

and the verb system of French), where individual affixes simultaneously realize

several morphological categories, in contrast with the more ‘‘analytic’’ patterns of

English. Nonetheless, some complex verb forms in Slavic have developed a more

analytic structure (5.5.5.): compare (4a) to (4b) within one language, and (5a) to

(5b–c) across languages:

(4) Synthetic and analytic structures

‘I shall read’ [Imprfv]:

(4a) Ukr

cyt- a

- ty- mu

read thematic vowel Inf Fut 1Sg

(4b) Ukr bu

d- u

cyt-a

-ty

be þ Fut 1Sg read Inf

(5) ‘I would have read’ [Masc]

(5a) Pol prze- czyt- a- ł- by-m

Prfv read thematic-vowel MascSg Cond-1Sg

(5b) Rus ja

by pro-

cit- a

-l

I Cond Prfv read thematic-vowel MascSg

(5c) Blg

stja

xdas˘am pro-

-l

AuxCond-1Sg that Aux-1Sg Prfv read MascSg

Similar examples are found in the virtual loss of cases in Bulgarian and

Macedonian, which has made these languages more of the analytic type, and has

forced prepositions to carry a heavier semantic and functional load, as in English.

While Czech has a genitive plural of v

eda ‘science’ in Akademie V

ed ‘Academy of

Sciences’, Bulgarian has Akade

mija na Nau

kite, literally ‘Academy of Sciences

[PlDef]’.

5.2 Morphological categories and structures 219

While case and verbal agreement are seen as part of inflexional morphology,

prepositions and particles are usually allocated to syntax. In the Slavic linguistic

tradition, however, there is a focus on the word (Rus sl

ovo) as a grammatical unit in

both morphology and phrase and sentence structure which emphasizes the central

position of the word in the Slavs’ conception of their language-structure.

5.3 Morphological word-classes

It is convenient to begin a discussion of morphological word-classes with the

traditional division of words into those which inflect and those which do not.

Non-inflecting words include conjunctions, prepositions, various invariant parti-

cles, interjections and exclamations:

(6) Invariant parts of speech

(6a) Conjunctions

‘and’ Rus, Bel, Blg, Mac, B/C/S i; Cz, Slk, Sorb a;Ukrta;

Sln in

‘that’ Rus

cto, Bel

sto, Ukr

co, Cz, Slk ˇze; Pol

ze; Blg

ce,

Mac deka, B/C/S, Sln da

(6b) Prepositions

‘in’ Rus, Blg, Mac, Sln, Cz, Slk v; Ukr, Bel v/u;

B/C/S u; Pol, Sorb w

‘before’ Rus, Ukr pe

red; Bel pe

rad ; Cz, Sorb pr

ed;

Blg, Mac, B/C/S, Sln, Slk pred; Pol przed

(6c) Particles

Conditional EastSl, Slk, Sln by

Question Rus, Bel, Cz, Slk, Blg, Mac, B/C/S li; Sorb -li

Sln ali ; Pol czy; Ukr cy; Bel ci

(6d) Interjections

‘perhaps’ Pol chyba; Blg xı

(6e) Exclamations

‘well’ Bel ox, oj; Sorb ach; Rus, Bel nu; Sorb no

‘hop, jump’ Sorb hop

‘splash’ Sorb plumps

Most simplex words in these categories are non-inflecting, and have the same form in

any position in the sentence. Exceptions, like the Belarusian variation between v, u

and u

in the form of the preposition ‘in’, are due to phonological factors (4.4.2).

However, the inflecting word-classes have historically contributed many words to

220 5. Morphology: inflexion

the invariant categories in the modern Slavic languages (7a–d). Prepositional

phrases, consisting principally of Preposition þ Noun, generally governing a follow-

ing noun phrase in the genitive (in those languages where it is still available), continue

to provide a productive source of compound preposition-like expressions (7e).

Impersonal constructions also show forms which may be identical to inflected end-

ings, but they do not form full paradigms (7f). Adverbs can be formed from gerunds

(7g) and from Preposition þ Noun combinations which have become calcified (7h):

(7) Invariant parts of speech derived from inflected forms

(7a) Conjunctions

‘because’ Rus potomu

´ˇ

cto, Pol dlatego

(lit. ‘‘for it, [that]’’)

(7b) Prepositions

‘thanks to’ Sorb dz

´akowano

, Rus blagodarja

(þ Dat)

‘in spite of’ Rus nesmotrja

na (þ Acc) (smotre

‘look’)

(7c) Interjections

‘of course’ Bel pra

da (lit. ‘‘truth’’ [NomSg])

‘absolutely’ Bel bezum

na (lit. ‘‘without condition’’)

(7d) Exclamations

‘goodness’! Bel ba

cjuxny!; Rus ba

tju

ski! (lit. ‘‘fathers!’’)

‘hell’! Bel

cort, Rus

rt (lit. ‘‘the devil!’’)

(7e) Compound prepositions

‘during’ Rus vte

nie [Acc] (lit. ‘‘in the course (of)’’)

Ukr na pr

otjazi [Loc] (

)

(7f) Impersonal forms

‘I am sorry that ...’

Rus mne ˇzal{,

cto ...

to-me pity, that ...

‘my feet are cold’

Ukr menı

olodno v noha

to-me cold in feet

(7g) Adverbs from gerunds

‘lying down’ Sorb le ˇzo

‘standing up’ Sorb stejo

(7h) Adverbs from prepositional phrases

‘meanwhile’ Sorb mjez-tym (lit. ‘‘between that’’)

‘in the afternoon’ Sorb po-połdnju (lit. ‘‘after mid-day’’)

5.3 Morphological word-classes 221

5.4 Inflexional categories

The inflecting word-classes, on the other hand, take different forms in different

grammatical contexts, depending on grammatical roles like subjects and objects,

and on agreement:

(8a) Rus ja ljubı

-l krası

v-uju de

sk-u

I love-PastMascSg beautiful-FemSgAcc girl-AccSg

‘I loved a/the beautiful girl’

(8b) Rus krası

v-aja de

sk-a ljubı

-la menja

beautiful-FemSgNom girl-NomSg love-PastFemSg me

‘the beautiful girl loved me’

From the point of view of the morphological categories expressed in their inflexions

(5.4), and the forms which these inflexions take in paradigms (5.5), we find a broad

division into two main types of inflecting words: the verbs; and the ‘‘nominals’’,

which include nouns, adjectives, pronouns, determiners, numerals, participles and,

to a limited extent, Czech gerunds, and which display these features – although not

all of these categories are represented in all forms of the relevant word-classes:

(9) Verbs only Verbs and nominals Nominals only

Tense Person Case

Aspect Gender Definiteness

Mood (incl. Renarration) Number Deixis

Voice

5.4.1 Number

The inflexional category of number is marked in Slavic on all inflecting parts of

speech, including the Bulgarian and Macedonian articles, and gerunds in Czech

(but not in the other languages). In personal and some other pronouns, number is a

lexical rather than an inflexional category (5.5.2–5.5.3). Number is an inherent

category in nouns, pronouns and nominalized forms of adjectives and participles.

It occurs through concord (6.2.1) in non-head members of the noun phrase, and in

predicates through agreement (6.2.2).

Indo-European and Proto-Slavic had three numbers: singular, dual (for two

objects, especially parts of the body), and plural. Only Sorbian and Slovenian

now preserve the dual number as a living category, and the other Slavic languages

now have only the opposition of singular and plural.

222 5. Morphology: inflexion

In modern Slavic the ability of the various numbers to refer to real-world entities

is largely similar to the situation in English. Singular noun phrases in Slavic, apart

from their expected ability to refer to singular countable and non-countable mass

referents, can also refer to what in English may be designated by plural nouns, for

instance ‘potatoes’ (as a dish to be eaten: Rus kart

ofel

[Sg] ). Such singular-only

(‘‘singularia tantum’’) words function as mass nouns. There are other words for

individual potatoes, which are pluralizable in the regular way, for instance by using

a related diminutive form (Rus kart

ska ‘(a) potato’, Pl kart

ski). There are also

collective nouns which are grammatically singular (Bel zver ‘beast’, zvjar

e ‘wild

beasts’), and a generic singular:

(10) Generic singular

(10a) Blg rab

oti

s, nı

sto ne izlı

work-2SgPres nothing Neg emerge-3SgPres

‘you work, and nothing comes of it’

(10b) Blg d˘arv

oto e raste

nie

tree-Def be-3SgPres plant

‘the tree is (a) plant’

Unlike English and like most European languages, referents which are distributed

on a ‘‘one each’’ basis are in the singular in Slavic where English has a plural:

(11) ‘‘Distributed plural’’

Rus be ˇza

li soba

ki, podnima

ja xv

ost

run-PastImprfv-Pl dog-Pl raising-Ger tail-AccSg

‘the dogs were running (along), with their tails raised’

Plural number refers to multiple entities, with the principal exceptions of the

‘‘authorial’’ ‘we’, and the polite use of 2 Person plural pronouns, found everywhere

except in Polish, which uses the words pan ‘man’, pani ‘woman’ and pan

stwo

‘people’, with 3 Person agreement (11.4.2):

(12) Politeness and plural number

(12a) Rus ty

ne zna

‘you [Sg ¼ Familiar] don’t know’

ne zna

ete ‘you [Pl ¼ Polite] don’t know’

(12b) Pol ty nie wiesz ‘you [Sg ¼ Familiar] don’t know’

pan nie wie ‘man (¼ you [Sg ¼ Polite]) don’t know’

There are also ‘‘generalized plurals’’, but without an expressed subject and with

3 Person plural inflexions, corresponding functionally to French on, German man:

5.4 Inflexional categories 223

(13) Generalized plurals

Blg tu

k proda

vat zelen

here sell-3PlPres vegetables [SgColl]

‘here they sell vegetables/vegetables are sold here’

Plural-only nouns (‘‘pluralia tantum’’) are more numerous in Slavic than they are in

English. They refer not only to nouns with plural component parts, like eyeglasses

and underpants (Blg o

cila

‘eyeglasses’, ga

sti ‘underpants’), but also to what to the

anglophone mind are semantically singular entities like watches and cabbage soup.

A given object may have different numbers in different languages:

(14) Pluralia tantum Singular forms

Proper names

‘Bohemia

(þ Moravia)’

cechy

‘Czechoslovakia’ Cz C

eskoslovensko

Materials:

‘firewood’ Rus drova

Slk drevo

Realia:

‘watch’ Slk hodinky Pol zegarek

B/C/S u`` ra

Cz hodiny Blg

cas

ovnik

Rus

casy

‘cabbage soup’ Rus, Ukr

ci Ukr kapusnja

Collectives:

‘peas’ Rus gor

ox, Pol groch

Most abstracts:

‘music’ Cz hubda, Rus mu

zyka

In many parts of the declension systems the expressions of number in the various

Slavic paradigms have continued to be significantly distinct. In Bulgarian there is

even a special set of nominal inflexions for impersonal masculine nouns used only

with numerals (5.5.1). However, distinct inflexions associated with number are

not found in personal pronouns; in some relative (‘who’, ‘which’), interrogative

(‘who?’, ‘which?’, ‘what?’), indefinite (‘someone’, ‘something’) or negative (‘no-one’,

‘nothing’) pronouns, all of which have inflexions typical of either singular or plural

paradigms (5.5.2.2); or in a small number of non-inflecting nouns and adjectives,

where number is shown only through concord and agreement (6.2.1–6.2.2).

There is also the decline of the dual and its tendency to merge with the plural,

even in Sorbian and Slovenian, as it has done in all the other Slavic languages. One

224 5. Morphology: inflexion

of the main relicts of the dual inflexion across many Slavic languages is found in the

palatalized plural forms of parts of the body: compare the singular and plural

forms of ‘eye’, ‘ear’ and ‘hand’, where the palatalization of the stem-final velars /k/

and /x/ (orthographically Cyrillic t, Roman h, ch) results in /c

s/, a typical feature

of the former dual:

(15) ‘eye’ ‘ear’ ‘hand’

Rus

oko,

ci (poetic) u

xo, u

´ˇ

si (ruka

,ru

ki)

Bel v

oka, v

cy vu

xa, vu

´ˇ

sy (ruka

,ru

ki)

Ukr

oko,

ci (vu

xo, vu

xa)(ruka

,ru

ky)

Pol oko, oczy ucho, uszy re˛ka, re˛ce

Cz oko, o

ci ucho, u

si ruka, ruce

Slk oko, o

ci ucho, u

si (ruka, ruky)

B/C/S o%ko, o%k

ci u`` ho, u``

si ru

ka, ru

Blg ok

o, o

cı

o, u

sı

r˘aka

,r˘ace

Mac oko, o

ci uvo, u

si raka, race

Some of these forms are obviously cognate with the regular duals of modern

Sorbian and Slovenian:

(16) ‘eye’ ‘ear’ ‘hand’

Sorb Sg woko wucho ruka

Du wo

ci wu

si ruce

Pl wo

ci wu

si ruki

Sln Sg ok

ouh

oro

Du o

si u

si rokı

Pl o

cı

sa roke

Other forms, however, show regularized plurals (bracketed in (15)). And even

where the old dual remains, there is sometimes a regularized plural for special

uses, usually metaphorical: Slovak has regular oka

‘metaphorical eyes’, ucha

‘metaphorical ears’, as in morske

oka

‘sea eyes’ (e.g. in the name of a lake) and

ucha

na hrncoch ‘ears [¼

handles] on cooking pots’. More regular survivals of the

dual are found in specific case forms of nouns, like the dative/instrumental/locative

plural in B/C/S ˇze`` nama ‘women’ or pr

ozorima ‘window’, or the -ma form in the

instrumental plural of colloquial Czech knihama ‘books’ [InstrPl] for Standard

Czech knihami (10.4.3). Another survival of the dual is found in the standard use in

Slavic of what looks like a genitive singular – actually the old masculine nominative

dual – of masculine and neuter nouns with the numbers 2–4: Bel pe

snjar ‘singer’,

dva pesnjara

‘2 singers’ (sometimes referred to as a ‘‘paucal’’ form). The dual number

in Sorbian and Slovenian is also becoming unstable in dialectal and colloquial

5.4 Inflexional categories 225

use, giving way to the plural (Stone, 1993a: 614; Priestly, 1993: 448). It is likely to

remain operational in the standard languages by virtue of being enshrined in the

authoritative prescriptive grammars of these languages: as Lencek observes (1982:

186), the dual has been saved in Slovenian through the ‘intervention of grammar-

ians’. On the other hand, the remains of the dual are also being slowly eroded in

languages like Slovak by pressure from the other, now regular, inflexional para-

digms (Mistrı

k, 1985).

We discuss concord and agreement with numerals in the context of morphosyntax

in chapter 6, and number as a lexical category, including the typically Slavic

collective numerals, in chapter 9.

5.4.2 Case

Case is an inflexional category of all the inflecting parts of speech in Slavic: even the

verb shows case in the declension of participles, though not in the gerunds. The

number of cases and the number of distinct case forms differ between languages,

parts of speech and their paradigms. Proto-Slavic had seven cases: nominative,

vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental and locative.

Of these, the vocative was found only in singular nouns. Though it is not a ‘‘case’’

in the syntactic sense, for our purposes it will be treated as such on the basis of

having a distinct inflexion. This is also the traditional approach.

Case forms, where they did exist, showed considerable syncretism. The plural,

and even more so the dual, showed fewer distinct case forms than the singular; and

feminine i-stem nouns and neuter consonant-stem nouns showed fewer distinct

forms than nouns of the a/ja or o/jo declensions (5.5.1).

This general pattern of distinctive forms has been handed down to modern

Slavic with several changes. The most drastic change is found in Bulgarian and

Macedonian, which have lost all but some remains of the vocative, and an ‘‘oblique’’

case which occurs only in some paradigms:

(17) Non-nominative cases: Bulgarian and Macedonian

Bulgarian:

Oblique case: masculine singular nouns with the definite article

Vocative case: masculine and feminine singular nouns

Macedonian:

Oblique case: masculine names and nouns denoting persons and

relationships (optional accusative, singular only)

Vocative case: masculine and feminine singular nouns denoting

persons

226 5. Morphology: inflexion

The form of the vocative varies with gender and number:

(18a) Bulgarian: Nominative  Vocative

Nom Voc

Blg Masculine: u

cı

tel ‘teacher’ u

cı

telju

ote

c ‘father’

juna

k ‘youth’ juna

ko/juna

Feminine: sestra

‘sister’ se

stro

Ba˘ lga

rija ‘Bulgaria’ B˘alga

rijo

(18b) Macedonian: Nominative  Vocative

Nom Voc

Mac Masculine Personal: vnuk ‘grandson’ vnuku

Feminine: zˇena ‘wife’ zˇeno

The non-oblique (‘‘full’’) definite form is found in subjects and nominal predicates,

while the oblique (‘‘short’’) form occurs in other contexts. Paradigms lacking the

oblique form use the full form regardless (note that Bulgarian orthography uses

a for word-final /

a/ (5.4.3, 5.5.1):

(19a) Blg grad

t [full form] ema

l˘ak ‘the town is small’

(19b) Blg Dimı

t˘ar e mexa

nik

at [full form] ‘Dimitar is the mechanic’

(19c) Blg vı

ˇzdam mexa

nika

[short form] ‘I see the mechanic’

(20a) Mac sin mi gleda konjot [full form] ‘my son sees the horse’

(20b) Mac konjot gleda sina [short form] ‘the horse sees my son’

In the other languages, the general reduction of the number of different paradigms

has resulted in considerable interference by individual paradigms and case forms

on others, especially as parts of speech changed their inflexional paradigm. The

feminine a/ja inflexion -ax, for the locative plural, for instance, has become widely

used in East and West Slavic for all classes of nouns: compare Rus kostja

x ‘bones’

[LocPl], konja

x ‘horses’ [LocPl], to the Proto-Slavic forms (5.5.1). Other changes

have involved the number and distribution of cases. The vocative has been largely

lost in Russian, Belarusian, Slovak and Slovenian, reducing the number of cases to

six. And the locative has tended to disappear as a separate form, becoming identical

with the dative or instrumental:

B/C/S locative ¼ dative singular and plural in all nouns

Slovenian locative ¼ dative singular in all nouns

5.4 Inflexional categories 227

Ukrainian locative ¼ dative singular in most nouns, dative or instrumental

singular in all pronouns

Polish locative ¼ instrumental singular in all masculine and neuter

adjectives.

On the other hand, in some nouns Russian shows a second (partitive) genitive in -u

and a second locative in stressed -u

(Masc) or -ı

(Fem), so bringing up the maximum

number of cases to eight (syr ‘cheese’, sy

ra GenSg, sy

ru GenSg

; sad ‘garden’, sa

PrepnlSg, sadu

LocSg

; kr

ovi ‘blood’ PrepnlSg, krovı

LocSg

). There is a terminolo-

gical issue here, since some grammars of Russian use the term ‘‘prepositional’’ for the

locative. We shall follow the convention in Slavic by using ‘‘locative’’, as in Proto-

Slavic. We shall keep the term ‘‘prepositional’’ for those instances where there is a

distinction between the locational and non-locational meanings.

Of the six or seven (counting the vocative) common cases across modern Slavic,

the nominative is the citation form. It is marked either by a zero inflexion, for

instance in the masculine o/jo-declension or the feminine i-declension; or by an

inflexion which is often used as a label for the paradigm, for instance in the feminine

a/ja-declension. The only other case which can have a zero inflexion is the genitive

plural. With feminines, for instance, if the nominative singular has a zero inflexion

the genitive plural will normally not, and vice versa:

(21) NomSg GenPl

Rus da

m-a ‘lady’ dam-ø

nja

nj-a ‘nanny’ njan-ø (phonologically /n

a  n

kost

-ø ‘bone’ kost-e

All other cases are marked by (non-zero) inflexions. The distinctiveness of these

systems of inflexions varies considerably within and across paradigms.

Within paradigms the question of the distinctiveness of case forms is a central

one. Leaving aside the dual, some paradigms, like the masculine/neuter o/jo and

feminine a/ja, have retained much of the distinctiveness of their forms: compare the

Proto-Slavic forms in tables 5.1 and 5.4 with those of the modern languages

(tables 5.2, 5.5). Other paradigms, however, show lower, and in some instances

declining, distinctiveness, as in the feminine i-declension (tables 5.6, 5.7).

Distinctive case forms allow the carriage of distinctive grammatical functions and

meaning. Syncretic case forms (the identity of case distinctions following loss)

throws the onus back on the syntax, and/or the lexicon and the context, for the

expression of meaning. The limiting case of syncretism is the word which lacks

inflexions altogether, as happens with borrowed words and some home-grown

neologisms, particularly acronyms (8.2.3, 9.5.3, 9.6.1), before they establish their

228 5. Morphology: inflexion