Sussex R., Cubberley P. The Slavic Languages

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The development of the different forms of secondary gender, especially in the

plural, is another, more complex, issue. The special animate nominative forms of

Czech and Slovak, and the differences between virile and animate which distinguish

Polish and Upper Sorbian, look like an extension of the same principle, that

animate agents require special attention, and human agents most of all. Perhaps

because the homophony of nominative–accusative in feminine nouns was old

(Proto-Slavic), it did not attract attention, whereas the old distinction in the

masculines provided an opportunity for retaining a special nominative form,

used by the West Slavic languages for either animate masculine or virile masculine,

extended further to the accompanying adjectival system.

6.2.4.5 Dative

The dative’s primary function is that of indirect object, which it does without pre-

positions (except in Bulgarian and Macedonian nouns, which require prepositions;

for inflexion, see 5.4.2). Its use without prepositions for directional motion is rare:

(100a) B/C/S priblı

zˇiti se gra

du ‘to approach the town’

The ‘‘attributive dative’’ may be used for possession:

(100b) B/C/S

ona je Mı%los

u se

stra ‘she is Milos

’s sister’

Slk rodic

ia ti es

te zˇiju

? ‘are your parents still alive?’

With prepositions it is used for the expression of direction ‘toward’ (using

especially k-), ending up close(r), but not necessarily ‘in’ or ‘on’, as opposed

to the assumed arrival and entry of the accusative. This distinction is, however,

not a clear one except in the case of personal destinations (arriving at someone’s

place):

(101) B/C/S kre

nuli smo kva

ros

i ‘we set off for town’

Rus my

li kse

veru ‘we were walking northwards’

pojd

em kVa

ne ‘let’s go to Vanya’s place’

Pol droga ku miastu ‘the road to town’

Slk blı

zit’ sa

ku chlapcom ‘to approach the boys’

Otherwise, there is no consistency of prepositional use across the area.

6.2.4.6 Instrumental

The instrumental (Wierzbicka, 1980) without prepositions expresses instrument

(‘with’) (102a), means (‘by’) (102b), and the agent in passive constructions (102c):

(102a) B/C/S se``c

i sa%blj



om ‘to cut with a sword’

6.2 Syntactic roles and relations 339

(102b) Slk ı

st’ autobusom ‘to go by bus’

(102c) Bel s

ˇa

sce stvara

ecca ljudz

mı

‘happiness is created by people’

Some of these meanings are realized only by prepositions, not always with the

instrumental case:

(103a) Sln pelja

ti se z vla

kom [Instr] ‘to go by train’

(103b) Sorb pisac

z kulijom [Instr] ‘to write with a ball-point pen’

cf. (103c) Pol uniwersytet został zało

zony przez kobiete˛ [Acc]

‘the university was founded by a woman’

The instrumental can also be used in the predicate after the copula or semi-

copulative verbs, often as a free variant, but in principle expressing notions of non-

permanence (see 6.2.4.2).

With prepositions most common is the expression of accompaniment (‘with’,

using s/z):

(104) Rus ona

s bra

tom ‘she’s gone out with (her) brother’

Slk chlieb s maslom ‘bread with butter’

In location, it expresses relative location, for example ‘above’ (nad ), ‘below’

(pod ), ‘behind’ (za), ‘in front of ’ (p(e)red ) (the last also usable in the time sense of

‘before’ or ‘ago’, (105b) ) (some of these may take the accusative where motion is

involved – see 6.2.4.3):

(105a) B/C/S za vra

tima ‘behind the door’

nad vo



om ‘over the water’

Slk pod stolom ‘under the table’

za domom ‘behind the house’

(105b) B/C/S pred u

lazom ‘in front of the entrance’

pred

odlaskom ‘before one’s departure’

Sln pred hı

o ‘in front of the house’

pred 14 dne

vi ‘a fortnight ago’

pred odho

dom ‘prior to departure’

6.2.4.7 Locative

The locative is in many ways the least problematic of the cases. It is now used only

with prepositions, hence its common name ‘‘prepositional case’’, and takes its

meaning predominantly from the preposition. The key area of interest is when

the same preposition can also govern a case other than the locative. There are two

340 6. Syntactic categories and morphosyntax

principal types: when the preposition can also govern an accusative; and when

there are two forms of the locative itself.

A preposition can govern either an accusative or a locative in expressions of

direction and location, respectively. Compare the examples above under accusative

with the following examples of the locative:

(106) B/C/S upo

zoris

tu ‘in the theatre’ na po

zornici ‘on the stage’

Rus my

li vgo

rode ve

‘we were in town all day’

era

li na konce

rte ‘we were at a concert yesterday’

Pol studiowac

na uniwersytecie ‘to study at university’

Slk v kute ‘in the corner’ na stole ‘on the table’

However, while all the Slavic languages with a locative (i.e. excluding Bulgarian

and Macedonian) use this case for expressing location, some of the languages use

different prepositions (and cases) for direction (‘to’), notably do (þGen) in West

Slavic and Ukrainian:

(107) Cz do me

ˇsta

‘to town’ cf. vme

ˇsteˇ

‘in town’

Pol do szkoły ‘to school’ cf. w szkole ‘in school’

The high-frequency preposition po, used among other things for motion within a

confined space (108a) or over a surface (108b), takes the locative everywhere except

Russian, where it takes the dative. In many paradigms the endings of the dative and

locative are identical:

(108a) B/C/S ho

dati po so``bi [Loc] ‘to walk about the room’

Bel xadzı

pa pako

i [Loc] ‘to walk about the room’

Rus gulja

po pa

rku [Dat] ‘to stroll in the park’

Slk precha

dzat’ se po lese [Loc] ‘to stroll in the forest’

Pol chodzic

po ulicach [Loc] ‘to walk about the streets’

(108b) ‘books are strewn over the whole table’:

B/C/S knj ı%ge su razba

cane po c

ı%tavom sto

lu [Loc]

Bel knı

hi razlo

zˇany pa u˘ sı

m stale

[Loc]

‘to thump on the shoulder’:

Rus xlo

pnut

po plec

[Dat]

Cz popla

cat po rameni [Loc]

The most common non-locational meaning of the locative case is ‘about’, ‘con-

cerning’ (o(b) ) (only Slovak has (additionally) the accusative):

(109) B/C/S govo

riti ou

metnosti ‘to speak about art’

Rus my

razgova

rivali ogo

rode ‘we talked about the city’

6.2 Syntactic roles and relations 341

ob e

tom nel

zja

govorı

‘one can’t talk about that’

Pol opowiadanie o psach i kotach ‘a story about cats and dogs’

Cz snı

t o ceste

‘to dream about a/the trip’

Slk hovorit’ o bratovi [Loc] ‘to talk about one’s brother’

o [Acc] ide? ‘what’s it (the topic) about?’

The situation of the ‘‘second locative’’ (LocSg

, 5.5.1.1–2) is typically Russian,

and involves the old -u ending from the u-stem in the locational meaning, contrast-

ing with the o-stem ending -e in other uses of the ‘‘locative’’ case:

(110) Rus osa

de ‘about (concerning) the garden’

v sadu

‘in the garden’

omo

ste ‘about the bridge’ na mostu

‘on the bridge’

In other Slavic languages this choice of forms has been resolved by the languages

selecting either the -e or the -u form for the appropriate paradigms, similarly to the

choices made betwee n the o-stem and u-stem endings -a and -u in the genitive and

-u and -ovi in the dative (respectively). The Russian locative in -u

(always stressed)

is used only with a sma ll number of monosyllabic masculine inanimates of the

o/jo-de clensio n. It is still standard in Russian in these words, and is surviving

better than the partitive genitive (GenSg

, see 6.2.4.4 above and 5.5.1.1–2). An even

rarer parallel exists within the feminine i-declension, in which a few nouns have a

stressed ending in the locative meaning against the stressed stem of the non-locative

(semantically rare) and the rest of the singular:

(111) Rus o dve

ri ‘concerning the door’ na dverı

‘on the door’

o ste

pi ‘about the steppe’ v stepı

‘in the steppe’

6.3 Aspect

Aspect, together with case, presents as the most controversial grammatical cate-

gory in Slavic. In the first place, it occupies a complex position between inflexion,

paradigmatics and word formation. We have chosen to cover morphological aspect

under word formation (8.3), since the aspect-forming components are principally

associated with prefixation and suffixation. The inflexional properties attached to

those stems are treated under inflexional morphology (5.5.5). In this section we

take up the syntax and morphosyntax of aspect, and the related issues of semantics

and pragmatics.

Analyses of aspect have been dominated by a search for an orderly mapping

between grammatical forms and semantic interpretations. The first assumption has

been that since most imperfectives are formally distinct from perfectives, therefore

342 6. Syntactic categories and morphosyntax

there should be semantically distinct interpretations. Conventionally the perfec-

tive is held to describe actions which are (or will be) complete, completed, or have

reached an end-point. In contrast, imperfectives refer to actions in process,

ongoing, repeated or habitual – or, in the present tense, also atemporal and/or

generic: beavers build dams. Perfectives should therefore be only past or future,

while imperfectives should appear in any of the three tenses. In English glosses

this amounts to:

(112) Imperfective Perfective

past: did, used to do, was doing did, have done, had done

present: do (both ongoing and atemporal) –

am doing

future: will do, will be doing will do, will have done

Sorbian, B/C/S, Bulgarian and Macedonian retain the imperfect and the aorist

tenses (5.4.6), which further complicates the relation of tense to aspect.

A commonly accepted view is that the perfective is semantically the marked

member of the aspect opposition. If an action is not specifically viewed as com-

plete(d), the (unmarked) imperfective is used. The variety of meanings available

can be summarized in Comrie’s (1976: 25) diagram (6.1).

The process/completion (achievement, etc.) opposition captures neatly a com-

pact use of the perfective which requires periphrastic structures in English:

(113) Rus o

ndo

lgo res

l [Imprfv] zada

ˇu

i nakone

c res

l [Prfv] e

he long resolved problem and finally resolved it

‘he worked on the problem for a long time and finally solved it’

Perfective Imperfective

Habitual

Continuous

Non-

ressive Pro

ressive

Diagram 6.1

6.3 Aspect 343

Some data confirm this broad characterization in terms of activities and com-

pleted actions. Adverbs like gradually tend to occur with imperfectives, while at

once favors the perfective. Verbs of states or activities like ‘sit’ will favor the

imperfective, while verbs of actions and accomplishments like ‘build’ allow either

aspect, and punctual verbs like ‘kill’ will favor the perfective. The ‘‘procedurals’’ or

Aktionsarten (8.3.1.3) fit here: in Rus ona

zape

la [Prfv] ‘she began singing, she burst

into song’ the beginning is completed, even if the singing is not. This also seems to

line up with the notion of goal-directed activity or telicity. Perfectives tend to prefer

a direct object: Rus c

ita

‘to be engaged in reading [Imprfv]’, c

ita

roma

n ‘to be

engaged in reading [Imprfv] a novel’, proc

ˇita

[Prfv] roma

n ‘to read through a novel

to the end’, but proc

ita

[Prfv] does not comfortably stand on its own without an

object or appropriate terminating adverbial to situate it in time and/or space. An

action can also be interpreted as complete by being explicitly placed at a single

location in space and time. Such adverbs often require a perfective:

(114) Rus ona

prinjala

[Prfv] va

nnu v 5 c

aso

vve

era

‘she took a bath at 5 p.m.’

Perfective actions occur within the time-scope of imperfective actions:

(115) Rus poka

ona

prinima

la [Imprfv] va

nnu, ona

prope

la [Prfv] pe

snju

‘while she was taking a bath she sang through the song’

Negative imperatives tend to be imperfective, since they order us to avoid actions

or prevent them from occurring:

(116a) Cz neplac

! [Imprfv] ‘don’t cry!’

Negative perfectives express the undesirability of results, thus are often warnings:

(116b) Rus ne upadı

te! [Prfv] ‘don’t fall/be careful not to fall!’

There are some significant exceptions to these general tendencies. Slavic lan-

guages typically can use the present as a historic present, very much as in Romance.

And especially in South Slavic there are some important idiosyncrasies of the

relation between tense and aspect. In Bulgarian, for instance, the use of certain

aspects with certain tense inflexions switches the verb into the renarrative mood

(5.4.9). In B/C/S there is a present perfective, which can be used with the meaning

of a present tense, especially for repeated or hypothetical events in the present:

(117a) B/C/S ide``s



i se [Imprfv] po

nekad: za

stan



e [PrfvPres] c

ˇo

vek ...

‘and it sometimes happens that a man stops ...’

or in subordinate clauses, where it has the expected future sense:

344 6. Syntactic categories and morphosyntax

(117b) B/C/S o

stani [Prfv] o

vde, dok se vra



im [PrfvPres]

‘stay here till I return’

And Russian, too, can use the present perfective in the former sense (repetition,

cf. the English future in this sense, ‘Often you’ll see ...’):

(117c) Rus byva

et, prid

[PrfvPres] domo

j i uzna

[PrfvPres], c

ˇto

...

‘(it happens that) you’ll (sometimes) arrive home to find

(lit. ‘and will find’) that ...’

The claim that aspect is formally marked has led to attempts to identify the

semantic markedness of the perfective. It is not difficult to attack this position.

Some verbs lack perfectives for no apparent formal or semantic reason (8.3). Some

verbs are bi-aspectual: the same form can express either aspect (8.3), so breaking

the mapping between form and meaning. And ‘‘ongoing vs completed’’ – even

granting that this is an over-simplification – turns out to be unable to capture

some uses of the imperfective to express events which are completed:

(118a) Rus o

n otkryva

l [Imprfv] okno

he opened the window (but now it’s shut again)

(118b) Rus o

n otkry

l [Prfv] okno

he opened the window (and it is still open)

There has consequently been a major effort to refine and reorient the semantic

dichotomy of the two aspects. Some proposals have tried to replace ‘‘ongoing vs

completed’’ with another single, more accurately tuned, binary opposition. One

useful perspective involves serial events, which have time boundaries between the

completion of one and the start of the next: the ‘‘What’s next?’’ criterion:

(119a) Cz ten roma

n jsem c

etl [Imprfv] da

vno

‘I read this novel a long time ago’ (I am in the post-reading

state, I reflect on it ...)

(119b) Cz ten roma

n jsem p

rec

ˇetl

[Prfv]

‘I have read this novel’ (what am I to do next?)

The languages can also show aspectual differences in expressing identical events:

in Czech it is possible for the formal perfective to express present tense (Townsend,

1984: 291):

(120a) ‘I can’t stand him’

Cz ja

ho nesnesu [formally Prfv], more common than

ho nesna

m [regular Imprfv Pres]

6.3 Aspect 345

This may even occur with habitual or repetitive contexts, even when marked by

an adverb. Only particular emphasis on the duration or frequency make the

imperfective more likely (Townsend, 1981: 202):

(120b) ‘he always arrived late’

Cz p

ris

el [Prfv] vzˇdycky pozde

,or

vzˇdycky p

richa

zel [Imprfv] pozde

So either aspect can have different ‘‘meanings’’ in different languages, or there

are multiple factors at work. Recent research, e.g. by Benacchio (2002) on impera-

tives (7.1.4), shows that we need to supplement a time/space oriented vector with

contextual, pragmatic and interpersonal vectors if we are to capture the variability

of aspect usage in a methodical way.

The formation of the aspects is closely linked to verbal paradigms. For this

reason most grammars of Slavic languages treat aspect together with inflexion

(5.5.5) as part of the verbal paradigms. But the actual formation of the aspects is

accomplished mainly by prefixation and suffixation, and we therefore treat aspect

formation separately under word formation (8.3).

346 6. Syntactic categories and morphosyntax

Sentence structure

7.1 Sentence structure: overview

In this chapter we deal with the structure of the Slavic sentence: the simple sentence

(7.1), complex sentence (7.2), specific construction-types (7.3), word order (7.4) and

Functional Sentence Perspective (7.5).

The basic simple sentence contains no coordination and no subordination. In the

initial description of the simple sentence we omit clitics and other particles which

affect the word order of the sentence, and concentrate on neutral word order. Many

of these sentence patterns look like English. For differences in word categories

(e.g. articles, clitics) see 6.1.

The sentence contains a predicate, and usually a subject, which normally pre-

cedes the predicate (7.4). The subject may not be present, as happens with aperso-

nal and impersonal sentences and ellipsis (7.3.7). If the subject is present, it consists

of a noun phrase containing a nominal head, which may be a noun or a pronoun, or

another part of speech acting as a nominal (e.g. an infinitive); and zero, one or

several modifiers. Not all modifiers can occur with all head nominals: mass and

abstract nouns can take numerals only in special circumstances. And the order of

modifiers varies somewhat between languages, and for stylistic and special pur-

poses within individual languages as well.

The first element in the noun phrase is the quantifier:

(1)

QUANTIFIER + NOUN

Rus vse

pery ‘all the operas’

Then comes the determiner [Det], consisting of deictics (‘this’, ‘that’ (2a) ) and

possessive adjectives (‘my ...’; B/C/S ma

in ‘mother’s’ < ma

jka ‘mother’ etc.:

(2b) ). In addition to word-deictics Macedonian also has suffix-deictics (33a–c).

These, like the suffixed articles found in both Bulgarian and Macedonian, are

generally attached to the leftmost concording member of the noun phrase (2c–d).

347

The determiner slot may even be filled by a possessive noun phrase, which would

otherwise normally follow the noun (2c):

(2)

DETERMINER + NOUN

(2a) Rus

eti druz

‘these friends’

(2b) B/C/S nj

egov ko`` nj (ma

in ko`` nj) ‘his horse’ (‘mother’s horse’)

(2c) Pol moj-ej ciotk-i star-y kon

my-GenSgFem aunt-GenSg old-NomSg Masc horse

‘my aunt’s old horse’ (stylistically marked, emphatic)

Next comes the numeral or numeral phrase, consisting of a numeral and an

optional (and not very frequent) numeral classifier:

(3)

NUMERAL +(CLASSIFIER +)NOUN

(3a) Blg dve

knı

gi ‘two books’

(3b) Blg dve

te knı

gi ‘the two books’

(3c) Rus pja

elove

k) p

nyx rabo

tnikov

‘5 (CLASSIFIER) drunken workmen’

Then follows an adjective phrase, containing as many adjectives as are required,

with or without conjunctions like ‘and’ and ‘or’. They may also be accompanied by

degree and other modifiers. Unlike English, there may also be objects, infinitives

and other complements:

(4) ADJECTIVE PHRASE + NOUN

(4a) Cz pravdivy

stary

esky

rukopis

‘a real old Czech manuscript’

(4b) Pol bardzo silny w ramionach chłopak

very strong in shoulders lad

‘a lad very strong in the shoulders’

(4c) Rus dosto

jnyj na

ego uva ˇze

nija uc

ˇı

tel

worthy our-Gen respect-Gen teacher

‘a teacher worthy of our respect’

The nominal head follows; and then, in order, a group of noun phrases

with dependent case marking; and then prepositional phrases, and even a few

adverbs, fulfilling various syntactic roles; infinitives; and relative clauses and

complements:

348 7. Sentence structure