Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics – serie

This study is devoted to a corpus of Old Russian letters, written on pieces of birchbark. These unique texts from Novgorod and surroundings give us an exceptional impression of everyday life in medieval Russian society. In this study, the birchbark letters are addressed from a pragmatic angle. Linguistic parameters are identified that shed light on the degree to which literacy had gained ground in communicative processes. It is demonstrated that the birchbark letters occupy an intermediate position between orality and literacy. On the one hand, oral habits of communication persisted, as reflected in how the birchbark letters are phrased; on the other hand, literate modes of expression emerged, as seen in the development of normative conventions and literate formulae.

In Voices on Birchbark Jos Schaeken explores the major role that writing on birchbark – an ephemeral, even ‘throw-away’ form of correspondence and administration – played in the vibrant medieval merchant city of Novgorod and other cities in the Russian Northwest. Birchbark literacy was crucial to the organization of Novgorodian society; it was integrated into a huge variety of activities and had a broad social basis; it was used extensively by the laity, by women as well as men, by villagers as well as landlords. Voices on Birchbark is the first book-length study of this unique corpus in English. By examining a representative selection of birchbark texts, Jos Schaeken presents fascinating vignettes of daily medieval life and a holistic picture of the pragmatics of communication in pre-modern societies.

The Vend nyelvtan is a grammar completed in 1942 by the linguist Avgust Pavel that was designed to serve as a modern standard for the Prekmurje Slovenes who were to be subjects of Hungary. Though the grammar was meant to divide the Prekmurje Slovenes from the Slovenes of Yugoslavia, it was never put into use. Today it serves as a reflection of the lexical and grammatical peculiarities of the Prekmurje dialect as it was spoken during Pavel’s lifetime (1886–1946). The English translation of the grammar, originally written in Hungarian, offers linguists insight into a key part of the remarkable variation in Slovene. A peripheral area of Slovene, the Prekmurje dialect is in contact with German, Hungarian, and Croatian Kajkavian.

Both general linguists and Slavic specialists will find the Slavic verb to be a rich source of linguistic data. This book offers insights that contribute to a deeper understanding of both the Slavic languages and language structure more broadly.The first volume of this two-part work presents studies on the Slavic verb from a comparative perspective, focusing on analyses involving two or more Slavic languages. It includes contributions on verbal aspect (including biaspectuality, the East Slavic perfective, and the perfective present), semelfactive verbs, the pluperfect, phasal verbs, dative reflexive constructions, and anankastic modals. The empirical data span a broad range of Slavic languages—including Croatian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene dialects in Friuli, and Štokavian dialects in Albania—as well as studies adopting a cross-Slavic approach.

Both general linguists and Slavic specialists will find the Slavic verb to be a rich source of linguistic data. Its study offers insights that contribute to a deeper understanding of the Slavic languages and of language more broadly.The second volume of this two-part work compiles language-specific studies on the Slavic verb, featuring articles on secondary imperfectives, the aspectual behavior of simplex verbs, habituality, relative tense, and perfective verbs of returning. The empirical data are drawn from a range of Slavic languages, including Croatian, Czech, Molise Slavic, Old Church Slavonic, Resian, Russian, and Slovak.Contributors are: Walter Breu, Simeon Dekker, Magda van Duijkeren, Hanne Eckhoff, Egbert Fortuin, René Genis, Atle Grønn, Jaap Kamphuis, Irina Kor Chahine, Paula Kyselica, Ekaterina Mišina, Malinka Pila, and Jurica Polančec.

This volume contains articles by 17 slavists from the Low Countries. Although they are all about Slavic linguistics, they cover a wide range of subjects and their theoretical implications are often not restricted to slavistics alone. Most contributions deal with Russian or Slavic in general, but South and West Slavic are also represented. The reader who knows the strong points for which Dutch slavistics is traditionally known and appreciated will not be disappointed: s/he will find papers on syntax and semantics (Fortuin, Van Helden, Honselaar, Keijsper, Tribušinina), aspectology (Barentsen, Genis), philology (Veder), historical Slavic phonology and morphology (Derksen, Kortlandt, Vermeer), dialectology (Houtzagers, Pronk), the study of sentence intonation (Odé) and papers representing crossroads between these disciplines: philology and historical linguistics (Hendriks, Schaeken), aspectology and philology (Kalsbeek). Apart from its quality in the linguistic fields enumerated here, Dutch Slavic linguistics is known for its empirical approach: the main goal is to find explanations for linguistic reality. Theory is relevant inasmuch as it helps us to find such explanations and not for its own sake. Though each and every paper in this volume exemplifies this empirical attitude, it might be especially illustrative to mention that almost all authors who studied the larger contemporary Slavic languages made extensive use of language corpus resources, part of which were collected at the University of Amsterdam.

The editors PREFACE LIST OF PUBLICATIONS BY FREDERIK KORTLANDT ?driaan Barentsen: O S?P?STAVI?EL'N?? IZUC?NII ?GR?NICI??L'NY? VR???NNY? S?JUZ?V SL?VJANS?I? JAZY??V Robert S.P. Beekes: PALATALIZED CONSONANTS IN PRE-GREEK Uwe Blasing: TALYSCHI RIZ 'SPUR' UND VERWANDTE: EIN BEITRAG ZUR IRANISCHEN WORTFORSCHUNG Vaclav Blazek: CELTIC 'SMITH' AND HIS COLLEAGUES Johnny Cheung: THE OSSETIC CASE SYSTEM REVISITED Bardhyl Demiraj: ALB. RRUSH, ON RAGUSA UND GR. RHOKS Rick Derksen: QUANTITY PATTERNS IN THE UPPER SORBIAN NOUN George E. Dunkel: LUVIAN ?TAR AND HOMERIC ?? AR Jose L. Garcia Ramon: ERERBTES UND ERSATZKONTINUANTEN BEI DER REKONSTRUKTION VON INDOGERMANISCHEN KONSTRUKTIONSMUSTERN: IDG. *G' HEU- UND HETH. LAHU-HHI 'GIESSEN' Eric P. Hamp: INDO-EUROPEAN *SG'HEDHLA Andries van Helden: IS CASE A LINGUIST OR A FREDERIK?Tette Hofstra: AUS DEM BEREICH DER GERMANISCH-OSTSEEFINNISCHEN LEHNWORTFORSCHUNG: UBERLEGUNGEN ZUR ETYMOLOGIE VON FINNISCH RYTAKKA 'KRACH' Georg Holzer: STRUKTURELLE BESONDERHEITEN DES URSLAVISCHEN Wim Honselaar: REFLECTIONS ON RECIPROCITY IN RUSSIAN AND DUTCH Laszlo Honti: 'TIBI LIBER EST' ~ 'HABES LIBRUM' (BEMERKUNGEN ZUR HERKUNFT DER HABITIVEN KONSTRUKTIONEN IM URALISCHEN) Peter Houtzagers: ON THE CAKAVIAN DIALECT OF KOLJNOF NEAR SOPRON Petri Kallio: ON THE "EARLY BALTIC" LOANWORDS IN COMMON FINNIC Janneke Kalsbeek: THE QUANTITY OF THE VOWEL I IN STIPAN KONZUL'S KATEKIZAM (1564) Jared S. Klein: INTERROGATIVE SEQUENCES IN THE RIGVEDA Jorma Koivulehto: FRUHE SLAVISCH-FINNISCHE KONTAKTE Leonid Kulikov: THE VEDIC TYPE PATAYATI REVISITED: SEMANTIC OPPOSITIONS, PARADIGMATIC RELATIONSHIPS AND HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS Winfred P. Lehmann: LINGUISTIC LAWS AND UNIVERSALS: THE TWAIN. Alexander Lubotsky: VEDIC 'OX' AND 'SACRIFICIAL CAKE' Ranko Matasovic: THE ORIGIN OF THE OLD IRISH F-FUTURE H.Craig Melchert: PROBLEMS IN HITTITE PRONOMINAL INFLECTION Cecilia Ode: COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTIONS AND PROSODIC LABELLING OF THREE RUSSIAN PITCH ACCENTS Norbert Oettinger: AN INDO-EUROPEAN CUSTOM OF SACRIFICE IN GREECE AND ELSEWHERE Harry Perridon: RECONSTRUCTING THE OBSTRUENTS OF PROTO-GERMANIC Georges-Jean Pinault: TOCHARIAN FRIENDSHIP ?driana Pols: ROZDENIE SLOVARJA Arend Quak: ARCHAISCHE WORTER IN DEN MALBERGISCHEN GLOSSEN DER 'LEX SALICA' Jos Schaeken: NOCHMALS ZUR AKZENTUIERUNG DER KIEVER BLATTER Rudiger Schmitt: ZU DER FREMDBEZEICHNUNG ARMENIENS ALTPERS. ARMINA- Patrick Sims-Williams: THE PROBLEM OF SPIRANTIZATION AND NASALIZATION IN BRITTONIC CELTIC Han Steenwijk: THE MICROSTRUCTURE OF THE RESIANICA DICTIONARY Michiel de Vaan: SANSKRIT TRIDHA AND TREDHA William R. Veder: NON SECUNDUM SCIENTIAM: READING WHAT IS NOT THERE Theo Vennemann gen. Nierfeld: MUNZE, MINT, AND MONEY: AN ETYMOLOGY FOR LATIN MONETA. WITH APPENDICES ON CARTHAGINIAN TANIT AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MONTH WORD Willem Vermeer: THE PREHISTORY OF THE ALBANIAN VOWEL SYSTEM: A PRELIMINARY EXPLORATION Jos J.S. Weitenberg: DIPHTHONGIZATION OF INITIAL E- AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF INITIAL Y- IN ARMENIAN

Contents The Editors: Preface List of Publications by Frederik Kortlandt Willem ADELAAR: Towards a Typological Profile of the Andean Languages Elisabeth DE BOER: The Origin of Alternations in Initial Pitch in ihe Verbal Paradigms of the Central Japanese (Kyoto Type) Accent Systems V.A. CHIRIKBA: Armenians and their Dialects in Abkhazia Katia CHIRKOVA: On the Position of Baima within Tibetan: A Look from Basic Vocabulary Karen STEFFEN CHUNG: Living (Happily) with Contradiction George van DRIEM: The Language Organism: Parasite or Mutualist? Roger FINCH: Mongolian /-gar/ and Japanese /-gar-/ Stefan GEORG: Yeniseic Languages and the Siberian Linguistic Area Ekaterina GRUZDEVA: How to Orient Oneself on Sakhalin: A Guide to Nivkh Locational Terms C.HOEDE: Knowledge Graph Analysis of Particles in Japanese Henning KLOTER: Facts and Fantasy about Favorlang: Early European Encounters with Taiwan's Languages Maarten KOSSMANN: Three Irregular Berber Verbs: 'Eat', 'Drink', 'Be Cooked, Ripen' Riikka LANSISALMI: Teaching Personal Reference in Japanese Elena MASLOVA: Dual Nominalisation in Yukaghir: Structural Ambiguity as Semantic Duality Roy Andrew MILLER: The Altaic Aorist in *-Ra in Old Korean Marc Hideo MIYAKE: Avoiding Abba: Old Chinese Syllabic Harmony Maarten MOUS: Voice in Tunen: The So-Called Passive Prefix Be- Irina NIKOLAEVA: Chuvan and Omok Languages? Martine ROBBEETS: If Japanese is Altaic, How can it be so Simple? Elena SKRIBNIK: Buryat Evaluative Constructions Harry STROOMER: Three Tashelhiyt Berber Texts from the Arsene Roux Archives Arie VERHAGEN: Syntax, Recursion, Productivity - A Usage-Based Perspective on the Evolution of Grammar Jeroen WIEDENHOF: Language, Brains and the Syntactic Revolution

From a synchronic point of view, the various accentuation systems found in the Baltic and Slavic languages differ considerably from each other. We find languages with free accent and languages with fixed accent, languages with and without syllabic tones, and languages with and without a distinction between short and long vowels. Yet despite the apparent diversity in the attested Baltic and Slavic languages, the sources from which these languages have developed – the reconstructed languages referred to as Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic respectively – seem to have had very similar accentuation systems.The prehistory and development of the Baltic and Slavic accentuation systems is the main topic of this book, which contains sixteen articles on Baltic and Slavic accentology written by some of the world’s leading specialists in this field.

Slovene is one of the most dialectally diverse languages of Europe, consisting of 37 dialects. This book gives a detailed description of one of the most archaic dialects of Slovene: the dialect spoken in the Gail Valley (Gailtal) in the Austrian state of Carinthia (Kärnten). The Gailtal dialect is part of the Slovene minority language in Austria and is spoken by an ever decreasing number of speakers. The volume at hand describes the phonology, morphophonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon of the dialect. A separate chapter is devoted to the preservation and development of the common Slavic pitch accent in the Gailtal dialect and in Slovene in general. The book will be of interest to scholars in Slavic linguistics, language contact, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and typology.

The accentual systems of the Baltic and Slavic languages continue to intrigue scholars of general and historical linguistics. They play an important role in the reconstruction of the linguistic ancestor of Baltic and Slavic, but also in the typological study of accentual systems. This volume contains contributions related to the accentology of the Baltic and Slavic languages by leading scholars in the field. They discuss the accentual systems that are attested in Baltic and Slavic dialects and texts, and the historical developments that led to these systems. The volume further contains contributions on similar accentual systems and developments in other languages, such as Abkhaz and the Mordvinian languages. A number of papers also deal with the role of the Balto-Slavic accents in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European. The volume reflects the progress that has been made in the field of Baltic and Slavic accentuation during the last decades. It forms a major source for anyone interested in the latest developments and insights in the study of accentuation.

Language contact phenomena have been researched throughout the history of the discipline, but the intensity of the research has undoubtedly risen during the last decades due to growing globalization. This peer-reviewed volume presents twelve papers from the Second Conference on Language Contact in Times of Globalization (University of Groningen, June 2009) which deal with a wide range of topics, languages and contact situations. Five of them involve a Finno-Ugric language (Saami-Komi-Russian; Finnic-Baltic; Mordvin-Turkic; Estonian-German; Saami general), two a Slavic language (Slavic-Romance; Slavic general), two Germanic-Romance contact and three situations outside Europe (The Arabic World; Central Asia; South America). Methods range from field research and corpus analysis to historical linguistics, and both synchronic and diachronic approaches are used. The authors are Rogier Blokland and Michael Rießler, Martine Bruil, Louise-Amélie Cougnon, Anissa Daoudi, Santeri Junttila, Janneke Kalsbeek, Folke Müller and Susan Schlotthauer, Johanna Nichols, Pekka Sammallahti, Peter Schrijver, Remco van Pareren, and Willem Vermeer. Keywords / target groups: General linguistics, Contact linguistics, Finno-Ugric linguistics, Slavic linguistics.

The larger part of the present volume is about Slavic historical linguistics while the second part is about more general issues and methodological aspects. The initial chapters contain a revision of the author’s Slavic Accentuation and a discussion of the Slovene evidence for the Late Proto-Slavic accentual system and of the Kiev Leaflets. These are complemented by an extensive review of Garde’s theory and an introductory article about the work of earlier authors for those who are unfamiliar with the subject. Then follows a discussion of changes in the vowel system, Bulgarian developments, final syllables in Slavic, early changes in the consonant system, and of Halle and Kiparsky’s review of Garde’s book. This results in a relative chronology of 70 stages from Proto-Indo-European to Slavic. The following chapters deal with the progressive palatalization, the accentuation of West and South Slavic languages, various aspects of the Old Slovene manuscripts, the chronology of nominal paradigms, and other issues under discussion in recent publications. The second part of the present volume contains a number of case studies exemplifying specific theoretical problems, most of them of a semantic nature. The synchronic studies deal with Russian and Japanese syntax and semantics, the diachronic studies with tonogenesis in different languages and with semantic reconstruction in Altaic and Chinese.

This volume, Dutch Contributions to the Fifteenth International Congress of Slavists (Minsk, 2013) presents a comprehensive overview of current Slavic linguistic research in the Netherlands, and covers its various linguistic disciplines (both synchronic and diachronic linguistics, language acquisition, history of linguistics) and subdomains (phonology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, text).The different chapters in this peer-reviewed volume show the strong data-oriented tradition of Dutch linguistics and focus on various topics: the use of imperative subjects in birchbark letters (Dekker), the existential construction in Russian (Fortuin), Jakovlev’s formula for designing an alphabet with an optimal number of graphemes (Van Helden), frequency effects on the acquisition of Polish and Russian nominal flexion paradigms (Janssen), Macedonian verbal aspect (Kamphuis), the concept of ‘communicatively heterogeneous texts’ in connection with three birchbark letters from medieval Rus’ (Schaeken), a philological analysis of the authorship of some Cyrillic manuscripts (Veder), a reconstruction of the evolution of the Slavic system of obstruents: the motivation of mergers and the rise of dialect differences (Vermeer), and a contrastive analysis of Russian delat’ and Dutch doen (Honselaar and Podgaevskaja).With a well-known cast of contributors, this reference work will be of interest to researchers in both Slavic and general linguistics.