JSL Volume 7.2

JSL Volume 7.2
Summer-Fall 1999

From the Editor (1)

Reflections

Daniela S. Hristova.Total Fears (171-178)

Articles

Alina Israeli. 'Same' and 'Different' in Russian (179-218)

John Moore and David M. Perlmutter. Case, Agreement, and Temporal Particles in Russian Infinitival Clauses (219-246)

Yuri Novikov and Tom Priestly. Gender Differentiation in Personal and Professional Titles in Contemporary Russian (247-263)

Irina A. Sekerina. The Scrambling Complexity Hypothesis and Processing of Split Scrambling Constructions in Russian (265-304)

Sandra Stjepanovic. Scrambling: Overt Movement or Base Generation and LF Movement? (305-324)

Reviews

[Robert A. Orr]: H. Schuster-Šewc.. Grammar of the Upper Sorbian Language: Phonology and Morphology.Lincom Europa, 1996. Translated by Gary Toops. (Lincom studies in Slavic linguistics, 3.) ISBN 389586059X. 262 pp. (325-30)

[Gilbert C. Rappaport]: Robert D. Borsley and Adam Przepiórkowski, eds. Slavic in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 1999. Pp. xiv + 345. ISBN 1575861747 (paper), 1575861755 (cloth), (331-352)

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'Same' and 'Different' in Russian

Alina Israeli

The article analyses the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors governing the use of expressions meaning 'the same' and 'different' in Russian. It demonstrates that one of the factors is the number of items: one item (similarity) or two items (sameness). It also demonstrates that the six basic and two deictic ways to say 'the same' and the three ways to say 'different' represent either a sentence-external reading or a sentence-internal reading. This criterion partially overlaps with the treatment of the entities compared as co-equals, since only a sentence-internal reading may allow such treatment in the cases of similarity, sameness and difference. Other factors in the case of sameness may include the unexpectedness of the second mention of the item, reminding of the previous use or the perceived inappropriateness of the second use, and whether or not the entity is shared.

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Case, Agreement, and Temporal Particles in Russian Infinitival Clauses

John Moore and David M. Perlmutter

In this paper we argue that the Russian particles bylo, byvalo, and budet, when they occur in infinitival clauses with dative subjects, are not auxiliaries but adverbial temporal particles. This analysis accounts for the fact that they are morphologically invariant, that is, do not agree with their dative subject. We provide five arguments for this analysis, based on the placement of negation, aspectual restrictions, bylo and byvalo in finite clauses, their occurrence with other auxiliaries, and their use as modifiers of adjectives. Our analysis has implications for the general analysis of infinitival clauses in Russian. We argue, contra recent claims, that Russian infinitivals are not tensed. Our account also has consequences for the treatment of second-dative phenomena.

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Gender Differentiation in Personal and Professional Titles in Contemporary Russian

Yuri Novikov and Tom Priestly

A short sociolinguistic study was conducted among Russian immigrants and visitors to Canada to determine the influence of various factors, such as age, sex, education, social status, and the location of longest residence in the former Soviet Union, on the choice of gender in feminine personal and professional titles, in specifiers of unchangeable masculine nouns, and in past-tense verbal forms. The influence of age and longest place of residence in the former Soviet Union were shown to be significant for nouns, while the education factor was more likely to affect the use of feminine adjectival and preterit verbal forms in the specification of unchangeable masculine nouns.