Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie

22.05. Atle Grønn (Oslo): What should we study now? Discourse particles and other phenomena that make Ukrainian interesting for Slavicists [zoom]

For researchers who have dedicated their careers to the study of Russian grammar, the transition to Ukrainian may evoke excitement, yet it inevitably raises some questions. In learning Ukrainian, we constantly compare its grammar to what we know from Russian. In this talk, I will first highlight what I regard as the most compelling contrasts between Ukrainian and Russian.

In the second part of the talk, I will make a case for comparative studies of discourse particles in both languages. The inventory of discourse particles in Ukrainian and Russian presents significant differences (e.g., навіть-даже, адже-ведь etc.). The most common Russian particle, вот, corresponds to several Ukrainian particles such as ось, от, ото, о, оце etc. Despite notable exceptions—such as the works of Kobozeva for Russian and Batsevich for Ukrainian—the interpretation and usage of particles remain relatively poorly understood. In Slavic linguistics, discourse particles are often described as conveying “subjective modality” (субъективная модальность). I will discuss how we can render this notion (formally) more precise, drawing upon recent ideas developed by Krifka, McCready, Gutzmann, Rett, and others.