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

Vorträge im WiSe 2024/25

Kolloquium Slawistische Linguistik

24.10. Matěj Kundrát (Tromsø) & Jeffrey Parrott (Zlín): The Czech high front vowel(s) ‘i/y’: A phonemic difference without a phonetic distinction [zoom]

We discuss the (morpho)phonology of the Czech high front vowel(s), typically but not always spelled 'i/y', which despite having an identical phonetic realization [i], nonetheless trigger asymmetric patterns of palatalization and variable dipthongization. Using evidence from these alternations, as well as apparent counterexamples, we argue in favor of strict modularity and against phonetics-based theories of (morpho)phonology.

 

07.11. Luka Szucsich (HU Berlin): Why okza me ‘for me’ but *od me ‘from me’: Are there PP-internal clitics in Burgenland-Croatian? [hybrid]

In contrast to other Slavic languages (Abels 2003, 2012), Burgenland Croatian seems to allow clitics within PPs: za me ‘for me’, na te ‘on you’. I will show that these clitic-like pronouns are in fact strong, morphophonologically truncated pronouns, which also exhibit stress and tone retraction.

However, truncation of pronouns, which is accompanied by stress and tone retraction, is only possible with 1.sg and 2.sg in the accusative. With all other accusative pronouns, there is no truncation, and one can observe either stress and tone retraction (zá njega ‘for him’: associated stress shift), or there is only a retraction of the stress (zà nās ‘for us’: dissociated stress shift). In this talk, I will discuss the conditions for these processes and propose an analysis that makes use of morphosyntactic locality conditions.

 

05.12. Maria Martynova (HU Berlin): Postradal Nikto 'Nobody Got Hurt': Negative Concord in Heritage Russian in Germany and the US [Probevortrag für eine PhD Verteidigung; hybrid]

This talk explores the dynamics of Negative Concord (NC) in Heritage Russian spoken in Germany and the United States. Negative Concord, characterized by multiple negative elements yielding a single semantic negation, is a well-documented feature of standard Russian grammar. However, its realization in heritage speakers presents an intriguing interplay between linguistic structures and the impact of limited input and contact with majority languages, such as English and German, which do not feature NC.

Using experimental data, this study investigates the roles of syntactic factors in NC production. It further examines how this phenomenon is influenced by the linguistic environment of heritage speakers. The analysis utilizes Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMM) to account for variability across participants and linguistic contexts.

The findings aim to contribute to our understanding of NC as a complex phenomenon in language contact situations and its broader implications for theories of bilingualism, syntactic transfer, and language change.

 

12.12. Zorica Puškar-Gallien (ZAS): Explorations of the case and agreement systems of heritage Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian [hybrid, Raum 5.42]

This talk will present an overview of the current state of formal research on Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS) spoken as a heritage language (by second-generation speakers) in Germany. A special focus will be put on agreement and case, as phenomena that encode a relationship between two constituents, which show a great degree of variation in heritage languages. Despite the vast knowledge gained over the years, the literature still harbours a great amount of disagreement on how agreement and case should be analysed even in monolingual systems: do they involve syntactic or postsyntactic operations; are features copied/valued/shared/checked; are features primitive, binary, or hierarchical; are case and agreement a result of a single operation, or different operations or processes? BCMS presents an especially fertile ground for the exploration of such issues due to great variability present in its agreement patterns (see e.g. Wechsler and Zlatić 2003, Corbett 1979, Willer-Gold et al. 2016, Despic 2017, Puškar 2017, Arsenijević 2021). In the grammars of heritage speakers, these phenomena have been identified as vulnerable, showing properties such as loss of inflectional morphology, overmarking or overregularization, due to language contact at macrolevel (between two languages) and at microlevel (between two grammars in a single speaker’s mind). Taking a heritage language as a system in its own right instead of treating it as somehow simplified or incomplete (Domínguez et al. 2019 vs. Bayram et al. 2019; Cabo and Rothman 2012), and treating a heritage speaker as a native speaker (Kupisch 2013; Rothman and Treffers-Daller 2014; Kupisch and Rothman 2018; Tsehaye et al. 2021;Wiese et al. 2021), the novel research project outlined in this talk will aim at identifying non-canonical patterns of agreement and case present in heritage BCMS, asking the question whether bilingual grammars differ from monolingual ones and how they can be formally modelled. Through identifying factors that affect agreement and case, I will explore the causes of variation under language contact through the lens of The Interface Hypothesis (Sorace 2011) and language-specific and global Complexity (Polinsky, Putnam & Salmons 2024). In sum, I will present a project that looks at heritage grammars as providing an enrichment of insights into syntactic theory and explores the extent to which natural grammar can or cannot generate particular constructions.

 

19.12. Clara McMahon (CUNY), Valeriia Modina (CUNY) & Dorota Klimek-Jankowska (Wrocław): Aspect, Negation, and the Visual World Paradigm: An investigation into Russian and Polish [zoom]

In Russian, an interaction between aspect and negation is reported in the theoretical semantics and pragmatics literature (Zinova & Filip, 2014a,b). When an imperfective verb is negated, the entire event is negated; however, when the perfective aspect is under negation in Russian, only a subpart of the event (the result) is denied as a result of pragmatic implicature. This study aims to investigate this hypothesized interaction using the Visual World Paradigm (VWP). We examine aspect (perfective vs. imperfective) and negation (affirmative vs. negated sentences) in Russian and Polish. This study additionally introduces a novel psycholinguistic task: a visual variant of a Likert scale. The visual Likert scale will display images corresponding to Ramchand (2008)’s syntactic decomposition of an event. Using a visual depiction of the full event structure will allow us to collect more fine-grained information in real-time about the interpretations of grammatical aspect, as well as about the processing of events more generally.

 

16.01. Mariia Privizentseva (Potsdam): Split constructions by base generation: Evidence from reciprocals, NCIs, and indefinites in Russian [hybrid]

Cross-linguistically reciprocals often consist of two parts that may be placed next to each other or split by further material. Analyses differ in whether the split is derived by movement (Sigurðsson et al. 2022, Landau 2024, Messick & Harðarson 2024) or by base generation (Paparounas & Salzmann 2024). This research brings to light novel data on split reciprocals in Russian and shows that splitting in Russian is very restrictive in that only a subset of the prepositions can appear between the two parts of the reciprocal. I then demonstrate that there are two other phenomena that allow the same type of splitting: negative concord items and indefinite pronouns. On the basis of interpretative differences attested for negative concord items, I argue that split forms in all three constructions are derived by base generation. I then suggest that prepositions that allow splitting are part of the nominal extended projections and that the notion of extended projection is best formalized by inheritance of features from the base to the top (see Grimshaw 1991, Keine 2020).

 

06.02. Lidija Tasić (Niš): A Formal-Semantic Account of (Particularized) Implicatures: Towards a Unified Account of Implicatures [zoom]

 Criticism of the Gricean conception of implicatures as non-truth-conditional contributions to the meaning of an utterance has inspired the development of grammatical theories for scalar (Chierchia 2004; Chierchia et al. 2012; Marty 2017), conventional (Potts 2005), and ignorance implicatures (Fox 2007; Meyer 2013). However, despite evidence that speakers commit themselves to the truth of particularized implicatures as well (Weiner 2006; Carston 2002), particularized implicatures remain the only type of implicature still analyzed purely in terms of pragmatic inference (Sperber & Wilson 1986; Van Rooij & Schulz 2007; Zeevat & Winterstein 2023). This talk proposes a formal-semantic account of particularized implicatures that is rooted in grammar. The core idea is that particularized implicatures typically emerge from assertions (what is said) as stereotypical answers to explicit or implicit questions in the specific context (what is meant). I argue that the meaning of particularized implicatures can be formally modeled through a speaker-oriented contextual modal base (following Bianchi et al. 2016), a stereotypical ordering source function (following Yalcin 2014; Kratzer 2012), a Best function (as proposed by Jozina & Hohous 2020), and an implicit or explicit question under discussion (following Büring 2003). I also suggest that they are introduced in grammar by a covert assertion operator (Chierchia 2006). A preliminary model of their meaning will be proposed and illustrated with examples. Time permitting, the possibility of extending this model to other types of implicatures will also be discussed.

 

13.02. Tatsiana Maiko (Milan): Russian Spoken Learner Corpus: Design, compilation, and applications [zoom]

Learner corpus research for Russian as a second language is a relatively new field that has emerged only within the last decade (Kisselev 2023). This presentation will offer a concise overview of existing Russian learner corpora and surveys current corpus-based studies in L2 Russian acquisition. It will introduce an ongoing project aimed at constructing a spoken learner corpus of Russian (RuSLC, Maiko 2023). The corpus consists of both longitudinal and pseudo-longitudinal oral data produced by L1 Italian learners. In the longitudinal part of the project, data collection is conducted twice a year within the same group of students throughout their three/five-year study program. The pseudo-longitudinal subcorpus includes data produced by students across different proficiency levels, from A1 to C1. In addition to learner data, the corpus also includes two reference subcorpora. One subcorpus contains interviews with native speakers of Russian, while the other one consists of interviews with bilingual (Italian-Russian) speakers. The interviews are transcribed following explicit conventions. The database contains audio files, their transcripts, and detailed metadata about the interviewee, the interviewer, and the tasks. This talk will provide an overview of the corpus's design, metadata structure, and its potential applications in the field of language acquisition research.

References:

Kisselev O. 2023. “Russian Learner Corpora Research: State of the Art and Call for Action”. Bakhtiniana Revista de Estudos do Discurso, 18 (1): 8-29.

Maiko T. 2023. “Proekt ustnogo učebnogo korpusa russkogo jazyka”. L’analisi linguistica e letteraria, XXXI (2): 25-38.​

 

27.02. Magdalena Kaltseis (Innsbruck): Unveiling Language Ideologies in the Classroom: Insights from Interviews with Teachers of Russian and Ukrainian [zoom]

Language ideologies are commonly understood as “any sets of beliefs about language articulated by users” (Silverstein 1979) and various studies show that these ideologies play a crucial role in (language) teaching. In my presentation, I will share the results of my interview study with teachers of Russian and Ukrainian and unveil their language ideologies. In particular, I will focus on the teachers’ concept of the ‘native speaker’ and the ideological assumptions that this concept contains and conveys.

 

27.03. Luca Molinari (Venedig/Warschau): Many functions but ONE destiny: The case of единъ 'one' in Old Church Slavonic [zoom]