Completed Projects by Lidia Federica Mazzitelli
This is a collection of texts written in Standard Belarusian, which I compiled in 2010. The corp... more This is a collection of texts written in Standard Belarusian, which I compiled in 2010. The corpus contains ca. 1,5 Mio. words.
The corpus description is available on https://github.com/Belarusian-Corpus. Instructions for accessing the corpus materials can be found there.
Lakurumau is an Austronesian language, belonging to the Meso-Melanesian linkage of Western Oceani... more Lakurumau is an Austronesian language, belonging to the Meso-Melanesian linkage of Western Oceanic. It is spoken by ca. 800 speakers in only one village situated on the East Coast of New Ireland, the second-largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago (Papua New Guinea). Due to the pressure of Tok Pisin, the vernacular language in Papua New Guinea, the number of fluent speakers is rapidly sinking and the language is at risk of dying out in the next few decades. The deposit on Elar presents a collection of narrative texts, spontaneous dialogues, grammatical elicitations and grammatical notes.
The aim of the project is to investigate the topic of the expression of (predicative) Possession ... more The aim of the project is to investigate the topic of the expression of (predicative) Possession in the languages of the
so-called “Circum-Baltic area” (Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 2001) from a typological and areal point of
view. The languages taken into account are Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, Votic, Veps, North Saami, Russian, Belarusian, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and German.
Even if some studies about the languages involved in this analysis are already available, we still lack a comprehensive research about this topic on an areal level.
Therefore, the main goals the project wants to achieve are:
1. to provide a clear description of the constructions used in these languages to encode the notion of
Possession and to highlight the splits in the system, using the tool of the “semantic maps” (Haspelmath, 2003);
2. to find out and, as far as possible, to explain, the convergences, that can be observed in the encoding of possession in these languages (such as the use of formally similar or coincident constructions - like the Russian adessive construction u ‘at’ + Gen. and the Finnic adessive case- or similar semantic splits - like both Belarusian and Lithuanian avoiding to use their ‘have’-verbs in possessive expressions
concerning diseases);
Synthetically, the research aims to give us a clear representation of the constructions used in these languages to encode the notion of possession, to find out areal convergences and to explain their cause.
References
Aikhenvald, A. Y., Dixon, R. M. W. (eds.), 2012, Possession and ownership: A crosslinguistic typology (= Explorations in Linguistic Typology: 6), Oxford: Oxford University Press
Ambrazas, V. et al., 1994, Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika, Vilnius: Mokslo ir Enciklopedijų Leidykla
Chappell, H., McGregor W., 1996, “Prolegomena to a theory of inalienability”, in: Chappell, H., McGregor W. (eds.) The grammar of inalienability: a typological perspective on body part terms and the part-whole relation, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 3-30
Clark, E.V., 1978, “Locationals: Existential, Locative and Possessive Constructions”, in: Greenberg, J.H. Universals of Human Language, Vol.4: Syntax, Stanford: Stanford University press, 85-126
Dahl, Ö., Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. (eds.) Circum-Baltic languages. Vol.2: Grammar and Typology (= SLCS), Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Erelt, M., 2003, The Estonian language, Tallin: Estonian academic publishers
Grzegorczykowa R., Laskowski, R. Wróbel, H., 1998, Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN
Haspelmath, M., 2001, “The European linguistic area: Standard Average European”, in: Haspelmath, M., König, E., Oesterreicher, W., Raible, W. (eds.) Language typology and language universals. (= Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1492-1510
Haspelmath, M., 2003, “The Geometry of Grammatical Meaning: Semantic Maps and Cross-Linguistic Comparison”, in: Tomasello, M.(ed.) The new psychology of language, vol.2, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 211-242
Baron, I., Herslund, M., 2001, “Dimensions of Possession. Introduction”, in: Baron, I., Herslund, M. (eds.) Dimensions of Possession, Amsterdam: Benjamins
Heine, B., 1997, Possession: Cognitive sources, forces and grammaticalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Holvoet, A., 2005, “Attributive and predicative possession: some cases of ambiguity in Baltic and Slavonic”, Zeitschrift für Slawistik 50, 58-67
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M., Wälchli, B., 2001, “The Circum-Baltic languages: An areal-typological approach”,in: Dahl, Ö., Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. Circum-Baltic languages. Vol.2: Grammar and Typology (=SLCS), Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 615-750
Langacker, R., 1991, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol.1, Stanford: Stanford University Press
Langacker, R., 1994, “The limits of continuity”, in: Fuchs, C. and Victorri, V. (eds.), Continuity in Linguistic Semantics, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 9-20
Langacker, R., 2000, Grammar and conceptualization, Berlin/New York : Mouton de Gruyter
Langacker, R., 2002, Concept, Image and Symbol. The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Langacker, R., 2009, Investigations in Cognitive Grammar, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter
Lyons, J., 1968, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Mazzitelli, L.F., 2012, The expression of predicative possession in Belarusian and Lithuanian. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” / Universität Mainz Johannes-Gutenberg
Mathiassen, T., 1985, “A discussion of the notion 'Sprachbund' and its application in the case of the languages in the Eastern Baltic area ”, International Journal of Slavic Philology 21-22, 273-281
Mikaelian, I., 2002, La possession en russe moderne. Éléments pour la construction d’une catégorie sémantco-syntaxique, Villeneuve d’Asc: Atelier National de reproduction des thèses
Nau, N., 1998, Latvian. (=Languages of the World / Materials 217), München, Newcastle: Lincom Europa
Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic diversity in space and time, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
Seiler, H., 1983, Possession as an operational dimension of language, Tübingen: Narr
Sulkala, H., Karjalainen, M., 1992, Finnish, London/New York: Routledge
Stassen, L., 2009, Predicative Possession, New York: Oxford University Press
Stolz, C., Stolz, T., 2009, “A chapter in marginal possession: on being six(ty) in Europe (and beyond)”, in: Helmbrecht et al. (eds.) Form and function in language research (= Trends in Linguistics 210), Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 69-90.
Stolz, T., 1991, Sprachbund im Baltikum? Estnisch und Lettisch im zentrum einer sprachlischen Konvergenzlandschaft [Bochum-Essener beiträge zur Sprachwandelforschung 13], Bochum: Brockmeyer
Stolz, T., 2004, “Possessions in the Far North: a glimpse of the alienability correlation in modern Icelandic”, in: Premper, W. (ed.) Dimensionen und Kontinua. Beiträge zu Hansjakob Seilers Universalienforschung (= Diversitas Linguarum 4), Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer, 73-96
Stolz, T., 2012, "Europäische Besitzungen. Zur gespaltenen Possession im europäischen Sprachvergleich.", in: Gunkel, Lutz & Zifonoun, Gisela (Hgg.), Deutsch im Sprachvergleich. Grammatische Kontraste und Konvergenzen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 41-74.
Stolz, T., Stroh, C. (eds.), 2006, Possession, Quantitative Typologie und Semiotik. Georgisch, Irisch, Türkisch (= Diversitas Linguarum 11). Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer
Stolz, T., Kettler, S., Stroh, C., Urdze, A., 2008, Split possession. An areal-linguistic study of the alienability correlation and related phenomena in the languages of Europe (= SLCS 101). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Taylor, J. R., 1996, Possessives in English. An exploration in cognitive grammar, Oxford: Clarendon press
Timberlake, A., 2004, A reference grammar of Russian, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University press
Veenker, W., 1967, Die Frage des finnougrischen Substrats in der russichen Sprache (=Uralic and Altaic Series 82), Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Books by Lidia Federica Mazzitelli
Lars Johanson, Lidia Federica Mazzitelli and Irina Nevskaya (eds.) 2019. Possession in the langua... more Lars Johanson, Lidia Federica Mazzitelli and Irina Nevskaya (eds.) 2019. Possession in the languages of Europe and North-Central Asia (SLCS 206), John Benjamins
Gerson Klumpp, Lidia Federica Mazzitelli & Fedor Rozhanskij. (eds.) 2018. ESUKA/ JEFUL. Special Issue: Typology of Uralic languages: towards better comparability. , 2019
This volume is based on papers read at the workshop “Typology of Uralic Languages: Towards Better... more This volume is based on papers read at the workshop “Typology of Uralic Languages: Towards Better Comparability” during the 49th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (Naples, 31 August – 2 September 2016). The aim of the workshop was to bring together researchers working on Uralic languages within the contemporary typological framework, in order to foster and prompt discussion on how Uralic linguistics can profit from typology, and vice versa.
In this introduction, we first present an overview of what we consider to be the most urgent problems to be solved in contemporary Uralic linguistics. In Section 2 we sketch an overview of the papers presented in this volume. Finally, in Section 3 we offer a typological portrait of 30 Uralic languages based on a comparative selection of phonetic, phonological and morphosyntactic features.
Studia Typologica 18, Mar 13, 2015
The book deals with the typologically oriented description of one of the basic conceptual domains... more The book deals with the typologically oriented description of one of the basic conceptual domains that are fundamental for the understanding of the structure and functions of language, namely: possession. More precisely, the study concerns predicative possessive constructions, and is devoted to Belarusian (Indo-European, East Slavic) and Lithuanian (Indo-European, Baltic), i.e. two languages that belong to two intimately related language groups within the Indo-European family and which, for a considerable time depth, have been developing in the same region, namely: the south-eastern “corner” of the Circum-Baltic area (CBA).
My investigation focuses on constructions that fulfill two semantic and formal criteria. (1) They express possession, and in particular the meaning of ‘having’; I do not take into account ‘belong’ expressions such as it is mine but only expressions as I have it. In the dissertation I provide an original contribution to the research on the semantics of possession, and I address the topic of how to distinguish belong ‘have’ and ‘belong’ constructions based on empirical evidence from Belarusian and Lithuanian. (2) The formal structure of the constructions corresponds to one of the types of possessive constructions identified in Heine’s (1997) typology. Heine claims that, in any human language, possessive constructions are derived from what he labels ‘source schemas’. The schemas (Action, Location, Accompaniment, Goal, Topic, Source, Genitive and Equation) are understood as both syntactical models and cognitive patterns. According to Heine, languages cognitively represent the concept of “possessing” as a state, resulting from a previous action (Action schema), or as a locative situation (Location schema), an accompaniment situation (Companion schema) and so forth. From the formal point of view, the source schemas represent the grammaticalization paths that languages use to build their possessive constructions from constructions, originally devoted to the expression of other semantic domains, as Location, Action or Accompaniment. Belarusian, for instance, has grammaticalized an originally locative preposition, u ‘at’, into a means of expression of possession (u mjane ёsc’ ‘at me is’ = ‘I have’): this is an instance of the Location schema. Lithuanian, conversely, has grammaticalized a verb with an originally meaning of ‘holding’ into its major strategy for the expression of possession, the verb turėti: an instance of the Action schema.
Languages can use only one of the schemas to express possession; yet typically more possessive constructions, derived from different schemas, are used to convey different possessive meanings. The central part of my work is dedicated to analyze several types of possessive constructions in Belarusian and Lithuanian, and to give a detailed account of their semantics. Particular attention is devoted to the completion between the verb mec’ ‘have’ and the de-locative construction u mjane ёsc’ ‘at me is’ = ‘I have’ in Belarusian.
I show that the two constructions are functionally synonymous only in a few contexts; more often, depending on various semantic and syntactic constraints, only one of the two is allowed. The construction u mjane ёsc’ is shown to be decidedly preferred in near-experiential contexts – as for instance sentences expressing physical characteristics (‘she has blond hair’) or diseases (‘she has a cancer’). Interestingly, the same situation is found in Lithuanian, where in these cases the verb turėti ‘have’ would also be disliked, and other constructions would be used.
I also analyze the non-possessive meanings that the Lithuanian turėti and Belarusian mec’ can express, namely: future reference, modal meanings, resultative meanings. My research on modal and resultative constructions with ‘have’ in Belarusian is the first detailed investigation to have been made on this topic.
The study is based on corpus analyses and complementary questionnaire data gained on the field through surveys among native speakers. I have personally compiled the corpus of Belarusian texts I used for this study: it contains 1.5 Mio words, taken from 212 texts of various types (newspapers, novels, essays, law texts, and other).
In the dissertation I take consciously into account the larger areal background, ie. the Circum-Baltic area. The prolonged contact with neighboring languages – Russian, Polish and the Balto-Finnic languages – is duly considered and weighed as criteria that might have led to the contemporary shape of these two languages in the marking of possessive meanings. From this perspective, this dissertation fills a lacuna: hitherto, research on the Circum-Baltic area (cf. Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001) had addressed the issue of predicative possession only marginally.
The book also provides an introduction to the sociolinguistic context of Lithuanian and Belarusian, with particular focus on their postcolonial status. They have been subjects of the Russian Empire first, and then part of the Soviet Union: this has resulted in heavy Russification, especially in Belarus. I also address the peculiar sociolinguistic status of Belarusian: despite its being co-official language of Belarus together with Russian, Belarusian is spoken on a daily basis by merely 4% of the population. Influence from Russian is pervasive on all linguistic levels, and it also has consequences in the choice of possessive constructions. Sociopolitical stances also have an influence on the linguistic choices of Belarusian (the more liberally and nationalist oriented, the less “Russified” their speech): I have also considered these factors in my work. Sociolinguistics is an important issue when considering Lithuanian data as well: hyper-correctness and self-corrections are a frequent phenomenon among educated speakers, who try to amend their language from unwanted Russicisms; unfortunately, this may sometimes lead to an unnatural language. When evaluating the data (also the answers to the questionnaires), I have taken this circumstance into account as well.
The book yields empirically verified and, to some extent, quantifiable insights into the domain of predicative possession. These insights are valuable not only for those interested in Belarusian and Lithuanian (or East Slavic and Baltic, respectively), but the data analyses and their results can be considered a reliable starting and reference point for typologists with no specific knowledge in either of these two languages (or language groups), too.
Papers by Lidia Federica Mazzitelli
Oceanic Linguistics, 2020
This paper describes the valency-related morphology of Lakurumau, a previously undescribed Wester... more This paper describes the valency-related morphology of Lakurumau, a previously undescribed Western Oceanic language, member of the Lavongai/Nalik language chain. The paper analyzes the function of valency-changing devices and their relation to the morphology reconstructed for Proto-Oceanic. Particular attention is dedicated to the unique phenomenon of phonetic alternations signaling (in)transitivity, as in the pair itak 'carve.INTR'-itok 'carve.TR'. The unusual reflexes of Proto-Oceanic *-ani and *-akin[i], which have developed in Lakurumau into an applicative/transitivizer and a marker of intransitivity respectively, are also discussed, as well as the impersonal construction based on the suffix-an (from a possible Proto-Oceanic passive *-an). The data from Lakurumau are also compared, when possible, to those from the other Lavongai/Nalik languages.
Language Documentation and Conservation 14, 215-237 , 2020
This paper provides an introduction to Lakurumau, a previously undescribed and undocumented Ocean... more This paper provides an introduction to Lakurumau, a previously undescribed and undocumented Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea. The first part of the paper is a guide to the Lakurumau documentation corpus, deposited in the ELAR archive. The participants and the content of the deposit, the technology used for recording, and the ethical protocols followed in the construction of the corpus are discussed. In the second part, a brief grammatical description of Lakurumau is presented, providing morpho-syntactic and sociolinguistic evidence in support of the classification of Lakurumau as an independent language, and some directions for future work are outlined.
Referential and pragmatic-discourse properties of Lithuanian impersonals: 2SG-IMP, 3-IMP and ma/ta-IMP. Kalbotyra 71, 32-57, 2019
In this paper I describe the semantics, pragmatics and the discourse functions of three Lithuania... more In this paper I describe the semantics, pragmatics and the discourse functions of three Lithuanian agent-defocusing constructions, featuring the non-referential use of second person singular/third person verbal forms and the non-agreeing participial forms in ma/ta. These three constructions can all be defined as impersonal, in the broader sense of the word, as the agent (or the main participant, whatever its semantic role may be) is constructed as non-referential: I label them 2sg-imp, 3-imp and ma/ta-imp. My corpus consists of original Lithuanian texts (a short story and entries on an Internet forum) and of the Lithuanian translations of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novella Le Petit Prince and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. My analysis shows that 2sg-imp are preferably used to express generic agents (anyone) and 3-imp are preferably used to express referential indefinite agents (someone), while ma/ta-imp are referentially flexible. 2sg-imp are pragmatically marked in that they are used to express empathy between the speaker and the pool of potential referents; they are mostly used in specific discourse types, such as opinion statements and life drama situations. 3-imp are preferred in situations where the indefiniteness of the agent is relevant to the development of the narrative; ma/ta-imp are instead preferred when the agent is irrelevant, and the focus is on the event itself. The behavior of Lithuanian 2sg-imp, 3-imp and ma/ta-imp is consistent with the one already described for similar constructions in other European languages.
Daniel Bunčić and Anastasia Bauer (eds.) Linguistische Beiträge zur Slavistik. XXIV. JungslavistInnen-Treffen in Köln, 17-19 September 2015. München: Verlag Otto Sagner, 115-123
В этой статье я анализирую семантику и дистрибуцию конструкций типа мне нечего делать в русском, ... more В этой статье я анализирую семантику и дистрибуцию конструкций типа мне нечего делать в русском, белорусском и литовском языках. Я обозначаю эти конструкции тер-мином WIC (wh-infinitive constructions) и различаю три типа, в зависимости от формы субъекта главного предиката: дательный партиципант в DWIC ('dative WIC'), посес-сивный адъюнкт с у + род. в UWIC ('uWIC') и номинативный субъект глагола 'иметь' в HWIC ('have WIC'). DWIC найдены во всех трех языках; HWIC только в белорусском и литовском, а UWIC в русском и белорусском. Данное корпусное исследование пока-зало, что DWIC-преобладающий выбор в русском и в белорусском языках; UWIC являются лишь маргинальным феноменом, ограниченным на выражение отношений реальной посессивности. В белорусском языке, HWIC употребляются редко, и не все носители языка их принимают. В литовском языке, наоборот, нет никакой существен-ной семантической разницы между DWIC и HWIC, но они сильно различаются по своей квантитативной дистрибуции: HWIC являются самым распространненым вари-антом, тогда как DWIC являются лишь маргинальной опцией. В статье я также утвер-ждаю, что посессивная семантика русских и белорусских DWIC всё ещё ощущаема, но только в очень малой мере: посессивность бесспорно присутствует только в UWIC, а в DWIC переобладает модальное значение.
Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 36, 26-53, 2018
This paper presents and analyses the lexical and the grammatical elements used to encode the sema... more This paper presents and analyses the lexical and the grammatical elements used to encode the semantic domain of landscape (the geophysical environment) in Nalik, an Austronesian language spoken in the New Ireland province of Papua New Guinea. The data discussed in the paper are primarily derived from my own fieldwork in New Ireland. The Nalik landscape lexicon is mostly formed by monomorphemic nouns; partonomies are usually derived from the semantic domain of the human body, as in vaat a daanim 'head of the river', ie. 'spring'. The conformation of the New Ireland landscape is reflected in the Nalik directional particles, which encode the position of the speaker and of the object with respect to the sea ('north-west up the coast', 'south-east down the coast', 'inland/out on the sea'). In the Nalik territory, toponyms related to human settlements are particularly dense and are often semantically transparent; toponyms referring to landscape features as hills or rivers are less dense and less prominent as reference points. The paper shows that the primary categorisation forces that drive the categorisation of landscape in Nalik are the affordances (ie. the benefits) of the landscape features and the socio-cultural practices of the community.
In Kuße, H./Scharlaj, M. (Hrsg.). 2016. Linguistische Beiträge zur Slavistik. XXIIII. JungslavistInnen-Treffen in Dresden, 18.-20. September. München: Otto Sagner., 2016
Das Ziel des vorliegenden Aufsatzes ist, einen Überblick über die sprachlichen Mittel zu geben, d... more Das Ziel des vorliegenden Aufsatzes ist, einen Überblick über die sprachlichen Mittel zu geben, die in den slawischen und baltischen Sprachen zum Ausdruck von nicht-prototypischen Possessionsverhältnissen auf prädikativer Ebene verwendet werden.
Wie Stolz et al. (2008) zeigen, es ist typisch für die europäischen Sprachen, dieselbe Konstruktion sowohl für den Ausdruck von prototypischer als auch nicht-prototypischer Possession zu benutzen. Die Situationen, in denen aber eine Sprache über verschiedene Mittel verfügt, um unterschiedliche possessive Bedeutungen auszudrücken, sind in Stolz et al. (2008) als splits (‚Spaltungen‘) bezeichnet. Im Aufsatz sollen solche Spaltungen im Possessionssystem der slawischen und baltischen Sprachen dargelegt werden.
Die Ergebnisse der angeführten Analyse zeigen, dass die slawischen Sprachen meist ihre Besitzkonstruktionen auch für den Ausdruck nicht-prototypischer possessiver Verhältnisse verwenden können. Die slawischen Sprachen, folglich, zeugen von einem typischen europäischen Muster: Genauso wie die Mehrheit der Sprachen Europas weisen sie keine wesentlichen Possessionsspaltungen auf. Allerdings, wie die viele Ausdruckmöglichkeiten für Altersangaben zeigen, sind Fälle von gespaltener Possession auch im Slawischen zu finden. Häufig können diese Spaltungen als Resultat von Sprachkontakt angesehen werden (vgl. Grkovič 2011).
Folia Linguistica, 2017
This paper deals with the linguistic means used to express predicative possession in the language... more This paper deals with the linguistic means used to express predicative possession in the languages of the Circum-Baltic area. The domain of possession is considered here as a prototypically organised domain, where the prototype is the notion of ownership. It is shown that most languages of the area do not provide evidence of splits in their possession systems: rather, they extend the scope of use of their ownership constructions to include all other non-prototypical possessive notions. The linguistic expression of notions that belong to domains neighbouring possession, namely experience, location and attribution, is also analyzed. The results show that these notions are rarely coded by means of possessive constructions: exceptions are explained by invoking semantic causes as well as language contact. A comparison of the functions fulfilled by ‘have’ verbs in the Indo-European languages of the area and by adessive constructions in the Finnic languages is provided, too, and their different scopes of use are explained with reference to their diachronic development and to processes of areal convergences.
The object of this paper are the linguistic means used in Lithuanian to express predicative Posse... more The object of this paper are the linguistic means used in Lithuanian to express predicative Posses-sion. The possessive constructions are individuated and described, as along with the semantic con-straints that favour or disfavour their use. It is claimed that the evidence provided in this paper con-firms what ČINČLEJ (1990) stated: Lithuanian should be considered as occupying a transitional posi-tion between the have- and the be- languages, contra ISAČENKO (1974), who considered it as a pure have-language. The role that language contact may have played in determining the Lithuanian way of expressing Possession is also considered.
in: Kor-Chahine, I., Zaremba, C. (eds.) (2013) Travaux de Slavistique. Actes du VI congrès de la Slavic Linguistic Society. Presses Universitaires de Provence: Aix-en-Provence, 161-173
Citation: Mazzitelli, Lidia (2012), "Le costruzioni mec'+Inf. e mecca+Inf. in bielorusso", mediAz... more Citation: Mazzitelli, Lidia (2012), "Le costruzioni mec'+Inf. e mecca+Inf. in bielorusso", mediAzioni 13, http://mediazioni.sitlec.unibo.it, ISSN 1974-4382.
R. Benacchio, L. Ruvoletto "Le lingue slave in evoluzione: studi di grammatica e semantica", Padova: Unipress, 2010
The paper deals with the variation between the accusative and the genitive case for the expressio... more The paper deals with the variation between the accusative and the genitive case for the expression of negated objects in Belarusian.
Talks by Lidia Federica Mazzitelli
Asang - a multifunctional particle that marks completivity, change of state, 'already', focus and... more Asang - a multifunctional particle that marks completivity, change of state, 'already', focus and foreground in discourse
In my talk, I will analyse the discourse functions of three functionally impersonal constructions... more In my talk, I will analyse the discourse functions of three functionally impersonal constructions in Lithuanian: the ‘vague you’ (2SG-IMPS) and ‘vague they’ (3PL-IMPS; Siewierska 2008), and the impersonal passive in ma/ta (ma/ta-IMPS). These constructions belong to the domain of R-impersonals, displaying a non-topical and non-referential agent (Malchukov & Ogawa 2011). My preliminary analysis is based on a corpus of occurrences taken from different sources (the Lithuanian translation of the novella The Little Prince, the short story Aš mirštu, tu miršti, jis (ji) miršta by Jurga Ivanauskaitė and some posts on a popular Internet forum).
In my talk, I will discuss these three constructions with regard to the referential properties of the omitted agent, the properties of the represented event and their discourse functions. Non-referential uses of 2SG and 3PL pronouns have been extensively studied in various languages, but they have been much less investigated in Lithuanian (see Žeimantiene 2005, 2006). As for the ma/ta construction, much attention has been dedicated to its morphosyntactic properties, while its discourse functions have often been overlooked (but see Geniušienė 2016).
My analysis shows that the Lithuanian 2SG-IMPS and 3PL-IMPS differ from each other in their referential range, as well as in their discourse functions, with 2SG-IMPS used to construct empathy and 3PL to construct distance. Ma/ta-IMPS have the widest range of uses, being able to encode non-referential generic and indefinite agents as well and referential specific agents (even 1SG; Geniušienė 2016); it is mostly used to express distance. As for event elaboration (cf. Sansò 2011), 2SG-IMPS and 3PL-IMPS can express elaborated events, while ma/ta-IMPS usually encode little elaborated events.
References
Geniušienė, Emma (2016) The relation between the indefinite personal and the passive in Lithuanian. In Anne Kibort/ Nijolė Maskaliūnienė (eds.) Passive constructions in Lithuanian. Selected works of Emma Geniušienė. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 247-268
Malchukov Andrej L. and Akio Ogawa (2011) Towards a typology of impersonal constructions: A semantic map approach. In Andrej Malchukov/Anna Siewierska (eds.) Impersonal constructions. A cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 17–54.
Sansò, Andrea (2006) ‘Agent defocusing’ revisited. Passive and impersonal constructions in some European languages. In Werner Abraham/ Larisa Leisiö (eds.), Passivization and typology. Form and Function, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 232-273.
Siewierska, Anna (2008) Ways of impersonalizing. In: Maria de los Angeles Gomez Gonzales/Lachlan Mackenzie/Elsa Gonzalez Alvarez (eds) Current Trends in Contrastive Linguistics. Amsterdam : John Benjamins, 3-26
Žeimantienė, Vaiva (2006) Deutsche subjektlose Passivkonstruktionen und „man-Sätze“ im Vergleich zu ihren Entsprechungen im Litauischen. Lucyna Wille/Jaromin Homa (eds.). Menschen – Sprachen – Kulturen, Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 379-387.
Žeimantienė, Vaiva (2005) Einzelsprachliche Realisierungen des Subjekt-Impersonals: Das Beispiel deutscher man-Sätze und ihrer Entsprechungen im Litauischen. Kalbotyra 55 (3), 81-90.
Uploads
Completed Projects by Lidia Federica Mazzitelli
The corpus description is available on https://github.com/Belarusian-Corpus. Instructions for accessing the corpus materials can be found there.
so-called “Circum-Baltic area” (Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 2001) from a typological and areal point of
view. The languages taken into account are Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, Votic, Veps, North Saami, Russian, Belarusian, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and German.
Even if some studies about the languages involved in this analysis are already available, we still lack a comprehensive research about this topic on an areal level.
Therefore, the main goals the project wants to achieve are:
1. to provide a clear description of the constructions used in these languages to encode the notion of
Possession and to highlight the splits in the system, using the tool of the “semantic maps” (Haspelmath, 2003);
2. to find out and, as far as possible, to explain, the convergences, that can be observed in the encoding of possession in these languages (such as the use of formally similar or coincident constructions - like the Russian adessive construction u ‘at’ + Gen. and the Finnic adessive case- or similar semantic splits - like both Belarusian and Lithuanian avoiding to use their ‘have’-verbs in possessive expressions
concerning diseases);
Synthetically, the research aims to give us a clear representation of the constructions used in these languages to encode the notion of possession, to find out areal convergences and to explain their cause.
References
Aikhenvald, A. Y., Dixon, R. M. W. (eds.), 2012, Possession and ownership: A crosslinguistic typology (= Explorations in Linguistic Typology: 6), Oxford: Oxford University Press
Ambrazas, V. et al., 1994, Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika, Vilnius: Mokslo ir Enciklopedijų Leidykla
Chappell, H., McGregor W., 1996, “Prolegomena to a theory of inalienability”, in: Chappell, H., McGregor W. (eds.) The grammar of inalienability: a typological perspective on body part terms and the part-whole relation, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 3-30
Clark, E.V., 1978, “Locationals: Existential, Locative and Possessive Constructions”, in: Greenberg, J.H. Universals of Human Language, Vol.4: Syntax, Stanford: Stanford University press, 85-126
Dahl, Ö., Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. (eds.) Circum-Baltic languages. Vol.2: Grammar and Typology (= SLCS), Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Erelt, M., 2003, The Estonian language, Tallin: Estonian academic publishers
Grzegorczykowa R., Laskowski, R. Wróbel, H., 1998, Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN
Haspelmath, M., 2001, “The European linguistic area: Standard Average European”, in: Haspelmath, M., König, E., Oesterreicher, W., Raible, W. (eds.) Language typology and language universals. (= Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1492-1510
Haspelmath, M., 2003, “The Geometry of Grammatical Meaning: Semantic Maps and Cross-Linguistic Comparison”, in: Tomasello, M.(ed.) The new psychology of language, vol.2, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 211-242
Baron, I., Herslund, M., 2001, “Dimensions of Possession. Introduction”, in: Baron, I., Herslund, M. (eds.) Dimensions of Possession, Amsterdam: Benjamins
Heine, B., 1997, Possession: Cognitive sources, forces and grammaticalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Holvoet, A., 2005, “Attributive and predicative possession: some cases of ambiguity in Baltic and Slavonic”, Zeitschrift für Slawistik 50, 58-67
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M., Wälchli, B., 2001, “The Circum-Baltic languages: An areal-typological approach”,in: Dahl, Ö., Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. Circum-Baltic languages. Vol.2: Grammar and Typology (=SLCS), Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 615-750
Langacker, R., 1991, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol.1, Stanford: Stanford University Press
Langacker, R., 1994, “The limits of continuity”, in: Fuchs, C. and Victorri, V. (eds.), Continuity in Linguistic Semantics, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 9-20
Langacker, R., 2000, Grammar and conceptualization, Berlin/New York : Mouton de Gruyter
Langacker, R., 2002, Concept, Image and Symbol. The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Langacker, R., 2009, Investigations in Cognitive Grammar, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter
Lyons, J., 1968, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Mazzitelli, L.F., 2012, The expression of predicative possession in Belarusian and Lithuanian. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” / Universität Mainz Johannes-Gutenberg
Mathiassen, T., 1985, “A discussion of the notion 'Sprachbund' and its application in the case of the languages in the Eastern Baltic area ”, International Journal of Slavic Philology 21-22, 273-281
Mikaelian, I., 2002, La possession en russe moderne. Éléments pour la construction d’une catégorie sémantco-syntaxique, Villeneuve d’Asc: Atelier National de reproduction des thèses
Nau, N., 1998, Latvian. (=Languages of the World / Materials 217), München, Newcastle: Lincom Europa
Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic diversity in space and time, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
Seiler, H., 1983, Possession as an operational dimension of language, Tübingen: Narr
Sulkala, H., Karjalainen, M., 1992, Finnish, London/New York: Routledge
Stassen, L., 2009, Predicative Possession, New York: Oxford University Press
Stolz, C., Stolz, T., 2009, “A chapter in marginal possession: on being six(ty) in Europe (and beyond)”, in: Helmbrecht et al. (eds.) Form and function in language research (= Trends in Linguistics 210), Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 69-90.
Stolz, T., 1991, Sprachbund im Baltikum? Estnisch und Lettisch im zentrum einer sprachlischen Konvergenzlandschaft [Bochum-Essener beiträge zur Sprachwandelforschung 13], Bochum: Brockmeyer
Stolz, T., 2004, “Possessions in the Far North: a glimpse of the alienability correlation in modern Icelandic”, in: Premper, W. (ed.) Dimensionen und Kontinua. Beiträge zu Hansjakob Seilers Universalienforschung (= Diversitas Linguarum 4), Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer, 73-96
Stolz, T., 2012, "Europäische Besitzungen. Zur gespaltenen Possession im europäischen Sprachvergleich.", in: Gunkel, Lutz & Zifonoun, Gisela (Hgg.), Deutsch im Sprachvergleich. Grammatische Kontraste und Konvergenzen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 41-74.
Stolz, T., Stroh, C. (eds.), 2006, Possession, Quantitative Typologie und Semiotik. Georgisch, Irisch, Türkisch (= Diversitas Linguarum 11). Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer
Stolz, T., Kettler, S., Stroh, C., Urdze, A., 2008, Split possession. An areal-linguistic study of the alienability correlation and related phenomena in the languages of Europe (= SLCS 101). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Taylor, J. R., 1996, Possessives in English. An exploration in cognitive grammar, Oxford: Clarendon press
Timberlake, A., 2004, A reference grammar of Russian, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University press
Veenker, W., 1967, Die Frage des finnougrischen Substrats in der russichen Sprache (=Uralic and Altaic Series 82), Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Books by Lidia Federica Mazzitelli
In this introduction, we first present an overview of what we consider to be the most urgent problems to be solved in contemporary Uralic linguistics. In Section 2 we sketch an overview of the papers presented in this volume. Finally, in Section 3 we offer a typological portrait of 30 Uralic languages based on a comparative selection of phonetic, phonological and morphosyntactic features.
My investigation focuses on constructions that fulfill two semantic and formal criteria. (1) They express possession, and in particular the meaning of ‘having’; I do not take into account ‘belong’ expressions such as it is mine but only expressions as I have it. In the dissertation I provide an original contribution to the research on the semantics of possession, and I address the topic of how to distinguish belong ‘have’ and ‘belong’ constructions based on empirical evidence from Belarusian and Lithuanian. (2) The formal structure of the constructions corresponds to one of the types of possessive constructions identified in Heine’s (1997) typology. Heine claims that, in any human language, possessive constructions are derived from what he labels ‘source schemas’. The schemas (Action, Location, Accompaniment, Goal, Topic, Source, Genitive and Equation) are understood as both syntactical models and cognitive patterns. According to Heine, languages cognitively represent the concept of “possessing” as a state, resulting from a previous action (Action schema), or as a locative situation (Location schema), an accompaniment situation (Companion schema) and so forth. From the formal point of view, the source schemas represent the grammaticalization paths that languages use to build their possessive constructions from constructions, originally devoted to the expression of other semantic domains, as Location, Action or Accompaniment. Belarusian, for instance, has grammaticalized an originally locative preposition, u ‘at’, into a means of expression of possession (u mjane ёsc’ ‘at me is’ = ‘I have’): this is an instance of the Location schema. Lithuanian, conversely, has grammaticalized a verb with an originally meaning of ‘holding’ into its major strategy for the expression of possession, the verb turėti: an instance of the Action schema.
Languages can use only one of the schemas to express possession; yet typically more possessive constructions, derived from different schemas, are used to convey different possessive meanings. The central part of my work is dedicated to analyze several types of possessive constructions in Belarusian and Lithuanian, and to give a detailed account of their semantics. Particular attention is devoted to the completion between the verb mec’ ‘have’ and the de-locative construction u mjane ёsc’ ‘at me is’ = ‘I have’ in Belarusian.
I show that the two constructions are functionally synonymous only in a few contexts; more often, depending on various semantic and syntactic constraints, only one of the two is allowed. The construction u mjane ёsc’ is shown to be decidedly preferred in near-experiential contexts – as for instance sentences expressing physical characteristics (‘she has blond hair’) or diseases (‘she has a cancer’). Interestingly, the same situation is found in Lithuanian, where in these cases the verb turėti ‘have’ would also be disliked, and other constructions would be used.
I also analyze the non-possessive meanings that the Lithuanian turėti and Belarusian mec’ can express, namely: future reference, modal meanings, resultative meanings. My research on modal and resultative constructions with ‘have’ in Belarusian is the first detailed investigation to have been made on this topic.
The study is based on corpus analyses and complementary questionnaire data gained on the field through surveys among native speakers. I have personally compiled the corpus of Belarusian texts I used for this study: it contains 1.5 Mio words, taken from 212 texts of various types (newspapers, novels, essays, law texts, and other).
In the dissertation I take consciously into account the larger areal background, ie. the Circum-Baltic area. The prolonged contact with neighboring languages – Russian, Polish and the Balto-Finnic languages – is duly considered and weighed as criteria that might have led to the contemporary shape of these two languages in the marking of possessive meanings. From this perspective, this dissertation fills a lacuna: hitherto, research on the Circum-Baltic area (cf. Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001) had addressed the issue of predicative possession only marginally.
The book also provides an introduction to the sociolinguistic context of Lithuanian and Belarusian, with particular focus on their postcolonial status. They have been subjects of the Russian Empire first, and then part of the Soviet Union: this has resulted in heavy Russification, especially in Belarus. I also address the peculiar sociolinguistic status of Belarusian: despite its being co-official language of Belarus together with Russian, Belarusian is spoken on a daily basis by merely 4% of the population. Influence from Russian is pervasive on all linguistic levels, and it also has consequences in the choice of possessive constructions. Sociopolitical stances also have an influence on the linguistic choices of Belarusian (the more liberally and nationalist oriented, the less “Russified” their speech): I have also considered these factors in my work. Sociolinguistics is an important issue when considering Lithuanian data as well: hyper-correctness and self-corrections are a frequent phenomenon among educated speakers, who try to amend their language from unwanted Russicisms; unfortunately, this may sometimes lead to an unnatural language. When evaluating the data (also the answers to the questionnaires), I have taken this circumstance into account as well.
The book yields empirically verified and, to some extent, quantifiable insights into the domain of predicative possession. These insights are valuable not only for those interested in Belarusian and Lithuanian (or East Slavic and Baltic, respectively), but the data analyses and their results can be considered a reliable starting and reference point for typologists with no specific knowledge in either of these two languages (or language groups), too.
Papers by Lidia Federica Mazzitelli
Wie Stolz et al. (2008) zeigen, es ist typisch für die europäischen Sprachen, dieselbe Konstruktion sowohl für den Ausdruck von prototypischer als auch nicht-prototypischer Possession zu benutzen. Die Situationen, in denen aber eine Sprache über verschiedene Mittel verfügt, um unterschiedliche possessive Bedeutungen auszudrücken, sind in Stolz et al. (2008) als splits (‚Spaltungen‘) bezeichnet. Im Aufsatz sollen solche Spaltungen im Possessionssystem der slawischen und baltischen Sprachen dargelegt werden.
Die Ergebnisse der angeführten Analyse zeigen, dass die slawischen Sprachen meist ihre Besitzkonstruktionen auch für den Ausdruck nicht-prototypischer possessiver Verhältnisse verwenden können. Die slawischen Sprachen, folglich, zeugen von einem typischen europäischen Muster: Genauso wie die Mehrheit der Sprachen Europas weisen sie keine wesentlichen Possessionsspaltungen auf. Allerdings, wie die viele Ausdruckmöglichkeiten für Altersangaben zeigen, sind Fälle von gespaltener Possession auch im Slawischen zu finden. Häufig können diese Spaltungen als Resultat von Sprachkontakt angesehen werden (vgl. Grkovič 2011).
Talks by Lidia Federica Mazzitelli
In my talk, I will discuss these three constructions with regard to the referential properties of the omitted agent, the properties of the represented event and their discourse functions. Non-referential uses of 2SG and 3PL pronouns have been extensively studied in various languages, but they have been much less investigated in Lithuanian (see Žeimantiene 2005, 2006). As for the ma/ta construction, much attention has been dedicated to its morphosyntactic properties, while its discourse functions have often been overlooked (but see Geniušienė 2016).
My analysis shows that the Lithuanian 2SG-IMPS and 3PL-IMPS differ from each other in their referential range, as well as in their discourse functions, with 2SG-IMPS used to construct empathy and 3PL to construct distance. Ma/ta-IMPS have the widest range of uses, being able to encode non-referential generic and indefinite agents as well and referential specific agents (even 1SG; Geniušienė 2016); it is mostly used to express distance. As for event elaboration (cf. Sansò 2011), 2SG-IMPS and 3PL-IMPS can express elaborated events, while ma/ta-IMPS usually encode little elaborated events.
References
Geniušienė, Emma (2016) The relation between the indefinite personal and the passive in Lithuanian. In Anne Kibort/ Nijolė Maskaliūnienė (eds.) Passive constructions in Lithuanian. Selected works of Emma Geniušienė. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 247-268
Malchukov Andrej L. and Akio Ogawa (2011) Towards a typology of impersonal constructions: A semantic map approach. In Andrej Malchukov/Anna Siewierska (eds.) Impersonal constructions. A cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 17–54.
Sansò, Andrea (2006) ‘Agent defocusing’ revisited. Passive and impersonal constructions in some European languages. In Werner Abraham/ Larisa Leisiö (eds.), Passivization and typology. Form and Function, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 232-273.
Siewierska, Anna (2008) Ways of impersonalizing. In: Maria de los Angeles Gomez Gonzales/Lachlan Mackenzie/Elsa Gonzalez Alvarez (eds) Current Trends in Contrastive Linguistics. Amsterdam : John Benjamins, 3-26
Žeimantienė, Vaiva (2006) Deutsche subjektlose Passivkonstruktionen und „man-Sätze“ im Vergleich zu ihren Entsprechungen im Litauischen. Lucyna Wille/Jaromin Homa (eds.). Menschen – Sprachen – Kulturen, Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 379-387.
Žeimantienė, Vaiva (2005) Einzelsprachliche Realisierungen des Subjekt-Impersonals: Das Beispiel deutscher man-Sätze und ihrer Entsprechungen im Litauischen. Kalbotyra 55 (3), 81-90.
The corpus description is available on https://github.com/Belarusian-Corpus. Instructions for accessing the corpus materials can be found there.
so-called “Circum-Baltic area” (Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 2001) from a typological and areal point of
view. The languages taken into account are Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, Votic, Veps, North Saami, Russian, Belarusian, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and German.
Even if some studies about the languages involved in this analysis are already available, we still lack a comprehensive research about this topic on an areal level.
Therefore, the main goals the project wants to achieve are:
1. to provide a clear description of the constructions used in these languages to encode the notion of
Possession and to highlight the splits in the system, using the tool of the “semantic maps” (Haspelmath, 2003);
2. to find out and, as far as possible, to explain, the convergences, that can be observed in the encoding of possession in these languages (such as the use of formally similar or coincident constructions - like the Russian adessive construction u ‘at’ + Gen. and the Finnic adessive case- or similar semantic splits - like both Belarusian and Lithuanian avoiding to use their ‘have’-verbs in possessive expressions
concerning diseases);
Synthetically, the research aims to give us a clear representation of the constructions used in these languages to encode the notion of possession, to find out areal convergences and to explain their cause.
References
Aikhenvald, A. Y., Dixon, R. M. W. (eds.), 2012, Possession and ownership: A crosslinguistic typology (= Explorations in Linguistic Typology: 6), Oxford: Oxford University Press
Ambrazas, V. et al., 1994, Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika, Vilnius: Mokslo ir Enciklopedijų Leidykla
Chappell, H., McGregor W., 1996, “Prolegomena to a theory of inalienability”, in: Chappell, H., McGregor W. (eds.) The grammar of inalienability: a typological perspective on body part terms and the part-whole relation, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 3-30
Clark, E.V., 1978, “Locationals: Existential, Locative and Possessive Constructions”, in: Greenberg, J.H. Universals of Human Language, Vol.4: Syntax, Stanford: Stanford University press, 85-126
Dahl, Ö., Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. (eds.) Circum-Baltic languages. Vol.2: Grammar and Typology (= SLCS), Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Erelt, M., 2003, The Estonian language, Tallin: Estonian academic publishers
Grzegorczykowa R., Laskowski, R. Wróbel, H., 1998, Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN
Haspelmath, M., 2001, “The European linguistic area: Standard Average European”, in: Haspelmath, M., König, E., Oesterreicher, W., Raible, W. (eds.) Language typology and language universals. (= Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1492-1510
Haspelmath, M., 2003, “The Geometry of Grammatical Meaning: Semantic Maps and Cross-Linguistic Comparison”, in: Tomasello, M.(ed.) The new psychology of language, vol.2, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 211-242
Baron, I., Herslund, M., 2001, “Dimensions of Possession. Introduction”, in: Baron, I., Herslund, M. (eds.) Dimensions of Possession, Amsterdam: Benjamins
Heine, B., 1997, Possession: Cognitive sources, forces and grammaticalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Holvoet, A., 2005, “Attributive and predicative possession: some cases of ambiguity in Baltic and Slavonic”, Zeitschrift für Slawistik 50, 58-67
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M., Wälchli, B., 2001, “The Circum-Baltic languages: An areal-typological approach”,in: Dahl, Ö., Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. Circum-Baltic languages. Vol.2: Grammar and Typology (=SLCS), Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 615-750
Langacker, R., 1991, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol.1, Stanford: Stanford University Press
Langacker, R., 1994, “The limits of continuity”, in: Fuchs, C. and Victorri, V. (eds.), Continuity in Linguistic Semantics, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 9-20
Langacker, R., 2000, Grammar and conceptualization, Berlin/New York : Mouton de Gruyter
Langacker, R., 2002, Concept, Image and Symbol. The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Langacker, R., 2009, Investigations in Cognitive Grammar, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter
Lyons, J., 1968, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Mazzitelli, L.F., 2012, The expression of predicative possession in Belarusian and Lithuanian. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” / Universität Mainz Johannes-Gutenberg
Mathiassen, T., 1985, “A discussion of the notion 'Sprachbund' and its application in the case of the languages in the Eastern Baltic area ”, International Journal of Slavic Philology 21-22, 273-281
Mikaelian, I., 2002, La possession en russe moderne. Éléments pour la construction d’une catégorie sémantco-syntaxique, Villeneuve d’Asc: Atelier National de reproduction des thèses
Nau, N., 1998, Latvian. (=Languages of the World / Materials 217), München, Newcastle: Lincom Europa
Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic diversity in space and time, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
Seiler, H., 1983, Possession as an operational dimension of language, Tübingen: Narr
Sulkala, H., Karjalainen, M., 1992, Finnish, London/New York: Routledge
Stassen, L., 2009, Predicative Possession, New York: Oxford University Press
Stolz, C., Stolz, T., 2009, “A chapter in marginal possession: on being six(ty) in Europe (and beyond)”, in: Helmbrecht et al. (eds.) Form and function in language research (= Trends in Linguistics 210), Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 69-90.
Stolz, T., 1991, Sprachbund im Baltikum? Estnisch und Lettisch im zentrum einer sprachlischen Konvergenzlandschaft [Bochum-Essener beiträge zur Sprachwandelforschung 13], Bochum: Brockmeyer
Stolz, T., 2004, “Possessions in the Far North: a glimpse of the alienability correlation in modern Icelandic”, in: Premper, W. (ed.) Dimensionen und Kontinua. Beiträge zu Hansjakob Seilers Universalienforschung (= Diversitas Linguarum 4), Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer, 73-96
Stolz, T., 2012, "Europäische Besitzungen. Zur gespaltenen Possession im europäischen Sprachvergleich.", in: Gunkel, Lutz & Zifonoun, Gisela (Hgg.), Deutsch im Sprachvergleich. Grammatische Kontraste und Konvergenzen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 41-74.
Stolz, T., Stroh, C. (eds.), 2006, Possession, Quantitative Typologie und Semiotik. Georgisch, Irisch, Türkisch (= Diversitas Linguarum 11). Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer
Stolz, T., Kettler, S., Stroh, C., Urdze, A., 2008, Split possession. An areal-linguistic study of the alienability correlation and related phenomena in the languages of Europe (= SLCS 101). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Taylor, J. R., 1996, Possessives in English. An exploration in cognitive grammar, Oxford: Clarendon press
Timberlake, A., 2004, A reference grammar of Russian, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University press
Veenker, W., 1967, Die Frage des finnougrischen Substrats in der russichen Sprache (=Uralic and Altaic Series 82), Bloomington: Indiana University Press
In this introduction, we first present an overview of what we consider to be the most urgent problems to be solved in contemporary Uralic linguistics. In Section 2 we sketch an overview of the papers presented in this volume. Finally, in Section 3 we offer a typological portrait of 30 Uralic languages based on a comparative selection of phonetic, phonological and morphosyntactic features.
My investigation focuses on constructions that fulfill two semantic and formal criteria. (1) They express possession, and in particular the meaning of ‘having’; I do not take into account ‘belong’ expressions such as it is mine but only expressions as I have it. In the dissertation I provide an original contribution to the research on the semantics of possession, and I address the topic of how to distinguish belong ‘have’ and ‘belong’ constructions based on empirical evidence from Belarusian and Lithuanian. (2) The formal structure of the constructions corresponds to one of the types of possessive constructions identified in Heine’s (1997) typology. Heine claims that, in any human language, possessive constructions are derived from what he labels ‘source schemas’. The schemas (Action, Location, Accompaniment, Goal, Topic, Source, Genitive and Equation) are understood as both syntactical models and cognitive patterns. According to Heine, languages cognitively represent the concept of “possessing” as a state, resulting from a previous action (Action schema), or as a locative situation (Location schema), an accompaniment situation (Companion schema) and so forth. From the formal point of view, the source schemas represent the grammaticalization paths that languages use to build their possessive constructions from constructions, originally devoted to the expression of other semantic domains, as Location, Action or Accompaniment. Belarusian, for instance, has grammaticalized an originally locative preposition, u ‘at’, into a means of expression of possession (u mjane ёsc’ ‘at me is’ = ‘I have’): this is an instance of the Location schema. Lithuanian, conversely, has grammaticalized a verb with an originally meaning of ‘holding’ into its major strategy for the expression of possession, the verb turėti: an instance of the Action schema.
Languages can use only one of the schemas to express possession; yet typically more possessive constructions, derived from different schemas, are used to convey different possessive meanings. The central part of my work is dedicated to analyze several types of possessive constructions in Belarusian and Lithuanian, and to give a detailed account of their semantics. Particular attention is devoted to the completion between the verb mec’ ‘have’ and the de-locative construction u mjane ёsc’ ‘at me is’ = ‘I have’ in Belarusian.
I show that the two constructions are functionally synonymous only in a few contexts; more often, depending on various semantic and syntactic constraints, only one of the two is allowed. The construction u mjane ёsc’ is shown to be decidedly preferred in near-experiential contexts – as for instance sentences expressing physical characteristics (‘she has blond hair’) or diseases (‘she has a cancer’). Interestingly, the same situation is found in Lithuanian, where in these cases the verb turėti ‘have’ would also be disliked, and other constructions would be used.
I also analyze the non-possessive meanings that the Lithuanian turėti and Belarusian mec’ can express, namely: future reference, modal meanings, resultative meanings. My research on modal and resultative constructions with ‘have’ in Belarusian is the first detailed investigation to have been made on this topic.
The study is based on corpus analyses and complementary questionnaire data gained on the field through surveys among native speakers. I have personally compiled the corpus of Belarusian texts I used for this study: it contains 1.5 Mio words, taken from 212 texts of various types (newspapers, novels, essays, law texts, and other).
In the dissertation I take consciously into account the larger areal background, ie. the Circum-Baltic area. The prolonged contact with neighboring languages – Russian, Polish and the Balto-Finnic languages – is duly considered and weighed as criteria that might have led to the contemporary shape of these two languages in the marking of possessive meanings. From this perspective, this dissertation fills a lacuna: hitherto, research on the Circum-Baltic area (cf. Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001) had addressed the issue of predicative possession only marginally.
The book also provides an introduction to the sociolinguistic context of Lithuanian and Belarusian, with particular focus on their postcolonial status. They have been subjects of the Russian Empire first, and then part of the Soviet Union: this has resulted in heavy Russification, especially in Belarus. I also address the peculiar sociolinguistic status of Belarusian: despite its being co-official language of Belarus together with Russian, Belarusian is spoken on a daily basis by merely 4% of the population. Influence from Russian is pervasive on all linguistic levels, and it also has consequences in the choice of possessive constructions. Sociopolitical stances also have an influence on the linguistic choices of Belarusian (the more liberally and nationalist oriented, the less “Russified” their speech): I have also considered these factors in my work. Sociolinguistics is an important issue when considering Lithuanian data as well: hyper-correctness and self-corrections are a frequent phenomenon among educated speakers, who try to amend their language from unwanted Russicisms; unfortunately, this may sometimes lead to an unnatural language. When evaluating the data (also the answers to the questionnaires), I have taken this circumstance into account as well.
The book yields empirically verified and, to some extent, quantifiable insights into the domain of predicative possession. These insights are valuable not only for those interested in Belarusian and Lithuanian (or East Slavic and Baltic, respectively), but the data analyses and their results can be considered a reliable starting and reference point for typologists with no specific knowledge in either of these two languages (or language groups), too.
Wie Stolz et al. (2008) zeigen, es ist typisch für die europäischen Sprachen, dieselbe Konstruktion sowohl für den Ausdruck von prototypischer als auch nicht-prototypischer Possession zu benutzen. Die Situationen, in denen aber eine Sprache über verschiedene Mittel verfügt, um unterschiedliche possessive Bedeutungen auszudrücken, sind in Stolz et al. (2008) als splits (‚Spaltungen‘) bezeichnet. Im Aufsatz sollen solche Spaltungen im Possessionssystem der slawischen und baltischen Sprachen dargelegt werden.
Die Ergebnisse der angeführten Analyse zeigen, dass die slawischen Sprachen meist ihre Besitzkonstruktionen auch für den Ausdruck nicht-prototypischer possessiver Verhältnisse verwenden können. Die slawischen Sprachen, folglich, zeugen von einem typischen europäischen Muster: Genauso wie die Mehrheit der Sprachen Europas weisen sie keine wesentlichen Possessionsspaltungen auf. Allerdings, wie die viele Ausdruckmöglichkeiten für Altersangaben zeigen, sind Fälle von gespaltener Possession auch im Slawischen zu finden. Häufig können diese Spaltungen als Resultat von Sprachkontakt angesehen werden (vgl. Grkovič 2011).
In my talk, I will discuss these three constructions with regard to the referential properties of the omitted agent, the properties of the represented event and their discourse functions. Non-referential uses of 2SG and 3PL pronouns have been extensively studied in various languages, but they have been much less investigated in Lithuanian (see Žeimantiene 2005, 2006). As for the ma/ta construction, much attention has been dedicated to its morphosyntactic properties, while its discourse functions have often been overlooked (but see Geniušienė 2016).
My analysis shows that the Lithuanian 2SG-IMPS and 3PL-IMPS differ from each other in their referential range, as well as in their discourse functions, with 2SG-IMPS used to construct empathy and 3PL to construct distance. Ma/ta-IMPS have the widest range of uses, being able to encode non-referential generic and indefinite agents as well and referential specific agents (even 1SG; Geniušienė 2016); it is mostly used to express distance. As for event elaboration (cf. Sansò 2011), 2SG-IMPS and 3PL-IMPS can express elaborated events, while ma/ta-IMPS usually encode little elaborated events.
References
Geniušienė, Emma (2016) The relation between the indefinite personal and the passive in Lithuanian. In Anne Kibort/ Nijolė Maskaliūnienė (eds.) Passive constructions in Lithuanian. Selected works of Emma Geniušienė. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 247-268
Malchukov Andrej L. and Akio Ogawa (2011) Towards a typology of impersonal constructions: A semantic map approach. In Andrej Malchukov/Anna Siewierska (eds.) Impersonal constructions. A cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 17–54.
Sansò, Andrea (2006) ‘Agent defocusing’ revisited. Passive and impersonal constructions in some European languages. In Werner Abraham/ Larisa Leisiö (eds.), Passivization and typology. Form and Function, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 232-273.
Siewierska, Anna (2008) Ways of impersonalizing. In: Maria de los Angeles Gomez Gonzales/Lachlan Mackenzie/Elsa Gonzalez Alvarez (eds) Current Trends in Contrastive Linguistics. Amsterdam : John Benjamins, 3-26
Žeimantienė, Vaiva (2006) Deutsche subjektlose Passivkonstruktionen und „man-Sätze“ im Vergleich zu ihren Entsprechungen im Litauischen. Lucyna Wille/Jaromin Homa (eds.). Menschen – Sprachen – Kulturen, Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 379-387.
Žeimantienė, Vaiva (2005) Einzelsprachliche Realisierungen des Subjekt-Impersonals: Das Beispiel deutscher man-Sätze und ihrer Entsprechungen im Litauischen. Kalbotyra 55 (3), 81-90.
1. possession: fully grammaticalized in all languages; the broadest semantic spectrum in German and the narrowest in Russian; Belarusian and Lithuanian show significant constraints on the use of ‘have’ as possessive strategy.
2. resultative/perfect marker: grammaticalized in all languages except Russian; highest degree in German;
3. necessity modal: absent in North Germanic and Russian; highest degree in Lithuanian.
4. future marker: only in Polish and Belarusian, scarcely grammaticalized.
Several contac-induced phenomena may be observed. German has been the model for the development of ‘have’ resultatives in Polish (Heine & Kuteva 2006), and hence in Belarusian and Lithuanian; German sollen ‘shall’ has been replicated in Polish (and hence in Belarusian) with ‘have’ (Hansen 2001, Mazzitelli 2011). I argue, that the Lithuanian obligation development has been independent and that its roots must be found in the shift “dative of possession > have”: in Baltic the dative case could be associated to an infinitive with purposive functions; this construction has developed into the debitive mood in Latvian (Holvoet 1998). In Lithuanian, the old dative strategy has been replaced with the new ‘have’ one.
References
Holvoet, Axel. 1998. Notes on the rise and grammaticalization of the Latvian debitive. Linguistica Baltica 7: 101-118.
Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tanja. 2006. The Changing languages of Europe. Oxford/New York: OUP
Hansen, Björn. 2001. Das slavische Modalauxiliar – Semantik und Grammatikalisierung im
Russischen, Polnischen,Serbischen/Kroatischen und Altkirchenslavischen. München: Otto
Sagner
Mazzitelli, Lidia Federica. 2011. Possession, modality and beyond: The case of mec’ and mecca
in Belarusian. In Motoki Nomachi (ed.), Grammaticalization in Slavic Languages: From
areal and typological perspectives. (Slavic and Eurasian Studies 23), 179–202. Sapporo:
Slavic Research Center of the Hokkaido University.
Bauer, Brigitte. 2000. Archaic syntax in Indo-European. The spread of transitivity in Latin and
French. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Description:
Uralic studies have a long established tradition that developed on the base of historical linguistics. Many disciplines that play an essential role in contemporary linguistics (e.g. phonology and typology) are younger than Uralistics, and integration between the study of Uralic languages and contemporary linguistic disciplines is often not sufficient. Consequently, Uralic studies have at least two weak sides:
- A lack of contemporary synchronic grammars based on modern linguistic theory that can be used by typologists. An obvious illustration can be found in WALS: most of the referenced Uralic grammars are crucially outdated.
- Many grammars of Uralic languages follow the old-style tradition, specific for a particular language. The degree of comparability between Uralic grammars is very low. In the Finnish tradition the case of the direct object is termed ''Accusative'', in the Estonian tradition ''Nominative/genitive.''
These weak sides have been realized by many researchers, and gave rise to new approaches and a recent “renovation” of Uralic studies. New contemporary grammars are being published (Winkler 2001, Siegl 2013, Nikolaeva 2014, Wilbur 201 5). Considerably more attention has been paid to typology, cf. the volume “Negation in Uralic languages” (Miestamo, Tamm & Wagner-Nagy 2015), and the projects “Uralic Essive” (De Groot 2013) and “Oxford Guide to Uralic languages” (directed by M. Bakró-Nagy, J. Laakso & E. Skribnik), currently in progress.
The current workshop aims at bringing together linguists working on Uralic languages from the position of modern linguistic theory and typology. The main goal of the workshop is to increase the level of comparability of the Uralic languages, to promote the integration of Uralic studies into contemporary linguistics, to stimulate the dialogue between researchers of Uralic languages working on different language levels.
Topics:
The topics to be addressed include (but are not restricted to) the following:
- the sounds of Uralic languages from the point of view of modern phonological and prosodic studies
- phonology-morphology interface in the Uralic languages
- revisiting morphological and syntactic categories of the Uralic languages
- new approaches to morphological and morphophonological studies of the Uralic languages
- argument structure and DOM/DSM in the Uralic languages
- questions of word order and information structure in the Uralic languages
Preference will be given to papers that compare several Uralic languages or dialects and aim at a uniform description of the data and promote comparability. We also welcome papers addressing a particular language that offer new approaches to data interpretation in light of contemporary linguistics, as well as papers comparing one or more Uralic languages with their neighbouring language(s).
References
De Groot, C. 2013. The typology of Uralic essive. Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology 2/2, 119-123.
Miestamo, M.; Tamm, A. & Wagner-Nagy, B. 2015. Negation in Uralic Languages. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Nikolaeva, I. 2014. A grammar of Tundra Nenets. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Siegl, F. 2013. Materials on Forest Enets, an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia. Helsinki: SUS.
Wilbur, J. 2015. A grammar of Pite Saami. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Winkler, E. 2001. Udmurt. München: Lincom Europa