East Slavic indefinite pronouns: a corpus-based approach

The paper focuses on the development and functional distribution of indefinite pronouns in Old East Slavic, taking into account different sources, genres and registers. All the examples in the collected dataset were taken from the historical modules of the Russian National Corpus. They were tagged for type of indefinite marker, source (including originality and date), type of reference of the indefinite marker, semantics, type of discourse, and the degree of formality (formal or informal) present in the context. We then applied both descriptive and inferential statistical methods such as Random Forest analysis as well as multinomial logistic regression. Our analysis enabled us to identify the primary and secondary predictors of the choice of a particular indefinite marker and to trace the functional distribution of indefinite markers according to these factors.

Word order in heritage Russian: clause type and majority language matter

Heritage speakers (HSs) are known to differ from monolingual speakers in various linguistic domains. The present study focuses on the syntactic properties of monolingual and heritage Russian. Using a corpus of semi-spontaneous spoken and written narratives produced by HSs of Russian residing in the US and Germany, we investigate HSs’ word order patterns and compare them to monolingual speakers of Russian from Saint Petersburg. Our results show that the majority language (ML) of HSs as well as the clause type contribute to observed differences in word order patterns between speaker groups. Specifically, HSs in Germany performed similarly to monolingual speakers of Russian while HSs in the US generally produced more SVO and less OVS orders than the speakers of the latter group. Furthermore, HSs in the US produced more SVO orders than both monolingual speakers and HSs in Germany in embedded clauses, but not in main clauses. The results of the study are discussed with the reference to the differences between main and embedded clauses as well as the differences between the MLs of the HSs.

The translation and transmission of ‘diatribal’ verbs in the textual traditions of the Zlatostruj collection

The ‘diatribe’ is a dialogical mode of exposition, originating in Hellenistic Greek, where the author dramatically performs different voices in a polemical-didactic discourse. The voice of a fictitious opponent is often disambiguated by means of parenthetical verba dicendi, especially φησί(ν). Although diatribal texts were widely translated into Slavic in the Middle Ages, the textual history of the Zlatostruj collection of Chrysostomic homilies especially suits an investigation not only of how Greek ‘diatribal’ verbs were translated, but also how the Slavic verbs were transmitted or developed in different textual traditions. Over time, Slavic redactional activity led to a homogenization of verb forms. The initial variety of the original translation was partly eliminated, and the verb forms "Equation missing" and "Equation missing" became more firmly established as prototypical diatribal formulae. Especially the (increased) use of the 2sg form "Equation missing" has theoretical consequences for the text’s dialogical structure. Thus, an important dialogical component of the diatribe was reinforced in the Zlatostruj’s textual history on Slavic soil.

Factors contributing to prefixation of biaspectual verbs in Croatian

One of the distinctive features of Slavic verbs is their aspectual morphology: typically each finite and non-finite form of a verb has a constant aspectual value: either perfective (PFV) or imperfective (IPFV). Nevertheless, in all Slavic languages, besides these prototypical verbs with only one assigned aspectual value, there are also verbs with underspecified aspectual value, usually called biaspectual verbs (BVs).As argued in the literature, on the sentence level such verbs have the potential to express both aspectual values, PFV and IPFV, without any further aspectual affixation. However, some scholars assert that the intended aspectual value of such verbs can rarely be unambiguously signaled. To resolve the ambiguous aspectual value, native speakers often provide additional context signals or derive a new aspectually defined verb to indicate the intended aspectual value. The latter possibility has been addressed in numerous papers, but mainly with the goal of detecting the (most common) prefixes used in this process.This study aimed to examine the patterns behind BV prefixation in Croatian. In order to detect factors with a statistically significant impact on prefixation of BVs in Croatian, a random stratified sample of 237 Croatian BVs (BVs of Slavic origin and biaspectual borrowings) was compiled. The data regarding the existence of perfective derivatives were extracted from three different corpora of contemporary Croatian and one subcorpus: the Croatian National Corpus, the Croatian Language Repository, and the Croatian Web Corpus and its subcorpus Forum, and afterwards analyzed using R software with the help of the lme4 package.The results obtained with the generalized linear mixed model revealed five factors statistically significant for prefixation of BVs in Croatian, which can be attributed to the lexical (semantical), morphological and sociolinguistic domains.

Prospects and challenges of gender neutralization in Russian

Feminist linguistic activism has gained prominence among Western feminists as a way to eliminate sexism in language and everyday life. In Russian, gender specification (known as feminitivy) represents the mainstream approach practiced by grassroots feminist reformers. However, alternative approaches aimed at gender neutralization proliferate. The paper examines the prospects and challenges of gender neutralization both in writing and oral speech. Results of a survey documenting attitudes of Russian-speaking feminist and LGBTQI communities to language reform attempts are presented, with a special focus on comparison between gender specification and gender neutralization.