A DIACHRONIC VIEW ON SUPPLETION DIACHRONICAL RESEARCH REGARDING THE LEXICAL COMPETITION BETWEEN РЕБЕНОК AND ДИТЯ.
Aantal woorden: 26 402
Claudia Vanhove Studentennummer: 01304460
Promotor: Prof. dr. Dieter Stern
Masterproef voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad master in de richting Oost-Europese talen en culturen.
Academiejaar: 2016 - 2017 Preface
The following thesis is devoted to my six month Erasmus stay in Prague. It is in this wonderful city that I first came in contact with the notion of suppletion. Without the possibility to attend classes for free I would never have met Prof. Dr. Ronald Kim, who is specialized in the field and introduced me to the wonderful world of linguistics. Therefore I thank him and the system itself for allowing students to go out of their comfort zone and discover new fields whenever they feel like it. Prof. Dr. Kim’s classes stimulated me to write my bachelor paper on the notion of suppletion and consequently I was inspired to write my master thesis on the same subject. After two years of in dept research I feel like I finally start understanding the difficulties that go along with this concept. In addition I would like to thank prof. Dr. Stern for helping me with this subject during all this time. Without his help and positive attitude I might not have been able to go through with my research. In addition I thank my parents for believing in my capabilities and my friends for reading several parts of the paper in order to make me feel more at ease.
I Verklaring ivm auteursrecht
De auteur en de promotor(en) geven de toelating deze studie als geheel voor consultatie beschikbaar te stellen voor persoonlijk gebruik. Elk ander gebruik valt onder de beperkingen van het auteursrecht, in het bijzonder met betrekking tot de verplichting de bron uitdrukkelijk te vermelden bij het aanhalen van gegevens uit deze studie.
Het auteursrecht betreffende de gegevens vermeld in deze studie berust bij de promotor(en). Het auteursrecht beperkt zich tot de wijze waarop de auteur de problematiek van het onderwerp heeft benaderd en neergeschreven. De auteur respecteert daarbij het oorspronkelijke auteursrecht van de individueel geciteerde studies en eventueel bijhorende documentatie, zoals tabellen en figuren.
II Content table
Introduction...... 5
1. Defining suppletion...... 8
1.1 Inflectional versus derivational morphology...... 10
1.2 The gradient character of suppletion...... 11
1.3 Conclusion of synchronic research...... 12
2. Suppletion: A diachronic process...... 13
2.1 Inflicting language change...... 14
2.1.1 Incursion...... 14
3. Etymology of the lexemes...... 16
3.1 Ребенок...... 17
3.1.1 Робъ/рабъ > *orb-...... 17
3.1.2 Robja/robjatko/robenok > robę > робъ/рабъ...... 18
3.1.3 Rebenok > robenok...... 19
3.1.4 Rebenok – rebjata...... 19
3.2 Дети...... 19
3.2.1 Dětę, dětь < *dětent- < *dhojtent-...... 20
3.2.2 Ditja < dětę, dětь...... 20
3.2.3 Ditja – deti...... 21
3.3. Conclusion...... 21
4. An evolutionary time-line...... 21
4.1 Stages of lexical development of the suppletive word pair...... 22
4.1.1 Stage one...... 23
4.1.2 Stage two...... 24
4.1.3 Stage three...... 26
5 An argument of semantics...... 28
III 5.1 Semantic change...... 29
5.2 Semantic shift rab > rebenok...... 30
5.2.1 From slave to child...... 30
5.3 Semantic shift rebenok > rebjata...... 32
5.4 Ditja...... 33
6 Types of meaning...... 33
6.1 Language: Its Structure and Use (1989)...... 34
6.2 Semantics: The Study of Meaning (1981)...... 37
7 Affective meaning...... 40
7.1 What is affect?...... 40
7.1.1 Affective/evaluative morphology...... 43
7.2 Measuring affective meaning...... 44
7.2.1 The Semantic Differential...... 45
7.2.2 Feeltrace...... 47
7.2.3 conclusion...... 48
8 Conclusion...... 49
9 Bibliography...... 53
IV Introduction
In the field of linguistic research suppletion might be one of those subject that is the most ill- defined. Its general nature could only be referred to as skittish and therefore it is no surprise that the difficulty going along with defining its premises results in a discrepancy in the research. With this I tend to refer to the major amounts of research that treat the notion of suppletion mainly as a synchronic concept and by discussing its main properties try to define it as accurately as possible. Yet it is necessary to state that these definitions are lacking in grasping the notion entirely and defining all its premises. One the main definitions that is used among researchers is the one provided by Mel’čuk (1994, 409), which states that suppletion entails the unusual occurrence of a relation between lexemes that is grammatically completely regular, yet phonologically completely irregular. Even though he discusses his definition of suppletion quite elaborately in his Suppletion: Towards a logical analysis of the concept (1994) - which is by far the most frequently quoted work regarding suppletion - it is still possible to contradict some of the statements that Mel’čuk makes. In order to discuss a linguistic phenomenon like suppletion in all its glory it is necessary to define such a notion correctly first. In order to do so I will start from Mel’čuks work and discuss some of the issues that arise when taking a closer look at the definition that he provides. Additionally I urge to improve upon the definition by using a different work method. Instead of researching the notion of suppletion synchronically, I will do so diachronically. The linguistic field shows a logical preference for defining a concept before researching it. Even though this might seem the most logical and straight forward method it is clear that some major issues could be encountered while doing so. This has, for example, led up to linguistic research regarding suppletion to dwindle around some theoretical questions for almost a century instead of focusing on more specific examples of suppletion that might show the true evolutionary workings of the notion. More specifically this paper will be focused on one particular example of suppletion, namely the relation between ребенок – дети (child – children) in the Russian language. This being one of the most frequently mentioned examples of ‘full’ suppletion – which is often defined as the suppletive relation between two words that are etymologically unrelated – it serves as the perfect example to submit to linguistic research. Concretely, I will start by explaining how exactly this suppletive word pair was established by referring to preliminary research on language change. Matthew L. Juge provides some interesting insights in his work On the Rise of Suppletion in Verbal Paradigms (2000) in which he discusses the possible processes that could play a role in the rise of suppletive pairs in verbal paradigms, like the deviating stem of the French future form of aller, ir-. By applying his methods on the noun pair ребенок – дети, I will show how suppletion came to be in this case. Additionally, it is possible to draw up a diachronic time-line that shows the evolution of both word forms like is illustrated in the work of Čumakina et al. Historical changes in the Russian Lexicon (Istoriceskie Izmenenija v Russkoj Leksike 2004). The evolution per word form occurred mostly separately since they are not etymologically related as will be shown in chapter three. This chapter is devoted to an extensive etymology of all four word forms. In order to draw up the time-line accordingly I will use the online Russian National Corpus, which incorporates a historical corpus containing Old Russian texts and
5 which allows us to go all the way back in time and additionally show the frequency of use of particular word forms. In order to be complete I opt to use some additional physical databases that were also used by Čumakina et al. (2004). By comparing the results of the online corpus and the physical corpora it is possible to achieve a clearer and more trustworthy result. The frequency of use of word forms plays a main role in this research since frequency is one of the most important aspects that are at the base of the rise of suppletion. Suppletive word pairs arise in copious amount of languages and are usually attested between word forms that have a high frequency of use. We could refer to those words as being part of the basic lexicon; e.g. the verb [to] be. Even though this research already covers to a large extend how suppletion came to be, it still does not explain what process in language specifically drives the change to occur. Why is it possible that the word form ребенок becomes a part of a lexical competition with the previous singular of дети, being дитя? Whereas language change seems to be a phenomenon in itself that is usually not activated by people, the subject invites itself to be researched a bit further. At first regard the suppletive word pair ребенок – дети is used to refer to children, more specifically it can be said that those words carry a certain affective meaning. It is possible to detect a similar character of words with the suppletive word pair good – better, or rather the Russian добрый – лучший. These word pairs have in common that they refer to objects with a certain connotation. Affection does not only entail good or bad, but any kind of emotional correlation that a person links to certain people or objects. Arguably the degree of affection in regard to the Russian lexeme for ‘child’ was more present in ребенок than in дитя, which might have resulted in a take-over of the singular paradigm of the lexeme ‘child’ by ребенок. Via extensive literary research I will urge to specify the effect of affection on language change and the formation of suppletive word pairs. In order to do so it is firstly necessary to provide an introduction into the linguistic field of semantics. As the meaning, more specifically the affective meaning, of lexemes is claimed to serve as the main motivation to use one word over another it has to be explained properly. Therefore I urge to elucidate on the workings of semantics. Consequently I provide a more elaborate explanation on the acquisition of separate lexical entries over time by the lexemes rebenok, rebjata and ditja in chapter five. It is namely their semantic change that led up to the break up of the regular paradigms. A closer look at their semantics throughout time with the help of databases makes it possible for researchers to witness lexical development up close. Databases, however, usually focus on the referential meaning of the lexemes, meaning that they do not keep track of the affect or connotation that a lexeme can carry. Therefore chapter six focuses on explaining the types of meaning that can be conveyed through the medium of language. Linguists easily tend to focus on one particular part of language and the field of meaning might be one of the most unpopular ones. This is particularly due to the fact that meaning is often not fixed and can vary depending on culture, status, age and so on. Thus, the ambiguity that is portrayed in the field makes it one of great difficulty to explore further. Furthermore chapter seven will zoom in on the specifics of affect and affective meaning in itself. Since this notion plays a major role in providing an explanation for the frequency of use of lexemes, it proves itself useful to elucidate on the subject. Consequently it is necessary to find out what the affective meaning of the lexemes in question is exactly. Only by comparing those it is possible to make some conclusions on their diverging frequency. More specifically
6 a measurement of affective meaning in the lexemes could explain why precisely the word form rebenok started to be preferred over the form ditja. To be entirely complete it would be worth it to spread out the research over time and to measure the affective meaning of the lexemes in different periods of time. Thereby a time-line of affective meaning could truly provide us with a completely transparant view of the rise of the suppletive word pair. Arguably this is impossible since suchlike databases of affective meaning do not exist. Therefore said diachronic measurements are impossible to do. On the other hand it is possible to argue that the results of such a measurement should be completely in accordance with the results of the data researched in chapter four, i.e. the referential meaning of the lexemes, since the frequency data does not diverge depending on the type of meaning that is portrayed. To sum up this thesis focusses on the linguistic phenomenon of suppletion in all its possible aspects. By doing some elaborate literary research we urge to find out the deeper working of this concept. In order to receive full clarity on suppletion itself, we choose to operate in function of the suppletive word pair rebenok – deti. By applying the theory on this word pair as much as possible we urge to provide a well rounded definition of suppletion, a technical elucidation on how the phenomenon comes to be in a language, a time-line that shows the growth of the suppletive word pair rebenok – deti and a more elaborate explanation for what drives the concept to appear in language. More specifically the ‘motor of suppletion’ has been found to be hidden in the notion of frequency. Examples of suppletive pairs usually have this specific trait in common and therefore are often very well known among people. The same can be said for the notion of ‘child’, that is obviously a simple lexeme known among all speakers of language λ. Therefore the final part of this thesis will focus on providing a cause of high frequency in the lexemes in question by researching their semantics. Since the field of meaning is barely touched in the research revolving suppletion, this is quite a new way to look at the notion. Accordingly we do not expect to provide all the answers all at once. The goal of this paper is to revive the research of suppletion and stimulate others to not limit themselves to the endless debates that a synchronic look has provoked thus far.
7 1. Defining suppletion
The phenomenon of suppletion has been stirring up the linguistic environment for over a century now. In the nineteenth century Herman Osthoff officially introduced the notion in his Vom Suppletivwesen der Indogermanischen Sprachen (1899). In his work he discusses the occurrence of suppletion in 45 Indo-European languages of different branches and additionally he urges to find the lexical sources of suppletion. It is clear that even when the subject of suppletion was only recently introduced into linguistic research the specific workings of the notion were already up for debate. Even now a century has passed and many linguists have tried to grasp the concept in its entirety, there is still not a proper consensus on what suppletion is and how it arises. In order to discuss this it is necessary to provide a workable definition of suppletion. Igor Mel’čuk discussed the subject largely in his Suppletion: Towards a logical analysis of the concept (1994). In his work he reduces the notion to two statements, namely the statement of logical characterization and substantive characterisation (1994: 405-406). Via logical characterization it is stated that suppletion is not a linguistic unit, entity nor operation. It, however, does entail the relation between two segmental linguistic signs X and Y of language ʆ. Therefore it is impossible to refer to a single suppletive linguistic sign, since only two linguistic signs can be suppletive in relation to each other. Substantive characterisation refers to the fact that the semantic difference between the signs X and Y is maximally regular in language ʆ, whereas the formal difference between them is maximally irregular. Concretely this means that the signs X and Y express the same thing (with the difference of the grammatical function that they carry), yet their form differs entirely. Additionally to this following definition of suppletion is expressed mostly in mathematical signs in order to clarify the exact structure of suppletion in language which results in the following:
Two minimal segmental signs X and Y of language ʆ are in a relation of suppletion = suppletive with respect to each other if and only if Conditions 1 and 2 are simultaneously satisfied: 〈 1. The signifiers of X and Y are not co〉representable. 2. The signifieds of X and Y are corepresentable and:
a. either the signifieds ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are identical [‘X’ = ‘Y’] and X and Y are allomorphs of the same morpheme [X {M} & Y {M}]; b. or the signified ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are not identical and ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are grammatically corepresentable. (Me∈l’čuk 1994:∈409)
In order to achieve more clarity on this definition it is necessary to include Mel’čuks (1994:408) clarifications on the matters ‘to be corepresentable’ and ‘ to be grammatically corepresentable’):
Linguistic units [not necessarily signs!] X and Y are corepresentable if and only if they can both be represented in terms of the unit Z and perhaps some other units.
8 Symbolically: COREPRES(X,Y) ≡ ( z)[X = {Z, P1, …, Pm} & Y = {Z, Q1, …, Qn}]. For instance, the signifiers laughing [=X] and laughed [=Y] are corepresentable in terms of the signifiers laugh [=Z], -ing [P1∃] and –ed⊕[=Q1]; the signifiers thief and thieve are corepresentable in terms of the signifier thief [=Z] and the alternation f v [ = Q1]
The signifieds ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are grammatically corep⇒resentable if and only if the semantic differences ‘X’ – ‘Z’ = ‘P1’, …, ‘Pm’ and ‘Y’- ‘Z’ = ‘Q1’, …, Qn can be completely represented in terms of grammatical, i.e. inflectional or derivational, meanings of ʆ. Symbolically: GRAM-COREPRES(‘X’, ‘Y’) ≡ ‘X’ = {Z, P1, …, Pm}, & ‘Y’ = {Z, Q1, …, Qn}, & all t⊕he meanings ‘Pi’ and ‘Qj’ are grammatical in ʆ. ⊕ Two signs X and Y are grammatically corepresentable if and only if their signifieds are. For instance, the signs laughing, laughs and laughed are pair wise grammatically corepresentable, as are laughing, laughter and laugher: their signifieds differ only by grammatical meanings. (Mel’čuk 1994: 408)
Mel’čuks (1994) meticulously constructed definition of suppletion is used in most works on the matter as a solid base on which it is possible to further discuss the subject. Even though the definition manages to capture the essence of the matter - namely a suppletive relation is one between two linguistic forms that are grammatically completely regular, yet phonologically completely irregular – it still raises some questions in regard to the occurrence of suppletion between forms in inflectional versus derivational grammar, the gradient scale of suppletion and whether the notion should be discussed just synchronically or also diachronically. As I mentioned earlier this paper will focus on a diachronical view on the matter of suppletion in order to possible do new findings in regard to the motor of the process of word formation. Mel’čuk rejects the strategy of defining the notion via a diachronic point of view, since a synchronic point of view is compulsory as to recognize the main properties of the notion (1994: 355). This statement is not entirely false of course. A synchronic view on suppletion has led up to a quite substantial amount of works providing interesting views on the matter, yet it is necessary to state that the lack of diachronic research is noticeable and possibly plays a large role as to why there cannot be reached a consensus on the matter of suppletion in general. Therefore, by managing a different method, it might be possible to put an end to the research discrepancy in regard to suppletion or at least to show some new insights in regard to this concept.
9 1.1 Inflectional versus derivational morphology
One of the main properties of Mel’čuks (1994) definition is that the notion of suppletion can arise either in inflectional, but also in derivational morphology. By not making a clear distinction between these two fields the definition of suppletion has such a broad character that almost every relation between two word forms that is not phonologically completely regular could be considered suppletive. More specifically the difference between inflectional morphology and derivational morphology could be indicated by the criterion of obligatoriness (Bybee 1985: 81). Basically this means that in the construct of language a speaker is forced to make certain decisions. In Russian, for example, a finished deed must be expressed with the perfect aspect of a verb, while the imperfect aspect is used to express the duration of an action. Such grammatical changes belong to inflectional morphology and are called ‘grammemes’. Inflectional morphology entails the process of adding an affix to the stem of a word in order to change its grammatical function, but without changing its grammatical category or core meaning (Fábregas, Scalise 2012: 13). Derivational morphology, resulting in ‘derivatemes’, does affect the grammatical function and/or the core meaning of a word form by adding a morpheme and the word will acquire a different syntactic function. The difference is that, as opposed to inflectional morphology, derivational morphology is not obligatory and its derivatemes do not form categories. This is of main importance to the issue that arises with Mel’čuks definition, because when we believe to have detected a case of two formally unrelated lexemes whose semantic difference corresponds to a derivateme of ʆ, this derivational relation is not necessarily present. Actually it is impossible to find out whether two formally unrelated words are actually derivationally related. If it is impossible to prove the derivational relation between lexemes then it is accordingly impossible to prove the suppletive relation in respect to each other. If we were to include derivational morphology as an actor in the formation of suppletion, it could lead up to the assumption of H. Osthoff (1899) that the relation between boy – girl is suppletive, since the semantic difference of these lexemes corresponds to that of a derivateme. This is based on the fact that the semantic difference of male and female are usually expressed quite regularly in English e.g., tiger – tigr + ess, actor – actr + ess, count – count + ess. It is clear that such discrepancies in language lead up to a lot of discussion that is mostly due to an incomplete definition of the concept. By taking a diachronic look at suppletion it is possible to state that the notion of suppletion is part of an evolutionary process of language change where a lexeme intrudes the paradigm of another lexeme. This lexical competition in the end results in a partial or complete take-over of the paradigm by the competing word form. By including the notion of paradigm into the definition of suppletion it is possible to cancel out the issue of inflectional and derivational morphology since a paradigm – as explained above – is in itself a schematic representation of the possible grammemes of a single lexeme. Therefore the relation between two derivatemes cannot be considered suppletive since they are not part of the same paradigm. Keeping in mind the argumentation provided above I choose to include neither derivational suppletion nor other types of non-inflectional suppletion. Yet, it is important to mention that suchlike constructions have in fact been attested. In Tlingit (part of the Na-Dené languages
10 spoken at the Canadian shore) and Ewondo (spoken in Niger-Congo) possibly suppletive structures have been found. Allegedly a case of derivational suppletion in the first and a case of suppletion involving possesive pronouns in the latter (Vafaeian 2010: 22) In his work Breaking Paradigms (2010) Vafaeian makes a strong argument for the inclusion of non- prototypical (thus non-inflectional) suppletion. Though, he makes sure to add that these two attestations as described above do not cause empirical issue. Even though I urge to research solely inflectional morphology in this thesis for the simple reason that the suppletive word pair rebenok - deti is categorized under this denominator, it is drastic to cancel the possibility of non-prototypical suppletion out of the entire research framework. Thus, further on I will restrict my definition to prototypical suppletion while keeping an open vision towards future research regarding attestations of non-prototypical suppletion.
1.2 The gradient character of suppletion
Beck and Mel’čuk (2006: 418) point out that the link between suppletion and paradigm can only be accounted for in a suppletive relationship between forms that are etymologically unrelated. This could be described as a specific ‘kind’ of suppletion and is in research often referred to as ‘full’ or ‘strong’ suppletion. Basically the degree of deviation between the suppletive word forms is discussed. If the lexeme in relation to the second lexeme deviates entirely, because their stems are etymologically unrelated, the relation is defined as ‘strong’ or ‘genuine’. If the two lexemes, however, differ only slightly the relation could be referred to as one of ‘weak’ or ‘quasi’ suppletion. It is in this case of ‘weak’ suppletion that problems start to arise, which will be explained by the use of the English example child – children. We could state that the phonological difference between the pronunciation of [i] in ‘child’ and [i] in ‘children’ is one of suppletive nature, but because of the obvious etymological relation between the two lexemes this case of suppletion could not be of the same degree as the relation between the etymologically unrelated lexemes good – better. To explain the grading scale of suppletion further Mel’čuk (1994: 440) introduces the notion of uniqueness. The relation between two word forms can only be classified as suppletive when the phonological differentiation is a unique one in language ʆ and therefore is not similar to any other alternation. According to this particular criterion the phonological alternation between child – children is indeed unique and consequentially their relation is suppletive. Other phonological alternations similar to the English think – thought or the French meux – mouvons (of the verb mouvoir), however, are not considered suppletive since they occur in multiple word forms despite their irregular character. Research regarding suppletion shows a large amount of discussion regarding whether there is a grading scale of suppletion and how it works precisely. At first sight it seems clear that an example of suppletion like child - children cannot be of the same level as good – better, because of the difference in amount of shared phonological material. Even if we were to agree on the existence of a grading scale of suppletion it is necessary to specify which forms exactly are part of the ‘weak’ side. The other side of the scale, the ‘strong’ side, would be illustrated by the suppletive relation between lexemes that are not etymologically related and therefore posses the smallest amount of shared phonological material. The relation between the lexemes
11 that would illustrate the ‘weak’ side, however, raises some questions in regard to whether this relation can truly be defined as suppletive or just as irregular. Corbett (2007: 21) mentions that the real issue is whether the grading scale of suppletion forms the end point of a scale of irregularity, or whether there is a clear cut-off between items that are just irregular on the one hand as opposed to suppletive on the other. In this case we could remark that Corbett (2007) does not take Mel’čuks (1994) notion of uniqueness into regard as a possibility to make a clear differentiation between irregularity in language and actual suppletion. In the case of this paper the used example is the Russian ребенок – дети, whose suppletive relation is no matter of discussion since both lexemes are definitely not etymologically related and share no phonological material. This specific example is chosen for the simple reason that even if we were to agree on the gradient character of suppletion, it would be possible to place this word pair on the furthest end of the scale under ‘strong’ or ‘genuine’ suppletion. The goal of this paper is not to debate whether a gradient scale is necessary or not, but to give a clear exposition of the currently collected research evolving suppletion. Thus, in order not to get caught up in such-like discussion I choose to utilize a non-ambiguous suppletive word pair throughout this entire paper.
1.3 Conclusion of synchronic research
Previous research has pointed out that the nature of suppletion proves itself challenging to capture in a precise theory. This fact in itself explains why most of the research is limited to that of defining the linguistic phenomenon and not actually researching it on other levels but a synchronic one. As stated above Mel’čuk (1994) openly opposes the idea of treating the notion of suppletion in any other manner, yet does not succeed entirely in answering all the questions that rise with his definition. Even though this is the case, he remains to be the most quoted and referred to researcher regarding this subject, which makes his Suppletion: Towards a logical analysis of the concept (1994) all the more valuable to this paper. Though, in order not to limit myself to only providing a summary of previous research I will also attempt to provide absolute clarity regarding the definition of suppletion. This definition will form an unambiguous template that can be used to decide which pair of words can be concluded to be without a doubt suppletive. The basis of suppletion can by summarized by Mel’čuks (1994: 405-406) logical and substantive characterization. The logical characterization pointing out the fact the suppletion is not a matter addressing only one lexeme, but a pair of lexemes. Two words are suppletive in regard to each other. The substantive characterization focuses on the fact that these two words carry the exact same meaning apart from their grammatical difference, i.e. tense, number,... This means that despite their phonological irregularity they are semantically regular. Keeping in mind the discussion regarding inflectional and derivational grammar it is possible to conclude that linguistic signs being part of the same paradigm are most likely to fulfill the necessary premises to be marked suppletive. A paradigm being the set of all word forms of a lexeme and each word form being associated with a combination of grammemes. Whereas the difficulty that goes along with determining whether a derivational suppletive word pair is in fact derivationally related is easily avoided when limiting the definition of
12 suppletion to inflectional morphology. In this case semantic regularity - as described by substantive characterization - and grammatical regularity are 100% ensured. Therefore it is possible to conclude that suppletion is the linguistic phenomenon describing the relation between two linguistic signs of the same paradigmatic set that is grammatically regular, yet phonologically irregular. Vafaeian (2010: 27) in its turn points out the importance of paradigm by referring to Northern Embera (Niger-Congo) among others. In Northern Embera the vocative has no morphological marking. Yet, the word ‘friend’ has a completely different form when used as a vocative, namely ače instead of the usual kõpa. Because of the lack of morphological marking for the vocative there is however no real paradigm to break in this case, which makes that this is not a real case of suppletion. Even though this definition is already quite workable it does not keep track of the gradient character of suppletion as described in 1.2. According to Mel’čuk (1994) a grading scale can in fact be maintained when the notion of uniqueness is kept in mind. Even though determining whether a deviation in a paradigm is unique in the language the gradation in phonological distance seems hardly practicable. Fact of the matter is that the grading scale of suppletion accounts in a great deal for a vague and dubious understanding of suppletion. With the goal of eliminating such indefiniteness I will opt to take out the possibility of gradation in suppletion altogether. That way there will be absolute certainty regarding the suppletive character of a pair of words when this definition is used. Consequently I conclude that suppletion is the linguistic phenomenon describing the relation between two linguistic signs of the same paradigmatic set that is grammatically maximally regular, yet etymologically unrelated and thus phonologically maximally irregular.
2. Suppletion: A diachronic process
As previously mentioned the occurrence of suppletion could be described as the introduction of an etymologically unrelated word form into the paradigm of a lexeme which results in a partial (or possibly complete) take-over of the paradigm of said lexeme. The process that describes how such an evolution might take place is described by Matthew L. Juge in his On the Rise of Suppletion in Verbal Paradigms (2000). Here he discusses the processes that lead up to verbal suppletion, while making a distinction between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ suppletion. For this paper that distinction will be futile, since we solely discuss the example of the suppletive word pair ребенок – дети that is undeniably etymologically unrelated, and thus an example of ‘strong’ suppletion. Juge (2000: 184-187) claims that the rise of suppletion is caused by three possible processes: sound change, analogy and incursion. It is necessary to mention, however, that Juge discusses verb suppletion. Therefore we will discuss the processes first and later on, by applying them to the word pair ребенок – дети, it will be possible to consider whether one of the processes fit as a cause for noun suppletion in our case.
13 2.1 Inflicting language change
When discussing which process inflicts language change in order to establish a strong suppletive relation between ребенок – дети, it is necessary to apply the processes mentioned by Juge (2000) to this word pair. By doing so it is possible to rule out analogy and sound change as possible causes for suppletion in this case. More specifically, analogy describes the linguistic process that allows for morphological changes of a verb to be falsely applied to another similar verb e.g., the English bring – brang – brung, which is influenced by similar verbs like sing, ring. The morphological and phonological changes that are inflicted by analogy, however, are not substantial enough to be considered as a cause for a strong suppletive relationship (Juge 2000: 185-186). The same could be said for sound change, which could lead up to weak suppletion and eventually even result in strong suppletion. Yet, even if we start from this premise it means that the word pair initially had to be etymologically related and that through the process of sound change dissimilarities started to arise that were large enough to eventually result in a strong suppletive relation. Earlier in this paper, however, it was already stated that the word pair ребенок – дети is not etymologically related and this is supported by the extensive etymology provided in chapter three. Therefore analogy and sound change are both not feasible as the cause for a suppletive relation to arise in this case.
2.1.1 Incursion
Juge (2000: 186) claims that incursion is the main source of strong suppletion in inflectional paradigms. This concept describes the incorporation of forms from one lexeme into the paradigm of another, historically separate, lexeme. According to Juge (2000: 186) this generally occurs in either defective, suppletive and regular paradigms. Defective paradigms being those that have empty cells and suppletive ones being those that are already suppletive to start with. Even though Juge (2000) focuses solely on verbal suppletion there is no reason why the processes described thus far could not be applied to nouns. If we were to classify the word pair ребенок – дети according to Juges (2000) verb typology it is necessary to take a closer look at the paradigm in question:
SINGULAR PLURAL
NOM Rebenok Det’i
ACC Rebenk-a Det’ej
GEN
DAT Rebenk-a Det’-am
14 INSTR Rebenk-om Det’-m’i
LOC Rebenk-e Det’-ax
Since the word pair ребенок – дети is not etymologically related it is necessary to look back at what the paradigms of these separate word forms looked like before they collided. Etymological research, provided later in the third chapter, shows that the singular ребенок used to form the regular paradigm with ребята. This previous plural of ребенок is currently still present in the Russian language, but underwent a lexical shift. At present the lexeme is not used to refer to children, but to a group of youngsters – preferably male, but not necessarily so – and could possibly be compared to the English vernacular ‘lads’ or ‘guys’ (Corbett 2007: 49). The current plural of ребенок, namely дети, previously formed a complete – thus not defective – paradigm with the singular form дитя. Initially it is possible to believe that the phonological difference between дитя and дети, namely the stem vowel [и] versus [е] shows a weak suppletive relation. Keeping in mind the discussion regarding the gradation of suppletion in 1.2, however, it is possible to argue that this minor phonological alternation is just a small irregularity and does not truly exemplify a suppletive relation. The extensive etymology of these lexemes in chapter three shows how this stem alternation came to be. Currently the word form дитя still exists in the Russian language, but since it is stylistically restricted and limited to the nominative case, it is considered a ‘remainder’ or an ‘orphaned’ form as Corbett (2007: 49) calls it. The main motivation for incursion to take place and incorporate an unrelated pre-existing form into a paradigm is semantic appropriateness (Juge 2000: 188). Lexemes undergo lexical changes throughout time and therefore a word form might acquire a more precise meaning or nuance to express a certain object. Because of this ‘new’ trait the lexeme might be preferred over an already existing, but less specific lexeme. As mentioned above the previous plural of ребенок, being ребята, currently carries the nuance of friendship between youngsters and is therefore used to refer to a group of young people that are in a friendly relationship with each other. This notion of affection possibly plays a large role in the dissimulation of the paradigm of ребенок – ребята and invites to be researched even further in order to determine the reason why suppletion arises. Joan Bybee provides a second possible reason for incursion in her Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form (1985: 57) by referring to the notion of autonomy. When a lexeme contains a high degree of autonomy it is more likely for it to have a separate lexical representation. The degree of autonomy is affected by three criteria, being:
a) Basicness/unmarkedness of the word form: A semantically basic or unmarked word is more likely to have a separate lexical entry, as opposed to a word that is semantically derived or restricted in function. b) Frequency: In order for a lexeme to have its own lexical entry or to be basic, it is necessary for it to be learned and stored independently. It has to be rote-learned and in
15 order for this type of language acquisition to function smoothly the word has to be of high frequency. c) Morpho-phonemic irregularity: A highly irregular word that cannot be derived from other related words, even when semantically marked, has to be autonomous.
Basic/unmarked words are often the most frequent ones, like [to] go, which means that the first and second criteria generally converge. When a lexeme has a high degree of autonomy it is possible for a lexical split to occur, which leads up to the existence of mixed paradigms. The evolution of language allows for the possibility of lexemes to achieve a high degree of autonomy over time. Bybee (1985: 89) argues that it is possible for a differing semantic to arise between a basic and a derived form, which eventually could lead to a split between them. This statement is of great importance in the case of the word pair ребенок – дети. Whereas an extensive etymology shows that the word forms дитя and дети could be considered basic word forms in Old-Russian, this is not the case for ребенок and ребята. These word forms are derived from the basic form раб (slave), but were over time capable of acquiring a separate lexical entry through the process of language evolution. Said evolution will be illustrated in the third, fourth and fifth chapter of this paper. Consequently it is possible to agree on the fact that the word ребенок was able to fulfill the criteria provided by Bybee (1985) in order for a lexical split and accordingly incursion to arise. We can state with certainty that the lexeme must have invaded the already lexically dysfunctional paradigm of дитя – дети, which led to a lexical competition between дитя and ребенок. In order for ребенок to be able to overthrow дитя as the singular of дети in Standard Russian it must have had the advantage of frequency. In the following chapter of this paper a diachronic time-line will be provided that shows the evolution of the lexical competition between дитя and ребенок based on similar diachronic research done by Čumakina in her Istoričeskie izmenenija v russkoj leksike: slučaj čeredujušegosja suppletivizma (2004). Accordingly it is necessary to focus on the premises that were compulsory for ребенок to take over the entire singular declension of the lexeme for child. Currently it is already known that ребенок has won the lexical battle, but it is yet to be proven why exactly this word form was preferred over the initially more logical word form дитя. As to explain this lexical development the focus will lie on the meaning of the lexemes in question. As described above a lexical shift has resulted in a split between paradigms. Arguably the phonological development has caused a lexical differentiation between stems to arise. Consequently the meaning of the word forms ребенок and дети converged, as did the actual lexemes into a singular paradigm, whereas their previous singular and plural counterparts дитя and ребята grew lexically more and more apart.
3. Etymology of the lexemes
Even without extensive research it seems obvious that the the word forms ребенок and дети are not etymologically related. Their diverging stems show little to no resemblance and the question regarding their relatedness have never posed any doubt. Yet, it seems useful for the sake of this paper to include an extensive etymology of both word forms that shows how the
16 words developed through time. Based on this etymology a timeline can be drawn up in which I will include the different formal stages of the lexemes. Accordingly the etymology shows the original relatedness - with which I mean the sharing of paradigms - by ребенок - ребята and дитя - дети. Proving the fact that these word forms were indeed sharing the same complete paradigm proves its importance, since it provides complete transparance regarding the lexical competition that took place. Research regarding the lexemes of the newly established paradigm would be incomplete, without paying attention to their former life span as elements of other paradigms. Consequently this paper will show what happened to these former word forms дитя and ребята and explain what their current function in the Russian language currently entails. In this part of the paper I consciously choose to work with the Latin alphabet in order to prevent confusion between signs that overlap with the Cyrillic alphabet.
3.1 Ребенок
Proto Indo-European *orbho- (PIE)
Proto Slavonic (PSL) *orb-
Common Slavonic Orb (CSL)
Old Slavonic (OSL) Рабъ (Zuidslavisch)/робъ (Westslavisch)
Orfanós (Grieks)
Non Slavic parallels Orbus (Latijn)
Orb (Armeens)
Árbha(ká) (Sanskriet)
(Brian Cooper 2009: 157)
3.1.1 Робъ/рабъ > *orb-
The most obvious change that occurred regarding the Protoslavonic orb (‘weak, powerless’) turning into the more recognizable робъ/рабъ, is the exchange of places of the “r” and “o”. This change is an alteration that occurred in the final stages of Common Slavonic and was only completed when separate Slavonic branches were already existent.
17 At quite a late stage in the development of Common Slavonic it is possible to detect the tendency to aim for raising sonority in syllables. In order to explain this more profoundly it is necessary to sketch the building stones of a syllable, which in itself is quite an ill-defined notion. A syllable exists out of an onset and a rhyme. The onset being the start of the syllable and the rest being called the rhyme, which is in its turn subdivided in the nucleus and the coda. The nucleus is the place in the syllable in which the peak of sonority is reached and the coda exemplifies the end of the syllable. The onset and the coda, show the start and the end of the syllable and are both characterized by a sonority low. This means that the onset and the coda always have a lower sonority than the nucleus. In order to reach raising sonority in each syllable the lexeme can undergo several different processes, depending on the word form itself. In this case the CSL word orb results into the East and West Slavonic робъ (and рабъ in South Slavonic) through the process of metathesis of the liquidae. More specifically the liquid consonant moves from the coda to the onset of the syllable. More concrete, this means that the [o] and the [r] switch places, which additionally eliminates the cluster of consonants, resulting in the East and West Slavonic робъ. The alternative form рабъ, that is attested in South Slavonic, can be explained by the same process with addition of a compensatory lengthening of the vowel. This lengthening is typical in South Slavonic languages and serves to compensate the loss of the coda in the syllable. More concretely the [o] becomes its longer counterpart [a].
3.1.2 Robja/robjatko/robenok > robę > робъ/рабъ
The East and West Slavonic form робъ and South Slavonic рабъ agree with the Old-Russian form robę, that was in use. Through the influence of Russian dialect the word took different forms, these being robja, robjatko, robënok (Cooper 2009: 157). In the 10th century there was a tendency of denasalization, because nasal sounds were not present in Old Russian. Concretely this resulted in a replacement of the nasal sound by [ja] as we see in robja (< robę). These forms definitely belong to the same core and look like diminutives. This would make it logical for the different forms to circulate depending on the region, since the formation of diminutives is quite open and flexible in the Russian language. Technically it is clear in which order the word forms occurred in the language even without running them through a historical database. The word form robja agrees the most directly to robę and brought robjatko and subsequently robënok into existence. Yet, it needs to be mentioned that all three word forms also existed next to each other. Since language is not a strict system with every time just one possible lexeme per object, it would not be realistic to state that the word forms were not in co-existence. The Russian National Corpus confirms this statement, showing an occurrence of robja in texts varying from 1611-1625, robenok from 1775-1991 and interestingly the database only shows a presence of the word robjatko in texts varying from 1927-1937. The reason for these remarkable results might have to do with the fact that the lexeme was more part of a dialect as opposed to the official language in which texts were written. The Russian National Corpus is limited by the type of texts it contains and several word forms, like the ones that are treated here, might not allow for obvious results. This would explain the unusual attestation of these forms in the database.
18 3.1.3 Rebenok > robenok
Russian rebenok is a local change from robenok due to assimilation before the change e > ë (Trubačev 1959: 40).
3.1.4 Rebenok – rebjata
It seems obvious that the word forms rebenok and rebjata were part of the same paradigm at some point in history. According to the form we could argue that this was around the time that the word robja circulated. A logical neutral plural form would have been robjata, in accordance with the formation of neutral plurals in Indo-European. The alteration to reb- instead of rob- can be explained via analogy of the local change due to assimilation mentioned in 1.3.
3.2 Дети
In order to discuss the origin of the word Дети, I will start with an analysis of its singular form ditja. This form is still used in Russian, although this is only the case in a literary context. For daily use the form ditja has been replaced by rebenok.
Proto Indo-European *dhojtent- (PIE)
Proto Slavonic (PSL) *dětent- (fed)
Common Slavonic *dětę, dětь (CSL)
Old Slavonic (OSL) итma (East Slavonic)
Dēls (Latvian)
Non Slavic parallels Filius < felius (Latin)
Dhēnús (Sanskriet)
19 3.2.1 Dětę, dětь < *dětent- < *dhojtent-
Many of the Indo-European words for ‘child’ are deverbal substantivized adjectives, like ‘Kind’ < Indo-European ĝentóm (‘born’), téknon < tíktō and also the Slavonic dětę < dětent- (‘fed’). Therefore it is possible to conclude that the word in itself stems from the PIE verb form *dhojtent- with the participial suffix –ent- and the suffix –t- (which may indicate a passive form) (Cooper 2009: 157). Since the word *dětę stems from a verb, we could argue that the nasal ending ‘ę’ stems from the PIE ending *-ēn, in which the nasal consonant held its place. That way it could become ‘ę’ through the process of nasalization. This change, however, only took place in the South Slavonic form. In the East and West Slavonic variant the –n would be eliminated like with *-ōn and result in the ending ‘ě’. In the word form dětę the ‘ě’ goes back to the diphthong ‘oi’, which stems from the Indo- European ‘əi’, cf. Sanskrit dháyati (‘he sucks the breast’) and Old Church Slavonic dojǫ (‘I feed with the breast’) from Indo-European *dhēi- : *dhoi- (‘milk, give milk’) (Cooper 2009: 157). This process of monoftongization stimulated by the derounding of forms is quite a late process in Proto Slavonic. A ‘ě’ usually stems from the Proto Slavonic diphthong ‘ai’ and the diphthong ‘ei’ would result in a Common Slavonic ‘i’. The diphthong ‘oi’, however, has the same result as the diphthong ‘ai’ because of their merger caused by the derounding of forms. The vowels “a” and “o” syncretised into “a”, which is a processed that also had an influence on diphthongs.
3.2.2 Ditja < dětę, dětь
The form ditja with the ‘i’ is only attested in Eastern Slavonic (and Russian). According to Vasmer (1998: online) this unusual stem is an assimilation of *dětina. This process, however, is not explained any further and does not seem to be plausible. Therefore I choose to differ and state that the ‘i’ could be a consequence of synharmonical j-metaphony. This change started to occur quite early and already had influence on Proto Slavonic, but actually the duration of the change stretched out over the course of centuries, which makes it also a possibility to have altered the stem of *dětę, dětь. The general idea of synharmonical j- metaphony is that under influence of the ‘j’ a syllable achieves an [acute] state. In this case, however, the ‘ě’ is already [acute], which makes it an unfit match for j-metaphony. The reason for this is that the j-metaphony in this case does not influence the ‘ě’, but its predecessor ‘oi’, which does start with a [grave] component. Because of this we can conclude that the j-methaphony happened before monophtongization and resulted in an alteration of ‘oi’ to ‘ei’, which in its turn became ‘i’. Additionally the ending nasal sound “ę” gets replaced by the Old Russian ‘ja’ through the process of denasalization as mentioned in 2.2.
20 3.2.3 Ditja – deti
The plural of the form *dětę is the differing form deti. This is currently still the used word for ‘children’ in Russian, though it is clear that it is an unusual plural form of dětę. As a plural we would expect the more obvious form *dětęta. Here the neuter form is avoided, however, for the reason that it is too inanimate for living things, even though this is the habitual form for neuter word forms in Indo-European (Cooper 2007: 157). As mentioned before it is possible that this alternative plural form has an influence on the formation of the singular itself. Since the plural does not show a sign of neutrality anymore, a non neutral singular could have been introduced simply via analogy. This would explain the form *dětь, that existed next to *dětę.
3.3. Conclusion
By researching the etymology of the word forms rebenok and deti (or rather its singular ditja) we can state that the word forms obviously do not share the same etymology. Yet we do successfully prove the relation between rebenok-rebjata, which makes it possible to assume that a previous form of rebenok (possibly robja) belonged to the same paradigm as rebjata (possibly under the form robjata). In fact the word form rebenok and rebjata most likely were also part of the same paradigm under their current forms, since otherwise the stem change from rob- to reb- might have not pushed through in the form rebjata. Next to the word form rebenok we researched the form ditja, which in Common Slavonic already had an unusual plural, being deti. Since this plural form was already an unusual neutral form (Cooper 2007: 157), but agreed with the plural formation of o-stem lexemes, it is not unlikely that it was left unchanged. This reasoning might provide an explanation for the frequency of use of this word form and its quite unusual survival. Consequently the word form deti stood its ground when the lexical competition between rebenok and ditja occured, which led up to the mixed suppletive paradigm rebenok – deti.
4. An evolutionary time-line
Despite the common perception of language and its workings it is possible to state that this medium of communication is always changing. Often language is looked upon as an abstract total with a set of rules and a list of exceptions to these rules. This is how we learn to view languages from the moment we get acquainted with them. A logical misconception follows, namely one stating that language should not change otherwise it would be impossible to communicate with each other. Yet, change is omnipresent in language and we can see the diachronic evolution in language even by looking at this medium synchronically, for example by paying attention to linguistic phenomenona like suppletion. This notion, where the relation between two word forms sharing the same paradigm is grammatically strictly regular but phonologically irregular, shows a direct look at change in language. Whereas the research regarding suppletion tends to stagnate as linguists cannot agree on a proper definition for the concept itself, a diachronic view on suppletion is yet to be researched more precisely. In order
21 to give a direct look at language change I will draw up a model that clearly shows the preference of one word form over another throughout time. Similar research was performed by Čumakina et al. (2004) and accordingly I will refer mainly to their work while discussing the diachronic character of language change, more specifically suppletion.
4.1 Stages of lexical development of the suppletive word pair
Suppletive word pairs like the Russian dobryj – lučšij and govorit’ – skazat’ occurred in language through a merger of separate paradigms, resulting in a mixed paradigm in which the forms do not share the same core. It is possible that through the process of language change this merger of paradigms eventually results in a complete take-over by the infiltrating word, which in its turn would lead to a completely regular paradigm in which all the forms share one core. This is exactly what happened in the case of oko – oči and glaz – glaza (Čumakina et al.: 2004). Čumakina et al. (2004: 4) describes the lexical development in three stages:
1) There is a completely regular full paradigm (“full” meaning that there are no empty cells in the paradigm) and there is no suppletion.
2) A change occurs in the paradigm. A new word form with a divergent core introduces itself. Suppletion is present.
3) The paradigm is taken over by the new word form entirely, which makes it completely regular again. Suppletion is eliminated.
In the case of oko – oči and glaz – glaza the lexical replacement occurs according to these three stages as is illustrated by Čumakina et al. (2004: 7-9). This resulted in a complete take- over by the word form glaza, which is currently primarily used. The word form oko in its turn went almost completely out of use (Čumakina et al. 2004: 9). It is evident that the example that is of main importance for this paper, namely rebenok – deti, did not complete the three stages that are provided above. Arguably the paradigm is momentarily ‘stuck’ in the second stage, and it might even be possible that the lexical replacement will never fully be executed. What is of main importance in the case of suppletion, however, is the question, demanding how a merger between paradigms of lexemes that show no etymological connection occurred and why it occurs at all. In the second chapter I referred to Juge’s On the Rise of Suppletion in Verbal Paradigms (2000) and Bybee’s Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form (1985) in order to explain how the merger between paradigms took place. This rather technical exposition explains why it was possible for the merger to take place using Juge’s (2000) origin theories for verbal suppletion and applying them to the word pair ребенок - дети. It however does not show over which period of time the change happened. Following the example of Čumakina et al. (2004) I will draw up a time-line of the rise of suppletion in said word pair and provide a direct diachronic look on the matter. Čumakina et al. (2004) based their research on several different databases. Basically the research involves checking the databases - that each give a view of the Russian language in a
22 different time period by a collection of texts from said period - for the presence of the lexemes. That way it is possible to detect when the regular paradigm of ditja - deti started to co-exist with the paradigm rebenok - rebjata and consequently we can detect when those paradigms started splitting up and merging. When taking a closer look at their etymology it was already possible to see that the formation of lexemes like robja, robjatko and robenok occurred roughly around the 17th and 18th century according to the Russian National Corpus. It is also expected that around this time we see a steady increase of these lexemes as opposed to the then current lexeme ditja. In order to research this more adequately it seems useful to compare the results of several databases. Earlier on when discussing the etymology in chapter three I shortly referred to the possibility of remarkable results regarding the Russian National Corpus due to its range of texts. Therefore in this paper I opt to compare the results of the online corpus and the results of the following databases that were also used by Čumakina et al. (2004: 9):
(a) Uppsala corpus of the contemporary Russian language: one million expressions, XX century (Lonngren 1993).
(b) Dictionary of Puškin’s language: 21 290 words, 1799-1837 (Vinogradov 1954) and online corpus of texts of Puškin (http://www.rvb.ru/pushkin/toc.htm).
(c) Uspenskij Sbornik: approximately 130 000 expressions, XII-XIII century (Kotkov 1971).
Additionally Čumakina et al. used the etymological dictionaries of Preobraženskij (1959) and Vasmer (1964) in order to refer to the etymology of the lexemes. These were of importance in some parts of chapter three, but instead of referring to them directly I will point out some facets of the etymology by referring to chapter three. Because it is impossible to make a comparison of absolute cipher material I urge to provide relative numbers wherever possible. Those numbers are acquired by dividing the absolute number of occurrences by the number of texts in used in the database itself.
4.1.1 Stage one
As established in the third chapter the word pair rebenok - deti was formed as a result of the merger of two independent regular paradigms being ditja - deti and rebenok - rebjata. The existence of these two paradigms describes the first stage where complete regularity is the rule and suppletion is absent. Earlier on in chapter three I already established that the final formation of the word form ditja occurred under influence of Old-Russian, which was in use approximately from the 10th until the 15th century. Therefore it is possible to assume that we detect this form and its plural in sources way before the lexemes rebenok and rebjata, that only started making their occurrence after the 16th century. This clearly indicates the existence of the first stage where ditja - deti were the only lexemes addressing the notion of ‘child’ for quite a long time until the word pair rebenok - rebjata started to arise. Consequently the logical question is when the latter started breaking up the paradigm of ditja - deti, which we will get to when discussing the second stage. For now we notice that the Russian National
23 Corpus does show the presence of the Church Slavonic ditę in Aleksandria1, a translatian of a text regarding the life of Alexander The Great which cannot be older than the 13th century:
(1) простыхъ боன женъ ро и ноaкаа диಲтʪ, грънѧѧ боன тоamа єго о боку сன ... (2) отьскоє же тоamо бѧamе мрът о. ꙗ коже ро и дитѧ жена, и по иa mи ...
The form итѧ was in fact in use since the 13th century and developed into the Russian итm under influence of the Russian denasalisation as described in the third chapter. This agrees with the results of Čumakina et al.’s (2004) research.2
4.1.2 Stage two
In the second stage we notice the appearance of the lexeme rebenok in the 16th- 17th century, which at that point shared the same meaning as the form ditja (Čumakina et al. 2004: 9). This agrees with the etymology of this lexeme discussed in chapter three. Here we established that rebenok does indeed derive from the Old Slavonic Рабъ with the meaning of ‘slave’. The Russian National Corpus shows the attestations of the Old-Russian forms робm and робенокъ carrying the meaning ‘child’ as illustrated:
(3) И отець еm Петръ учаm еm закmики ати: «Што, е, ты, робя, ракаеmь!3 (4)Как робя не спит, зmт[ь] жеmчь заеч[ь]m а суmит[ь], а mить пmатно, а по[mо]жити робmта по гоmо а, а на о б[у е]т, и ты гоmо и озми.4
1 1893 Александрия. Истрин В. М. Аmексан риm русских хронографо : Иссmе о аниm и текст. М., 1893, на осно е списка посmе ней трети XV .
2 Čumakina et al.’s Istoričeskie izmenennia v russkoj leksike (2004) shows some imprecision regarding their research results. When comparing their results to my own it is noticeable that the differences are minor and do not affect the results of the diachronic research. Therefore it can be said that Čumakina et al.’s (2004) research is still trustworthy. Yet, it is necessary to point out these slight abnormalities in their research. More specifically they claim the attestations of ditja in the Uspenskij Sbornik XII-XIII vv. (1971) which would prove the occurrence of the lexeme in the 13th century. Although a search in the online Russian National Corpus resulted in a similar conclusion, I was not able to detect the form ditja in the Uspenskij Sbornik XII-XIII (1971) itself. However, I did attest its plural deti, which could account for a similar conclusion as the one that was made by Čumakina et al. (2004). Additionally a comparison between the material provided as a result of quantitative research in the Častotnij Slovar’ Sovremennogo Russkogo Jazyka (1993) and my own research results in some dissimilarities. In the following section I will mention the results of my own research regarding the frequency of the lexemes in the Uppsala corpus and between brackets the material provided by Čumakina et al. (2009): ditja: not found (13), deti: 493 (489), rebenok: 166 (169), rebjata: 218 (219).
3 1611-1614 Ви ениm Е фимиm Чакоmьского 1611–1614 гг БАН. 45.10.9. Рукопись 30–40-х гг. XVII . Испра mениm несены по смысmу. Бибmиотека mитературы Дре ней Руси. Т. 14: Конец XVI – начаmо XVII ека. СПб., 2006,www.pushkinskijdom.ru
4 1625-1650 Сре ст о от етской бессонницы. БАН. Се . 636 (21.9.10). Сборник заго оро . 2-m чет ерть ХVII ека. 46 m. Оmонецкий сборник. 2-m чет ерть XVII . // Русские заго оры из рукописных источнико XVII – пер ой поmо ины XIX . / Сост., по гот. тексто ,статьи и комм. А. Л. Топорко а. М., 2010. С. 87– 144.
24 (5)онъ съ нею робенка, и тотъ робенокъ крещонъ на Не mо, крестиmъ руской попъ.5 (6)Дочь моm Агрепона быmа не еmика, пmака ъ, на менm гmm m много, и никто еm не учи,― робенокъ розбожа сm, mоктиmками с оими у ариmас[ь] мою спину, и кро ипеченье из горmа рыгнуmо, и ыmат[ь] стаmъ.6 It is clear that over time the lexeme which resulted in rebenok underwent a lexical shift toward the notion ‘child’ instead of ‘slave’. Such a change made the possibility of a lexical competition between ditja and rebenok apparent. As is illustrated above the form robja, meaning child, is attested throughout the seventeenth century. Robenokъ came into use later on, since the sources are clearly of a later era than those of the lexeme robja. The most important fact that we conclude however is that these forms denote the notion of ‘child’. This is truly peculiar since it shows the lexical shift that happened starting from the notion of ‘slave’ to ‘child’. Such-like lexical shifts are just as omnipresent in language as suppletion itself and cannot be ignored in this paper. It is namely through their lexical shift that the remaining lexemes after having broken with their singular or plural counterpart, i.e. ditja and rebjata, were able to remain into existence. In these cases ditja only slightly evolved towards a more literary expression of ‘child’ most likely to be used in literature, whereas rebjata’s meaning shifted to the more specific notion of ‘a group of (male) youngsters, lads’. Shifting towards a more specific notion might have affected the frequency of the lexeme, yet it did not result in it seizing to exist. The lexical shifts that occurred and the importance of semantics in general regarding suppletion are to be researched more elaborately in the fifth chapter. The shift in the frequency of use starts to be noticeable in the 18th century as is illustrated below:
Frequency of Use
Ребенок 86
Ребятишки7 12
Дитя 68
Дети 208
(Vinogradov 1956)
5 1875 Расспросные речи иноземцев и русских, возвратившихся из плена, присланных из Разряда в патриарший дворцовый приказ для допросов. Из: рукописи пер ой поmо ины XVII ека на 243 m. из бибmиотеки П. А. Мухано а. СПб: Русскаm историческаm бибmиотека. Т. II.
6 1975 Житие протопопа Аввакума, им самим написанное. ИРЛИ АН СССР, ОП, оп. 24, №43. Пустозерский сборник. А тографы сочинений А акума и Епифаниm. Л.: Из атеmьст о «Наука»
7 The word form ребmта was found in the Slovar’ Jazyka Puškina, yet solely as a derivation of rebenok. No specific quantitative material was provided that can be used in comparative research. Instead the form Ребmтиmки with the meaning ‘small children’ is incorporated in this grid as it appears to be a derivated form that later gave way to the current ребmта.
25 In this case it was necessary to use the absolute numbers that were provided in the Slovar’ Jazyka Puškina (1965), since it was impossible to calculate the relative percentage. The numbers are, however, provided by the database as a result of processing more than 20 000 texts of Puškin. So it seems only logical to assume that the numbers are in fact based on the same amount of texts and therefore trustworthy if it comes to representing the frequency of use of the word forms during the 18th century. Here the analysis shows that rebenok did start making way in the Russian language and is more frequently used than the form ditja. At this point the form rebenok expressed ‘boy or girl’ (Vinogradov 1956). This general expression became more widely used already and eventually exceeded the frequency of use regarding ditja dramatically. Rebjatiški, meaning ‘small children’, is however not very highly represented. This form eventually seizes to exist - as it is not attested in the National Russian Corpus - and possibly gave way to the form rebjata. Deti shows the highest frequency of use, which is not unlikely being the oldest and most common expression denoting ‘sons and daughters’. So even though this analysis shows a section of the Russian language in already quite a late stage, it does show nice results regarding the rise of the form rebenok that only roughly came into use around the 17th and 18th century. In the following centuries it will grow to supersede the form ditja almost entirely. Noticeably the meaning of these word forms seem to diverge quite a bit. It is safe to say that the notion of ‘sons and daughters’, ‘small children’ and ‘boy or girl’ are not equal and are therefore expected to be expressed by entirely different lexemes. Yet this is not the case. When discussing this particularity it is necessary to refer to the polysemy of the lexeme ‘child’. Polysemy, being the ‘multiplicity of meanings’ of words (Leacock & Ravin 2000 : 1). Arguably the word forms diverge in meaning quite a bit which leads up to the believe that they might not belong to the same paradigm.Vafaeian discusses in Breaking Paradigms (2010: 31) a similar case in Barasano and Maltese. Here he points out that the lack of a proper singular form for rīa ‘children’ might be problematic in Barasano. As there is no fitting singular counterpart it is possible to use bak-o ‘daughter’ or bak-u ‘son’ to express a singular ‘child’. One might quite easily make the assumption that this is a normal case of suppletion similar to rebenok - deti, yet the dissimilarity in meaning does make for the possibility that these words do not even make part of the same paradigm and are solely used as such (Vafaeian 2010: 31). This is not the case for the Russian word pair rebenok - deti, as the words do currently exactly express the notion ‘child’ and are definitely part of the same paradigm. Still we cannot rule out the fact that this was not always the case and the semantic shift they underwent might form for the main motivation that they became part of the same paradigm, i.e. that they became a suppletive word pair.
4.1.3 Stage three
A third stage is not to be described for the word pair rebenok - deti as it is currently still in the second stage. In a third stage we would expect rebenok to take over the entire paradigm and eventually to supersede the use of deti as its plural form. Yet, because of the lexical shift of the logical plural rebjata, it seems highly unlikely that this form would be playing a role in the
26 hypothetical future take-over of the paradigm. Yet, another plural formation of the lexeme rebenok could possibly blow a breach in the current suppletive paradigm. A comparison of the frequency of word forms, however, contradicts this prediction. The database of frequency (Löngrenn 1993) shows how the frequency of deti (493) highly exceeds the frequency of its singular counterpart rebenok (166). The National Russian Corpus accordingly sketches a similar image:
Frequency of use
Absolute number of Relative number of occurrences occurrences
Ребенок 17 764 3,41%
Ребята 22 157 4,37%
Дитя 6510 2,72%
Дети 41 264 4,01%
It shows a large frequency of use of deti (4,01%) in comparison with the singular rebenok (3,41%). If another plural form were to rise up as a derivation of rebenok, we would expect a high frequency of use. Even though rebenok does show quite a substantial usage, it does not come close to the frequency of deti. This makes a possible paradigm take-over quite unbelievable. Accordingly the analysis shows the minor frequency of use of the word ditja (2,72%). The word form rebjata, however, shows quite a surprising frequency of use (4,37%). This could be quite easily explained by the fact that its alternative meaning has made it an autonomous lexeme with a quite elaborate range of meaning which allows for high frequency. These numbers show an accurate representation of the frequency of use of these words in written texts. More specifically it is possible the assume on the one hand that the high frequency of use according to the National Russian Corpus allows for the word form rebjata to possibly take over the form deti. On the other hand this evolution would require the lexeme to make a lexical shift back to the more general concept of ‘children’, which seems quite unlikely. Yet, it is an interesting notion to keep track of. Moreover we can confirm that ditja is indeed an outdated, almost archaic form and is usually used in more literary/poetic contexts.
27 5 An argument of semantics
When researching the matter of suppletion there are many questions to be asked. In this paper I already attempted to answer most of those regarding suppletion as a synchronic entity. Questions like ‘how do we define suppletion’, ‘In which type of language does the notion occur?’ and ‘Is there a degree of suppletion?’. Consequently it seemed more interesting to address the matter from a diachronic point of view, which gave rise to a whole new type of questions like: How does suppletion arise in language? Over which period of time does it arise? Can we detect the arrival of suppletion in a language through diachronic research? In order to answer these questions I made use of the well-known suppletive example rebenok - deti in the Russian language. This word pair served as a typical suppletive occurrence in language and has proven itself useful to explain the specific traits of this linguistic phenomenon. At this point of the paper, however, it is time to ask the next set of questions in which I will still focus on the diachronic side of the matter. In fact it is possible to ask why suppletion has risen up in the specific case of rebenok - deti. In chapter three and four the semantics of the lexemes started to play a role more and more in the discussion of the suppletive nature of the word pair. A main motivation for this is the notion of frequency. It has been known for long that frequency and irregularity in language are strictly connected (Corbett et al. 2001: 216-218). So in order to research the rise of suppletion in a word pair it only seems logical to research the cause of its frequency of occurrence. Bybee (1985: 120) gives us the answer by stating that “the correlation of irregularity with frequency occurs on two dimensions. The first is the lexical dimension [...] where irregularity correlates with frequent lexical entries. The second is within a paradigm where [...] the greater irregularity resides in the unmarked members of categories, which are also the most frequent.”. With this second statement she refers to the fact that unmarked lexemes, i.e. basic forms, are rote- learned separately by speakers and therefore are more frequent in use. At this point Bybee’s (1985) statement has been proven not only by herself but also by Corbett et al. (2001: 218). In their research they specifically used the Russian language as a case study due to its elaborate inflectional grammar. Even though I do not completely agree with all the aspects of their research, i.e. the scale of irregularity, they do show quite neatly the connection between frequency of occurrence of lexemes and their irregular, or rather suppletive, nature. Since the frequency is linked to the presence of a separate lexical entry I will focus mainly on this fact. More specifically in this chapter I will provide an explanation as to why a breach was formed in the original paradigm of ditja - deti as a consequence of not only phonological distance - as I argued earlier on - but also of semantic distance. It is namely through the formation of a separate lexical entry that semantic distance came to be. Furthermore a closer look into the lexical dimension is paramount. In order to do so I will bring attention to the concept of semantics itself. In the second chapter of this paper I already referred to the importance of semantic appropriateness. It is namely the meaning of the words that urges us to use them and accordingly prefer them above others. Therefore it proves itself useful to take a look at the semantics of the lexemes in order to find out whether the rise of the frequency of use of rebenok over ditja is in fact inflicted by their semantic shift.
28 5.1 Semantic change
“ […] semantics is the study of meaning in language [...].” (Yule 2010: 113). Meaning can be defined in many different ways, which makes the research regarding the concept of meaning highly differentiated and one of the most sketchy ones in linguistics. It seems only right that it plays a role in the research of suppletion. The definition that is used most often, however, and the one I will utilize in my exposition is that “meaning is the function of signs in language.” Such-like definition is parallel to the theory of German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, stating that “the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” There are many ways of using words in language. This is what makes meaning such an intricate matter to address in linguistics. Many linguists like Noah Chomsky and Edward Sapir refrain from touching the notion and limit their research to the true technicalities of language. Yet by doing so they miss out on the communicative nature of language, which is basically ‘the whole point’ of the medium. Meaning is definitely not an unambiguous part of language. Communication happens in many different ways and language is only one of them. On top of that the way we use language is not always literal, which makes for the inherent fuzziness of meaning as Hock and Joseph call it in their Language History, Language Change and Language Relationship: An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics (2009: 208). With this term they refer to the polysemy of words and sentences. Polysemy - as was mentioned to before - refers to an utterance of which the meaning can only be properly determined when there has been taken knowledge of its context. The word or sentence in itself can carry out a multitude of meanings. For example the sentence: ‘Hannah writes very well.’. This simple sentence could mean a number of things depending on the context. Hannah could be a four year old, who has just learned how to write her name. If she performs this act well by writing nicely between the lines, the example sentence may be evoked from a parent or teacher as a reaction of praise. Another possible situation, however, is when Hannah is a teen and she has written many short stories. This in turn could mean that her parents believe in her ability to write good fiction, leading up to them exclaiming the example sentence to their acquaintances. This example shows how even simple utterances can be ambiguous and therefore vague or fuzzy. The way meaning works is of main importance for this chapter of the paper because it will provide a clearer insight in how meaning can grow or shift depending on the situation or the time and how it can influence the paradigmatic distribution of lexemes. One of the premises of belonging to the same paradigm is that the suppletive lexemes should convey the same meaning. In 1.1 and 1.3 I refer to this as the substantive characterization as described by Mel’čuk (1994: 406). More specifically it is necessary to mention that polysemy, thus the presence of a multitude of meanings expressed by simply one word in this case, clearly leads up to a more frequent use of this word. Frequency being one of the most important factors to give rise to suppletion (Corbett 2007, Bybee 1985), a polysemic character of a word could present itself as a necessary factor in order to acquire a strong suppletive word pair. It is not only paramount to provide the proper meaning(s) of the lexemes relevant to this paper, but also to describe their evolution in order to provide a possible cause for their suppletive character.
29 5.2 Semantic shift rab > rebenok
In regard to the suppletive word pair rebenok - deti it can be said that the lexeme rebenok is playing the lead role in the overtake of the paradigm. When discussing the effect of semantic shifts it cannot be left unnoticed that said lexeme stems from the semantically diverging rab, which to this day means ‘servant, slave’. In linguistics there is an ongoing discussion regarding the field of etymology in general since a typology cannot be established due to a lack of materials. In other cases linguists simply do not agree on a particular etymology of a word (Vafaeian 2009: 21). As I mentioned earlier in the paper suchlike discussions can cause research to stagnate as linguists refrain from making use of possibly questionable information. Although it is to be expected that researchers do not want to get caught up in problematic research fields, it does limit the research regarding suppletion gravely. Thus, in order to break this trend I will choose to stick by one particular etymology of rebenok - being the one provided in chapter three - and consequently discuss the obvious lexical shift that the lexeme underwent. Throughout time the lexeme rebenok became entirely autonomous and acquired its own lexical entry separate from rab. Consequently it probably formed its own paradigm with the expected plural rebjata. This lexical shift is of importance to this thesis because we detect this exact polysemy in the lexeme for ‘child’ in multiple languages. Hock and Jacob (2009: 231) refer to the possibility of a stereotypical Southern U.S. sheriff, who addresses a black elderly man with ‘boy’. This use of the lexeme similarly occurred in Greek ‘paîs’ and Latin ‘puer’, which both literally mean ‘boy, child’, but were also used to label slaves and servants. Interestingly this type of use is limited neither to western nor to Indo-European languages. Also in Kharia, which is a Munda language in India, ‘servant, slave’ is expressed as kən-ghɛr, which actually means ‘young man’. So it seems that a link can be made between the notion of ‘slave, servant’ and ‘child, boy’. It can hardly be said to be coincidental that servants or slaves were/are denoted by the lexeme for ‘child’ and that the lexeme in itself in the case of rebenok underwent an entire lexical shift from ‘servant, slave’ to ‘child’. This case truly invites itself to be researched further in order to find out whether a worldwide pattern can be detected regarding the polysemy of the lexeme for ‘child’ also denoting ‘servant, slave’. More specifically it is necessary to focus on the link between history and semantics.
5.2.1 From slave to child
In chapter three I already provided an extensive etymology of rebenok, yet it does not show how the word took on a completely different meaning. The following part will address the notion of semantic change more precisely by discussing the lexical evolution from rab ‘servant, slave’ to rebenok ‘child’. In 2.1.1 I already referred to Bybee’s (1985) theory on the autonomy of a lexeme, that it needs to acquire in order to get its own separate lexical entry. The lexeme in this case is a derivative and achieves an autonomous character through basicness/unmarkedness, frequency and morpho-phonemic irregularity. When the word form fulfills these factors it is quite possible for it to acquire its own lexical entry - as we see happen with rebenok - and form a completely different paradigm. As explained above this
30 evolution is one of importance, since it gave rise to the paradigm rebenok-rebjata and has possibly occurred a second time in order for that paradigm to be split up as well. Here I argue that rebenok as a derivateme of rab evolved into a completely autonomous lexeme that is in fact basic, i.e. it stands completely on its own and is not directly linked to rab. Speakers do not see the form as a derivateme of rab as it has acquired a completely different lexical entry. However properly showing the lexical evolution of a lexeme is not straight- forward I will attempt to do so with the help of the same databases that were used in chapter four. It was already possible to see an attestation of the word rab in Slavonic in the Uspenskij Sbornik XII-XIII. In this particular circumstance it depicted ‘slave, servant’ as it still does in the Russian language today. This is not a surprising discovery since we are well aware that this lexeme did not start to diverge from its meaning over the centuries. When looking at the word form rebenok we can say with certainty that the lexeme started to be used in the Russian language approximately in the eighteenth century based on the online Russian National Corpus. It however ‘infiltrated’ the Old-Russian language under the form robja approximately in the seventeenth century as I showed in chapter four. According to the examples provided by the online Russian National Corpus the lexeme already denoted the meaning of ‘child’ quite closely. It is however possible to say with certainty that in approximately the eighteenth century when it was already known as rebenok, the word carried the meaning of ‘boy or girl’ according to the Slovar’ Jazyka Puškina (1956). This observation has already been accounted for in 4.1.3, where I claim that this alternative meaning points towards the polysemic character of the lexeme. Additionally the word form rebenok in fact displays a high level of frequency, which probably is directly connected with the polysemy it displays as argued above. Dahl & Koptjevskaja (2001: 202) point out that there are no languages that do not display a polysemy of ‘child’ referring to ‘first generation descendant and ‘person who has not yet reached puberty’. Additionally the notion of ‘child’ touches in many languages on the functions of improper kinship terms. More specifically it could refer to a kinship relation, e.g. ‘my child’, but also to non-kinship referents like ‘the little girl’ (Vafaeian 2009: 54). Let us not forget the polysemic character in regard to addressing slaves or servants with the word ‘child, boy’ as was mentioned earlier. It gives the lexeme itself an additional situation in which it can be used. This stacking of meanings denoted by only one lexeme obviously accounts for its high frequency of use. Therefore it is no surprise that the lexeme easily fulfills the second premise provided by Bybee (1985). Here it is however interesting to note that the lexeme has a high frequency of use because of its polysemy - thus its separate lexical entry. It is not clear whether it first acquired this particular meaning of ‘child’ and because of that became frequent in use or whether it was frequently used and therefore became autonomous. In the end it is not possible to achieve certainty on the matter, yet it is important to note that Bybee’s (1985) theory is based on forms like rebenok. She drew up the premises making sure they provide an argument for the lexical split rab and rebenok underwent. This does not mean, however, that this is a strict rule that is attested in every case. Additionally this remark does not attempt to tear down the theory, it solely points out the difficulty that goes along with providing a theory regarding language in general. In the end it is important to keep track of the bigger picture, being that we cannot always predict in which way the causality works for particular linguistic structures to arise. That being said the lexeme rebenok since the
31 eighteenth century achieved the separate lexical entry of ‘child’. Its polysemic character is still present, but only with regard to kinship terms. Finally the lexeme in this case does fulfill the final premise being that it displays morpho-phonemic irregularity in the sense that it is currently not recognized as a derivation of rab and does not display semantically markedness in the slightest. It is in fact autonomous (from rab).
5.3 Semantic shift rebenok > rebjata
The obtaining of a separate lexical entry is a happening that is not limited to the lexeme rebenok. Additionally it is possible to argue that its ‘logical plural’, being rebjata, throughout time started to diverge from its singular in a similar way. Such an argument is in fact necessary to make, because it would explain why rebenok infiltrated the paradigm of ditja - deti. If it were not for the complete autonomy of both rebenok and rebjata - with ‘complete autonomy’ I imply they have both separate lexical entries - they would have most likely stuck together in a regular paradigm. In this case it does have to be noticed that reb’ -jata is a quite unusual plural, since it is formed similarly to a neutral plural instead of following the declension of male singular nouns resulting it the non-existent plural rebenk-i. This specific plural could be accounted for by referring to analogy. Possibly the notion of ‘children’ agreed more with that of small animals, of which the plural is usually formed by -ata. This similar meaning could result in morphological analogy, providing the plural with an -ata ending. That explanation seems quite unlikely however. On the other hand it would be possible to argue that the word forms rebenok and rebjata started to diverge way earlier. It is clear that the singular form rebenok stems directly from the highly similar robenokъ, whereas rebjata is more easily recognized as the plural of the form robja. Thus, I argue that this plural has been kept into use after robja kept evolving to the form rebenok that is in use now. This does imply that the relation between rebenok and rebjata was never all that strong and their evolution throughout language possibly diverged almost from the beginning. This would explain why the lexeme rebenok was able to infiltrate the paradigm of ditja - deti. According to this argumentation the lexeme was always highly autonomous. Thus, it would probably be possible to provide a similar technical elucidation for rebjata as I did for rebenok in 5.2.1. Technically we can state that rebjata was equipped to fulfill the premises provided by Bybee (1985) in order to receive its own lexical entry separate from rebenok or the two lexemes were just never as connected as initially expected. Therefore they evolved separately and currently have separate lexical entries. In chapter four I point out the current high frequency of rebjata by referring to the cipher material found in the online Russian National Corpus. The high frequency could be explained by the possibility that this word is fully autonomous and is part of a defect paradigm, i.e. one that has no singular forms. Currently we know it mostly denotes male youngsters or ‘lads’. It is possible to attest this meaning already in the eighteenth century as the Slovar’ Jazyka Puškina (1956) shows that the plural refers to ‘youngsters and young ladies’ (о юношах и девушках).
32 5.4 Ditja
We can conclude that undergoing a lexical shift is a logical consequence for lexemes when they become completely autonomous and their paradigms break up. Arguably the lexical shift can result in a form that might be more suitable in another paradigm, what I argue in the case for the lexeme rebenok. On the other hand the newly required lexical entry could be specific enough for the lexeme to remain existing on its own. In addition to this it is possible to state that the acquisition of a new lexical entry could also be the cause for a paradigmatic break up. This is accounted for in the case of ditja. It is known that ditja carried the meaning ‘child’ for several centuries, yet became less and less frequent. Currently the lexeme is still in use while denoting ‘child’, but its frequency has decreased dramatically because of the almost niche way it occurs in language. Since the form is quite old it is almost treated as archaic. Therefore the form ditja is used in literary or poetic situations in which it still denotes ‘child’. Remarkably the form is not to be found in the Slovar’ Jazyka Puškina (1956) and therefore we cannot make a clean comparison with the other forms. The form is however attested in the online Russian National Corpus in the seventeenth century in which it does clearly still denotes ‘child’:
(5) То поmожити жене ь пазуху моmит а его а начнет жена дитя ро ити.8
Based on this attestation it would be more correctly to say that the lexeme ditja did not really acquired a different lexical entry, yet the way and the context in which the word is used changed entirely. Also in (5) the text is a prayer, which could account for a more poetic context. Arguably this shift in use led up to enough semantic distance between ditja and deti for their paradigm to be compromised. This in combination with the presence of the superior form rebenok makes for a situation in which it was likely for the paradigm to split up.
6 Types of meaning
Up until this point of the thesis I have been mentioning the importance of the meaning of the lexemes in question. Instead of primarily focusing on the technical aspect of language it is necessary to explore the communicative goal of utterances. It is by researching this field that it is possible to do new findings regarding the frequency of use of the lexemes. Above I have already urged to provide an explanation to how the word forms changed in meaning and were able to acquire new lexical entries that caused the break up of their initial paradigms. Although this already gives quite a logical reason for the lexemes to diverge more and more in meaning over time, it does not explain what their meaning entailed in their entirety. In the following chapter I will focus on the different types of meaning that can be conveyed through language. Describing the types of meaning is of major importance for this thesis because it
8 1670-1680 Молитва на облегчение родов. РГБ. Ф. 310 (Собр. В. М. Ундольского). № 696. 1670-е гг. 199 л. РГБ. Ф. 310 (Собр. В. М. Ундольского). № 696. 1670-е гг. 199 л. [Лечебник. 1670-е гг.] // Русские заговоры из рукописных источников XVII – первой половины XIX в. / Сост., подгот. текстов, статьи и комм. А. Л. Топоркова. М., 2010. С. 324–330.
33 provides the main cause for the high/low frequency of use for the lexemes in question. Meaning is not simply limited to a one-dimensional structure that allows us to understand every utterance with absolute clarity. Two first language speakers are still able to misunderstand each other and have a certain haziness in their speech due to the many ways that it is possible to convey a certain meaning. In order to explain the types of meaning that are currently distinguished in language I choose to compare two works on the matter, being Language: Its Structure and Use (1989) by Finegan and Semantics: The Study of Meaning (1981) by Leech. Both works provide an elaborate exposition on the types of meaning. Instead of working chronologically I opt to start to explain Finegans (1989) work, since he provides a clearer and more compact image of the structure of meaning. Consequently I compare his components of meaning with the main components of Leech’ (1981) work, which can be said to be more detailed since he distinguishes seven different types of meaning that are not all of importance to our cause. Therefore I prefer to use the most recent work as a basis on which can be added by referring to Leech’ Semantics: The Study of Meaning (1981).
6.1 Language: Its Structure and Use (1989)
If it comes down to defining the concept of ‘meaning’ it is necessary to point out that a differentiation between types of meaning is to be made. Finegan (1989: 192) in his Language: Its Structure and Use draws up a typology of meaning differentiating between:
(a) Linguistic meaning: referential meaning (the real world object or concept picked out or described by an expression) and sense meaning. This is also called the denotation, in contrast to connotation, which includes both social and affective meaning.
(b) Social meaning: the information about the social character of the speaker or the context of utterance.
(c) Affective meaning: what the speaker feels about the content or the ongoing context.
If it comes down to language change - and more specifically the rise of suppletion - it is is necessary to determine which type of meaning provides the proper context that would have led to a particular overtake of ditja by rebenok. The typology of Finegan (1989) shows a large diversity in the types of meaning and accordingly we can assume that not all of them have the same affect on language change. Therefore I will provide the proper argumentation to decide whether a shift in either (a), (b) or (c) could have caused a partial paradigmatic overtake and led to the current stage of suppletion that is attested in the word pair rebenok - deti. Linguistic meaning directly refers to objects/concepts and its referents, which in this case is only of minor importance. The lexeme ditja namely caries the meaning of ‘small child’ (Ozhegov: online), a small child being the object it refers to. Even though meaning does seem to play a role of importance as a motor of language change it is doubtful that the referential and sense meaning as described in (a) provide the proper stimulus to inflict such a change.
34 Referential meaning refers in this case specifically to the definition of meaning, claiming that the meaning of a word is in fact the actual person, object or notion (Finegan 1989: 190). The referential meaning of the name of a person, for example, would strictly just be that person. A phrase like ‘my brother’s book’ refers to the bundled story that is in the possession of my brother. Thus, the referential meaning is the readable object which is identified by the linguistic expression ‘my brothers book’, the book in this case being its referent. This referential meaning as Finegan (1989: 190) describes does not suffice in explaining how certain expressions truly express what they express. Referential meaning cannot be applied on every expression as not every expression has a referent that exist in the actual world. Furthermore we can clearly make a distinction between ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘the present king of the United States’. Whereas the name Donald Trump refers to the actual living person Donald Trump the second expression does not have a referent, since the United States is not a monarchy and therefore does not have a king in the present. This, however, does not mean that the expression does not have meaning. It is in any case necessary to notice that words or expressions cannot only posses referential meaning, but also sense meaning. Finegan (1989: 190) provides the following example:
(1) Al Gore nearly became the forty-third president of the United States.
(2) Al Gore nearly became George W. Bush.
Accordingly it is possibly to state that ‘George W. Bush’ is not the same thing as ‘the forty- third president of the United States’. Although these two expressions do have the same referent, they simply do not carry the same meaning. Moreover referential meaning is not equal to sense meaning and it is always necessary to keep track of the difference as it is a prominent one. When treating this definition of linguistic meaning in general it quickly becomes clear that it is not to be applied to the suppletive word pair rebenok - deti as we treat them in a general manner. More specifically I do not utilize them in a specific context which makes there referential meaning non-existent. If it comes down to the sense meaning we can conclude that for all the relevant lexemes - being ditja, deti, rebenok and rebjata - this is roughly equal. The lexemes namely describe young people, admittedly with the difference of singularity versus plurality. Despite their obvious polysemy their denotation is basically the same and has not undergone a shift as is proven by their use throughout databases, in which they express the notion of ‘child, children’. The social meaning as described in (b) says that the meaning of a word or expression conveys information about the speaker (Finegan 1989: 191). Using particular expressions or dialectal structures will reveal in which area the speaker lives or what his social background is. Using the double negation in American English, for example, is a direct indicator of the speaker belonging to a lower social class. Social factors like ethnicity, social status, regional origin et cetera are to be detected in almost each and every utterance. This brings Finegan (1989: 191) to the conclusion that every utterance, in addition to linguistic meaning, also conveys social meaning, usually depending on word choice and pronunciation. Again this seems quite useless in the framework of this research as it is limited to written Standard Russian. The lexemes ditja, deti, rebenok, rebjata do not convey a certain social meaning when written down. Possibly when pronounced it would be feasible to determine the speakers
35 origin or social status. Admittedly social meaning could play a role in the frequency of use of a lexeme. If a certain word or expression which was popular in the higher social class were to become more available to the lower class and thus commonly used, its frequency would noticeably increase. This eventually could result in an overtake by this newly spread lexeme of its lower class synonym. If we were to keep this possibility in mind it might not be that easy to cancel out the importance of social meaning in the case of the lexemes denoting ‘child’ in this thesis. Currently it is possible to see that the lexemes ditja and rebenok in fact differ gravely in terms of use as I argued in 5.3. This could be linked to their social meaning, since ditja is used in a very different context, being a more literary/poetic one as opposed to the more general use of rebenok. Lastly the semantic notion of affective meaning points out the feeling of the speaker that goes along with the utterance that is being made. It is undeniable that depending on how a speaker chooses to transfer his message it can acquire a certain meaning. Finegan (1989: 191) provides the following example:
(1) Tina always boasts about her two doctorates, and she lectured me all night about Warhol’s art.
(2) Tina, who’s got two doctorates, offered a fascinating overview of Warhol’s art last night.
While comparing these two examples it becomes clear that even thought they refer to the same event - and thus share the same referential meaning - they convey a completely different message. In (1) Tina seems smug and arrogant regarding her accomplishments and the speaker did not enjoy her talking about Andy Warhol. The second sentence on the other hand shows a different emotion entirely based on the choice of words. It is not only in this manner, however, that a certain feeling can be communicated. Stress and intonation accordingly make the difference between a simple and honest statement, like ‘The lecture was really interesting.’, and a sarcastic utterance accompanied by appropriate facial expression (Finegan 1989: 192). The exaggerated stressing of the word ‘really’ would completely change the meaning of the sentence and reveal an entirely different emotion of the speaker. This particular method of conveying a feeling, attitude or opinion via utterance is not limited to sentences. Words can also carry a certain affective meaning as is exemplified by words such as ‘Hooray!’ and ‘Yuck!’, but also ‘awful’ and ‘hilarious’. Moreover, common words like ‘school’ or ‘family’ also convey certain feelings towards us and accordingly evoke memories and emotions in us. Finegan (1989: 192) points out that the difference between near- synonymous words like ‘homeless’ and ‘vagrant’ is a difference of affection. Such-like semantic distinctions are sometimes quite challenging to explain and yet they play a major role in communication. When we take a closer look to this type of meaning it appears possible to look into the affective meaning of any word possible. In the case of this paper it would prove useful to find out the affective meaning of the lexemes in question in order to adequately grasp the difference that lies in their utterance. As was mentioned earlier the linguistic meaning of ditja and rebenok does not seem to differ gravely, yet their use and frequency of use does. Thus,
36 researching which feelings and attitudes go in accordance with said lexemes throughout time could show the reason why one particular word is preferred over the other one.
6.2 Semantics: The Study of Meaning (1981)
The typology described above already shows a quite understandable image of the different statutes of meaning, yet it is important to mention that in the semantic field linguists do not all blindly agree with each other. To illustrate this I opt to include another typology - that is a bit more dated - provided by Leech in his Semantics: The Study of Meaning (1981). In this work meaning is subdivided into seven separate types, namely conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, collocative meaning and thematic meaning (1981: 9). Leech (1981) clearly distinguishes between conceptual meaning and the other six types. Therefore it is necessary to specify that conceptual meaning is also called denotative or cognitive meaning and in fact is in accordance with the subtype of linguistic meaning as it was described above according to Finegan’s (1989) typology. We could detect a similar subdivision in Finegan’s (1989) work as it is noticeable that social and affective meaning are more similar as they refer more directly to the perception of people and the way they convey their message. Whereas conceptual meaning is way more literal, social or affective meaning gives more direct information on the actual - thus not necessary literal - meaning of the utterance. When assessing Leech’ (1981) theory with regard to suppletion it does not seem useful to explain his entire typology. In order to stay on top of finding an explanation for the rise of suppletion in rebenok - deti I choose to only refer to those parts of the theory that seem useful. Therefore I will continue with explaining the specifics of social, affective and connotative meaning, which are all undeniably intertwined. In comparison to Finegan (1989) Leech’ (1981) assessment of social meaning is quite a bit more substantial and covers a wider area of meaning. Finegan (1989: 191) seemed to limit his typology to social factors expressed by language in the present, in which he made a distinction between region, social class, ethnicity and context. Even though this does inform us on the basics of what social meaning is, it seems that a more elaborate explanation is not an unnecessary luxury. Thus, social meaning does indeed convey more information about the social circumstances of the actors. These social circumstances could be determined through recognition of dialectal expression, context and choice of words. In linguistics a scale has been drawn up varying from formal/literal language use on the one side to colloquial, familiar and eventually slang on the other (Leech 1981: 14). It is this scale that prevents people from stating that true synonyms exist since the words do seem to convey something quite different in their social meaning, yet in regard to their conceptual meaning they are in fact overlapping. An illustration provided by Leech (1981: 14) gives us an image of how words can differ socially: “domicile (very formal, official) > residence (formal) > abode (poetic) > home (general)” or “steed (poetic) > horse (general), nag (slang), gee-gee (baby language). Thus, here we can draw the parallel with the example of the near-synonymous words ‘homeless’ and ‘vagrant’ that was described above. The words seem to mean the same, yet Finegan (1989) points out that there is in fact a difference of social meaning in these utterances. The importance of a scale like this is not to be underestimated as we see that the meaning of the
37 lexemes that are relevant to this paper clearly evolved into separate directions in regard to the scale. It is clear that whereas rebenok and deti both are part of the ‘general’ paradigm that is used in the majority of utterances, this is not the case for ditja and rebjata. Ditja in particular draws attention since it has been completely decreased in use and is to be found sooner in more poetic contexts. It is in fact recognized as quite an outdated expression and on the verge of being archaic. Rebjata on the other hand is still quite a common expression, yet more colloquial. It is still likely to be found in written text, yet it is not the general or formal way to address the plural of rebenok (even when neglecting its deviating meaning). Apart from this scale Leech’ (1981: 14) refers to the following dimensions that influence socio-linguistic variation drastically: Dialect (the language of a geographical region or of a social class) Time (the language of the eighteenth century, etc.) Province (language of law, of science, of advertising, etc.) Status (polite, colloquial, slang, etc., language) Modality (language of memoranda, lectures, jokes, etc.) Singularity (the style of Dickens, of Hemingway, etc.)
These factors stimulate the use of a particular type of language, according to which we can often easily deduct the social orientation of the speaker. When assessing Finegan’s (1989) theory I already pointed out how affective meaning can influence the meaning of an utterance drastically depending on the way the message is being transferred. Intonation and ‘tone of voice’ or voice-timbre (Leech 1981: 16) affect the utterance and make it so that a seemingly friendly sentence could be tainted by sarcasm and therefore express something completely different. Whereas Finegan (1989: 192) mentions that words in themselves are also capable of conveying feeling, he does not limit himself to the obvious expressions of joy, pain or sadness. By including the less evident words, like ‘family’, he touches a matter that might be crucial for this paper. Leech (1989) on the other hand does not include this particular option into his typology. Instead he elaborates on the notion of connotative meaning, that is not to be discarded for this thesis either. When we generally refer to the connotation of a word, we try to explain the ‘true meaning’ of a word besides its literal meaning. When communicating with someone it is necessary that the conversational partner is aware of the connotation of a word and thus understands what message you are trying to convey. In this thesis I opt to include this notion of connotation since it focuses on the main properties of the referent and how this conceptual reality is perceived by its speakers. This if of major importance in regard to the fact that this connotative view of a referent seems to play a part in the use of the word that refers to it. Leech (1981: 12) defines it as “the communicative value an expression has by virtue of what if refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content”. More specifically connotative meaning or the connotation refers to the features that make the concept into what it is on top of its pure conceptional meaning. So where the conceptional definition of a boy is to be grasped in three features, namely +HUMAN, +MALE, -ADULT, these aspects will provide a criterion to determine in which context the word can be used . Yet, these criteria do not cover all the attributes that we know a boy to have. It are these non-criterial properties that we expect on a boy, varying from physical ones (short, male genitalia) to more stereotypical ones (rough, playful, not serious,
38 loud) (Leech 1981: 12). It is here that we see how big a role society really plays, since it is the way people look at a certain person/object that ascribes him/it certain features, whether or not those features are inherent to the referent or just ‘typical’. Additionally it is necessary to remark that these features are prone to change throughout time and to differ depending on region or social group. An American might say the color green displays the connotation of money as American dollars are all green. A Brit or Australian on the other hand does not daily come into contact with USA dollars and therefore money does not necessarily come to mind when being confronted with the color green. Instead they might sooner think of environmentally friendly signs or nature. With this particular example I refer to people who speak roughly the same language but with clear regional differences. It is however possible to state that connotations can also vary among individuals of the same speech community or culture. Depending on your own beliefs and standpoints you might grant other aspects to a particular person/object than someone else. A mother could see a boy as sweet, cute but also sly or very curious and wanting to discover everything. Another young girl on the other hand would possibly describe boys very differently and say they are dirty and wild creatures that love fighting and are all bullies. So of course these differences do account for great difficulty in drawing up a specific typology on the connotative meaning of words in society in general. Yet it is important to keep track of the fact that this is the connection between ‘language’ and ‘the real world’. Undoubtedly correctly defining the meaning of a word will bring about great difficulty. With regard to connotative meaning we could state that one meaning is not ‘more right’ or ‘less right’ than any other one. It is their totality that brings about a certain image that could approach the conceptual reality as closely as possible. Finally Leech (1989: 13) claims the notion of connotative meaning to be open-ended, meaning that any characteristic granted to the referent contributes to its connotation. This statement stand in contrast with the fact that semantic theory is prone to define a word or concept in a limited set of symbols. Displaying such finiteness is useful in order to analyze aspects of linguistic structure, yet might sometimes be an over-simplification of language. In this thesis I will follow this trend of linguistics to view language as a finite and coherent system as closely as possible, yet in this case I stand by Leech’ (1981:13) description of connotative meaning as an open-ended notion. Thus, in addition to taking a closer look at the affective meaning of words it is necessary to keep track of their social and connotative meaning. Even though these concepts are proven extremely difficult to determine per lexeme, it is clear that they play a major role in the frequency of use. So far in this paper it is impossible to provide a complete explanation on the social and connotative meaning of the word forms in question, yet we could confidently state that they did play a role in the general cognitive process of speakers when deciding which word they preferred over another one. More precisely the lexeme ditja acquired a higher - more poetic - status, which is likely to have led to its decrease in frequency. Consequently rebenok denoted a range of meaning all in the sense of ‘child’. Its polysemic generality could quite possible have accounted for its increase in frequency and the eventual break up of the paradigm of ditja - deti.
39 7 Affective meaning
After giving a quite elaborate elucidation on social and connotative meaning it seems necessary to dedicate the following chapter to the notion of affective meaning. This proves itself necessary because the terms social, connotative and affective meaning are often used interchangeably in research. This has mostly to do with the fact that their definitions do partially overlap, which makes it difficult to make a clear distinction. Thus by discussing the notion of affective meaning a more clear distinction between the concepts could be established. When discussing the specifics of affective meaning it quickly becomes clear that this field is again quite a fuzzy one in the equally fuzzy field of semantics. The reason why that is, has to do with the fact that ‘affection’, thus the feeling of affect, is a very personal notion. Similarly to connotative meaning it is necessary to remark that the affective meaning of a word is not one-sided. Consequently it is impossible to exactly pinpoint this type of meaning per word form. This causes great difficulty regarding the matter, yet does not make it any less of an important linguistic structure. As I argued earlier on the notion of affectiveness most likely plays a major role as the motor that drives people to prefer a certain word (like rebenok) over the use of another word (like ditja). Thus, despite the fuzziness of the notion of affective meaning itself, it is a concept to pay attention to. Therefore I will urge to explain this ‘feeling’ as elaborately as possible in order to be able to grasp the importance of a word with a high level of affect. More specifically I will turn to previous linguistic research that specializes in drawing up a measuring tool for affective meaning. Researching affective meaning in all its aspects is likely to give us the necessary tools to determine the proper reason why rebenok was able to outshine ditja in the way it did.
7.1 What is affect?
To describe the notion of affect more elaborately it does not suffice to stay in between the limiting borders of linguistics. Affective meaning and affect is part of the field of psychology and cannot be taken out of that context. After all, the focus lies on the emotion, mood and feeling that is portrayed by a certain word when we refer to its affective meaning. Therefore it is paramount to cross the boundaries of linguistics and follow through with a more psychological agenda. Firstly it proves itself to be quite challenging to make a clear distinction between terms as affect, feeling, mood, sentiment, expressiveness and emotion. Possibly ‘affect’ refers more directly to both emotion and moods, yet it is ‘emotion’ that forms a central concept in this case. It is emotion in fact that refers to more intense and target-specific affective reactions, whereas ‘moods’ are more general. They lack specific cognitive content and are therefore less consciously accessible affective, thus weaker (Li 2015: 4). Based on this it seems only logical to get more into specifics regarding the concept of ‘emotion’. Providing a better understanding on this concept will also shed light on the notion of ‘affect’ in itself. This is however not as straight forward as it may seem since there are many different definitions and theories regarding emotion (Scherer 2000: 156). Because of this multitude of explanations I will urge to only provide the necessary theories. A selection of definitions/theories might
40 seem limiting but will prove to be the best approach in this case in order to form an image of emotion (and affect) that is as clear as possible. More specifically Li (2015: 5) distinguishes in Encoding and Decoding of Emotional Speech between a categorical and dimensional description of emotion. The categorical description in this case refers to the idea that there are a number of basic emotions. These basic or primary emotions are stated to be universal cross-culturally. In addition to those there are secondary emotions or attitudes that make the range of an individuals feelings, expressions and attunement wider. The dimensional description on the other hand is a completely different approach. In this case researchers describe emotional states in a multidimensional space. One of the most important dimensional models that has been created is the one by Schlosberg (1954), called the VAD model. This three-dimensional model has been used by researchers as the basis to develop a measuring device for affect in language, on which I will elucidate later on in 7.2. For now a description of the model looks as follows (Li 2015: 5): Valence (V, or appraisal, evaluation): positive-negative or pleasantness- unpleasantness dimension. Activation (A, or arousal, excitation): excitation level, ranging from sleep to tension. Dominance (D, or strength, power): apparent strength of the speaker, corresponding to attention-rejection, distinguished among emotions initiated by the subject and those arising from the environment.
The VAD model does show a quite wide dimension in which we can classify several emotions and accordingly start measuring them. Neither the model nor a categorical description of emotion, however, succeeds in providing a definition of emotion. To find out what the notion of emotion truly entails it is necessary to ask the right questions, like: ‘What exactly is the emotion? Is it the reaction you have as a consequence of a happening? Is it a certain feeling? Is it the physical reaction that you might have as a consequence of a feeling (e.g. the urge to run away in case of fear) (Scherer 2000: 152)? In literature on the matter it is currently agreed upon that emotion entails way more than just ‘feeling’. It has to be noted that these two concepts have been wrongly used interchangeably by William James and Carl Lange (1885), known for the James-Lange theory. This theory was not one yet two separate theories, but it is referred to as the James-Lange theory because they both used emotion and feeling as synonyms. Although modern theories stay far away from making such accusations the research was not all for nothing as James and Lange both agreed on several matters in regard to emotion. They both refer to the existence of a certain process, a particular sequence of events and the differentiation of causes and consequences. The classical dispute is based on the question whether the emotion is a cause of characteristic bodily reactions and action tendencies or whether it is their consequence. This question is still very valid in social psychological research, although now there have of course been new insights (Scherer 2000: 155). Scherer (2000: 156) brings attention to the emotional reaction triad. The components of this triad are physiological arousal (in the central and autonomous nervous systems), motor expression (in face, voice and gesture) and subjective feeling. In addition he mentions the action tendency, which basically is the tendency to run when you are afraid or whichever reaction follows due to a feeling. Arguably action tendency is emotion in itself (Frijda 1986:
41 71), yet I will refrain from going into that discussion in this thesis. Lastly Scherer (2000: 156) draws attention to a cognitive component. Based on the fact that every person evaluates an object or a happening differently, the emotional construct could vary quite a lot. For example, a person who is afraid of the dark will react differently to a dark and eerie alleyway at night than someone who is used to walk around in said surroundings. Yet, it is clear that mental processes, i.e. the cognitive activity of evaluation, is of major importance to the emotion- eliciting event. Thus, so he argues that cognitive evaluation or appraisal is also part of the emotion construct. When we quickly summarize the current findings we can state that the notion of emotion is build out of several components, being physiological arousal, motor expression, subjective feeling, action tendency and appraisal. This typology, however, is quite broad and should be narrowed down a bit to exemplify what emotion in reality is. In practice this is done by pointing out that emotion is a process of short duration. Whereas ‘mood’ is a state of being that is held on to way longer, emotion is usually experienced over only several moments and knows an obvious end. Consequently it is possible to refer not to emotional state, but to emotional episode to emphasize that it is just a brief happening (Scherer 2000: 157). After providing this specific definition it is possible to see whether said explanation is transferable to the linguistic field. The aspects described in the emotional reaction triad and appraisal are quite similarly to be encountered in linguistics. For example when uttering ‘Hurray!’ the speaker clearly feels physiological arousal throughout his body. Possibly the utterance is accompanied by the motor expression of throwing his hands in the air, the subjective feeling being one of joy and possibly happiness. The action tendency could be that the speaker will smile or clap his hands. The cognitive evaluation for this utterance could said to be universal, yet the utterance does not necessarily have to be used in circumstances that evoke feelings of excitement, joy, happiness, content... A speaker might utter the word sarcastically and consequently convey a completely different emotion. Accordingly we could point out that the affective meaning of a word can depend on many separate factors, among which the language user because of the cognitive process that goes along with emotion. In this case the emotion or affect is of short duration, and the emotion does not necessarily have to be one of enjoyment. So as Finegan (1989) explains it could be possible to attest affective meaning in almost every possible lexeme. Therefore we can remark that the affective meaning of ‘child, children’ is definitely not universal cross-culturally nor intraculturally. Thanks to the definition provided in this chapter it is possible to make a clearer differentiation between affective meaning, social meaning and connotative meaning. As stated above the notion of ‘affection’ translates more directly to the emotion that is conveyed through the utterance. Social meaning, on the other hand, gives more information over the social status of the speaker and the context in which the word is being used. Then finally connotative meaning refers more directly to all the different aspects that denote the subject that is referred to. An important link between these three meanings is the speaker. In this thesis I provide elaborate definitions of these three concepts and in the end it can be noted that linguistic variation depends on the speaker, either because of his social features (social meaning) or his cognitive evaluation of the concept in question (connotative and affective meaning. Similarly to the way dialects work, language variation is decided by these components (Chambers & Trudgill 1998: 120-121). Therefore I conclude in this case that the
42 use of rebenok over ditja is due to their newly acquired lexical entries in combination with the way they were perceived by people. This led up to their diverging frequencies and to the presence of the suppletive word pair rebenok-deti.
7.1.1 Affective/evaluative morphology
Affective, or rather evaluative, morphology is a specific subtype of linguistics. It is not only necessary to elucidate a bit more on the subject because of the word ‘affective’ in its title, but mostly because of what this title refers to. A short introduction to the field will sketch a clearer image on the matter and its connection to the subject of affect. The core ideas of evaluative morphology - as it is called more often - are diminutivisation and augmentativisation. These terms do not only refer to the physical size of objects, but also carry some specific emotional overtones of approval or endearment on the positive side and disapproval or pejoration on the negative side (Bauer 1997: 4). Consequently we can conclude that through the process of ‘creating’ a diminutive or an augmentative the word in question acquires a certain connotation. Interestingly linguists have been wondering what the semantically central sense is of the diminutive construction. Heise (1991) came forward with the option of the meaning of ‘child’ in Ewe. Jurafsky (1993) added to this assumption by stating that in Cantonese this role is fulfilled for the notion of ‘son’. It is more difficult to see a similar pattern throughout Indo- European languages since there is no historical evidence for the notion of ‘child’ to give rise to the diminutive, yet in Bantu and Muskogean families this is in fact the case. That is why Jurafsky (1993: 425) still pleads a case for the sense of ‘child’ as he argues that multiple Indo- European languages show to be child-centered in regard to their diminutive formation. Yet he adds that although the notion of ‘child’ probably embodied the historically and semantically prior sense of the diminutive it must have been extended into the notion of ‘small’ quite early. In his Universals in the Semantics of the Diminutive (1993: 426) Jurafsky includes a table that shows how the usage of the diminutive to mark the offspring of animals seems quite universal.
Offspring Unmarked Form Diminutive
English duck duckling
Ewe Koklô ‘chicken’ Koklô-ví ‘chick’
Ojibwa Mkwa ‘bear’ Mkoons ‘bear cub’
Halkomelem Təl´əqsəl ‘duck’ Təlíləqsəl ‘ducklings’
43 Additionally the diminutive is used to address people in an affectionate manner, namely by adapting kinship terms and names as we often see in Slavic languages like the Russian sistrica ‘sister’, and to express that something is small. Jurafsky (1993: 426) argues that in the second case the diminutive is based on an extension of the notion of ‘child’ to the notion of ‘small’. For example the Ojibwa mkizin ‘shoe’ becomes mkiznens ‘little shoe’. This piece of linguistic theory proves itself quite interesting to my research regarding affective meaning since Jurafsky (1993) very clearly identifies which affective meaning is carried by the lexeme of ‘child’. By stating that the formation of diminutives are based on this particular notion, he implies that the lexeme carries a strong sense of affection that influences languages on a morphological level. Accordingly it is already possible to conclude that the notion of ‘child’ carries a clear affective meaning that expresses the notion of not only offspring or kinship, but also the notion of a love that is felt for family and finally also smallness. In addition to that I dare to say that the notion of smallness goes hand in hand with a sense of endearment and cuteness. These senses are both directly linked to anything that is small or tiny and are therefore quite necessarily to be included in an affectionate typology of the notion ‘child’. By taking a closer look at the formation of rebenok, we were already able to conclude that this word is derivated from rab and almost acts like its direct diminutive. Its new lexical entry might have created a division between the two word forms, yet their etymological relation speaks for itself. Therefore we arrive to the conclusion that rebenok in fact carries a high affective meaning denoting kinship, smallness and endearment as opposed to ditja. It has been proven difficult to measure affective meaning in words, since this type of meaning strongly depends on the speaker. Yet, based on the current use of the lexeme ditja we can quite confidently say that its affective meaning is likely to be of a lower level which leads up to its limited use. In 7.2 I will expand on the possibility of measuring affective meaning, since a direct measurement would provide certainty on the matter.
7.2 Measuring affective meaning
In order to find out whether affective meaning truly played a role in regard to the formation of suppletion in the case of rebenok-deti, it would prove useful to measure their meaning. More specifically measurements on different moments of the evolution of the lexemes would provide a direct view on how the word forms were perceived by Russian speakers. The measurement is expected to point out that the affective meaning of ditja used to be one that accurately pointed out the affective components that resembled the notion of ‘child’ up until the point that the lexeme rebenok infiltrated in the Russian language. Consequently this new lexeme would develop an affective meaning that is more precise and is in better accordance with the view of the Russian people of approximately the eighteenth century. A measurement would explain directly the obvious increase in frequency of use of said lexeme and thus provide a proper explanation for suppletion to arise. In order to achieve such conclusions it is firstly necessary to do the measurement in itself. Accordingly we ask the question whether such a measurement of affective meaning is actually possible. In the following chapter I
44 introduce some important studies regarding the measurement of affect in words. Consequently it might be possible to research whether the expected results could be obtained.
7.2.1 The Semantic Differential
First up is Osgood, who in his Studies on the Generality of Affective Meaning Systems (1962) urges to work out an effective way to measure meaning. In order to do so he draws up the scales for the semantic space in which he ‘measures’ the words in several factors, being an evaluative factor, a potency factor and the activity factor. The evaluative factor is identified as the attitudinal component of meaning and is therefore characterized by scales like good-bad, pleasant-unpleasant and positive-negative. Orthogonal to evaluation there is the potency factor. This factor is represented by scales like strong-weak, heavy-light and hard-soft. Lastly the activity factor stand completely independent of evaluation and potency and is characterized by scales like fast-slow, active-passive and excitable-calm. The total picture that is drawn up in which concepts could be measured is called the semantic differential. By creating this ‘model of measurement’ Osgood (1962) urges to be able to measure the affective meaning of concepts as well as possible. In order to measure a specific concept a subject is asked to judge a series of concepts. These concepts can differ from e.g., my mother, Chines, modern art, etc. and are measured against a series of bipolair, seven-step scales defined by verbal opposites as is shown in figure 1 below.
Figure 1 (Lavrakas 2008: 428).
45 Thus, like a general test the concept is given and the subject simply puts his checkmark in the appropriate position on the following scale: +3 extremely good, +2 quite good, +1 slightly good, 0 equally good and bad or neither, -1 slightly bad, -2 quite bad, and -3 extremely bad. These quantifiers have been chosen based on Norman Cliff’s (1959) work, in which he defends them in order to yield approximately equal degrees of intensity (Osgood 1964: 173). The results of this test generates a cube of data regarding the concepts that are judged. In fact each cell represents how a particular subject rated a concept against a particular scale. Osgood (1964: 173) furthermore points out that the correlations among the scales are to be interpreted in order to make conclusions on “cultural meanings”. So he states that it is possible to run separate analyses for a single concept or classes of concepts and consequently determine their individual semantic spaces. On the other hand they could do the same this for a single subject or classes of subjects. In this case they do not analyze the correlating scales across the concepts that are judged, but the correlating scales across the people, i.e. the subjects, that are judging. Either way, there are several different ways to analyze the data in order to answer specific questions. One of the main questions that arises in regard to this measuring method is whether is it actually possible to come to trustworthy results since people from different (social) groups probably asses a concept differently. Earlier on in this thesis I already pointed out the likeliness for the affective meaning of a word to diverge depending on the language user and the way they classify the word based on their social class, age, culture, fears and so on. Osgood et al. (1964: 173) specifically notes that the tests have been conducted with many different people, i.e. older people and youngsters, males and females, republicans and democrats et cetera. Interestingly the results of the comparisons revealed that there were no significant differences in the underlying dominant factor. This of course does not mean that the outcome of particular concepts were completely the same. It does show however that the semantic framework is constant and differences between concepts or groups of people can be measured accordingly. Secondly there is another obvious issue with the semantic differential, being that it might not be possible to use it in cross-cultural research. It is impossible to simply translate the qualifiers and the instructions of the measurement tool for the English language to other languages and expect a similar outcome. Those results will not be sustainable or comparable. It is important to keep in mind that the linguistic frames defining the qualifiers are in fact adapted to the grammatical structure of the language (Osgood 1964: 178). Although this is the case cross-cultural research has been brought into practice anyway with the obvious hindrance that such translations might bring along. In order to minimize those issues the scales were decided on intraculturally. This means that each language or culture group must determine their own scales. Osgood (1964: 175) emphasizes that the over-all methodology of these samplings had to be standardized very carefully in order to be able to make intercultural comparisons. Thus, even though he does not elucidate on how the testing scales generally were chosen, it does seem possible to apply the measurement model onto different languages and cultures. Consequently it should be possible to apply it to the Russian language, more specifically to the lexemes rebenok and ditja.
46 7.2.2 Feeltrace
Even though the measurement model of the semantic differential provided by Osgood (1964) already shows a very real possibility to measure the affective meaning of words and utterances, it might prove itself useful to include a more recent measuring tool. In the end research keeps developing new ways and keeps improving on former theories. That is how the following measuring tool has been developed by Cowie et al. (2000). Feeltrace is quite similar to the semantic differential, being based on a two-dimensional activation-evaluation space. The goal is to track the emotional content of a stimulus as it is perceived over time, which would allow for the emotional dynamics of speech episodes to be examined (Cowie et al. 2000: online). The main challenges that go along with such a project are the gradation of emotion and the variation over time. Cowie et al. (2000: online) points out that spontaneous speech is usually not characterized by one specific archetypal emotion, but by emotional shading. It is often impossible to achieve complete clarity on the emotion that is being portrayed by the utterance and therefore issues are easily encountered. Secondly emotion can vary over time. The emotional shading of speech is rarely to be found constant. It shifts gradually, but also sharply depending on the speaker’s state. Cowie et al. (2000) additionally works on a project called PHYSTA. This project aims to design a database thanks to which it would be possible to achieve automatic recognition of emotion. The database is assembled out of spontaneously occurring speech with marked emotional content. It is in fact the project of FEELTRACE that is designed in order to describe the emotional content of said material. It has to be noted that it is not the system that determines the emotional state of the speaker. Its function is to record how the signs of the speaker are generally perceived by observers. Thus, as I stated above the measurement model is a two-dimensional one of activation and evaluation space. The activation scale shows how dynamic the emotional state is. Exhilaration, for example, is said to be one of high activation, whereas boredom is a state of low activation. Evaluation on the other hand measures globally how positive or negative the feeling is that is associated with the emotional state. This can be illustrated by the feeling of happiness, which is of course a positive evaluation versus the feeling of despair, which is a negative one. A visual representation shows that the activation-evaluation space is naturally circular. Cowie et al. (2000: online) developed this concept into an online measuring tool. The space is presented as a circle on a computer screen. It is then up to the observers to point out the appropriate position in the space, that adequately represents the emotional state that they remark. One of the difficulties that goes along with this type of measurement is that the researchers cannot ensure that the observers conclude their task in a consistent way nor that their opinion is clearly conveyed throughout the test. Figure 2 shows us a visual representation of the activation-evaluation space.
47 Figure 2 (Cowie et al. 2000: online).
7.2.3 conclusion
So even though measuring affective meaning has been proven ever so difficult it is not impossible. The measurement models that are provided above do seem adequate to give quite a complete set of data that would allow us to interpret words according to the emotion that they convey. Naturally a measurement like this brings forth logical difficulties; like the possibility of cross-cultural and intracultural comparison, the collection of trustworthy data and the varying results that might appear due to differences depending on the subjects doing to measurement. At this point a survey-like measurement is the only option that allows a closer look at the affective meaning of lexemes and utterances. An online measuring tool that detects emotion automatically has proven difficult to develop, since affective meaning in itself is always changing. The skittish nature of meaning is something that has to be kept in mind when trying to measure it. Consequently it is possible to conclude that each measurement of a concept by different groups of subjects is highly likely to result in very different results, yet the results would be as valuable. As Osgood (1964) states, the set of data can be sliced into many different pieces, each answering another set of questions. In the end we can conclude that a measurement of the lexemes that are relevant for this paper is not one that can be done easily. Therefore it is impossible to provide an ‘objective’ representation of the affective meaning of rebenok nor ditja. Though, while the measurement cannot be carried out in this thesis, I hope to have proven its significance and the answers it could bring in regard to the suppletive character of rebenok - deti.
48 8 Conclusion
This thesis is in its entirety devoted to providing insight into the linguistic phenomenon of suppletion by zooming in on one of the most well-known suppletive word pairs, namely the Russian rebenok - deti ‘child’- ‘children’. In order to fulfill this project an extensive literary approach was required. More specifically I subdivided the thesis into two main parts, namely by firstly discussing the synchronic approach and secondly by researching the matter diachronically. This second approach is more and more frowned upon by researchers, since the synchronic research is not able to achieve consensus on suppletion itself. Without defining the concept clearly most researchers do not attempt to look deeper into the matter. With this thesis I urge to break that stigma and provide a diachronic view on the suppletive word pair rebenok - deti. The notion of suppletion first became a part of the linguistic field at the end of the nineteenth century, yet has always been defined poorly. The by far most quoted work on the matter is Suppletion (1994) by Mel’čuk in which he defines the concept as the relation between two lexemes that is grammatically maximally regular, yet phonologically maximally irregular. Even though this definition is one of the most complete ones, it is still very general and causes a lot of discussion throughout among linguists. In order to discuss the particularities of suppletion, I urge to classify the word pair rebenok - deti into the current framework of suppletion that has been build up by researchers. The main works that I consulted in this first synchronic part of my thesis are Mel’čuk’s Suppletion (1994), Bybee’s Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form (1985) and Corbett’s Canonical Typology, Suppletion and Possible Words (2007). When discussing Mel’čuk’s (1994) definition of suppletion the first problem that arises is that of inflectional grammar versus derivational grammar. Research points out that this phenomenon usually arises in inflectional grammar. This is to be expected since inflected languages provide a decent amount of morpho-phonemic changes in lexemes which results in substantial paradigms. Such a grammatical structure provides the ideal conditions for suppletion to arise as opposed to languages with a more static grammar. Yet, this does not mean that suppletion cannot occur in derivational grammar. As I argue, however, several issues come into play when we consider this possibility. It is for example difficult to ensure the grammatical relation between derivatemes, especially when they do not share any phonological material. The lack of phonological coherence is one of the main aspects of suppletion, which consequently cannot be overlooked. Thus, we can conclude that the difficulty that goes along with determining the derivational relation between two etymologically non-related lexemes makes the inclusion of derivational morphology questionable. Consequently I opt to rule out this possibility of what is often referred to as non- prototypical suppletion and accordingly include the notion of ‘paradigm’ into my definition of suppletion. By including this notion I emphasize the necessity of a completely regular grammatical relation between the two lexemes that are in a suppletive relation to each other. This relation can only be guaranteed when we can attest their occurrence in a single paradigm. In the case of rebenok - deti, however, there is no question about their grammatical relation,
49 since their both occur in a single paradigm denoting the functions of singular - plural. Therefore their grammatical relation is undoubtedly maximally regular. A second point of discussion when it comes to suppletion is its gradient character. In research suppletion is often seen as an extreme form of irregularity. Whenever an usual phonological difference between two grammatically regular forms is attested, it could be a suppletive word pair. This would mean, however, that every irregular word pair is a suppletive one. Mel’čuk (1994) urges to oppose this statement by introducing the notion of uniqueness. By doing so it is possible to state that irregularities that occur only once in language are to be classified ‘suppletive’. Though, there is an undeniable difference between a suppletive word pair that is etymologically related - and thus shares a good amount of phonological material - versus a suppletive word pair that is etymologically unrelated. Therefore researchers have implemented the idea of a grading scale. The weak side of the grading scale denotes the word pairs that shared a lot of phonological material and the strong side denotes those that share none. Although this grading scale plays a large role in the research on suppletion, it is yet to be decided how the scale works precisely. Which form is weaker than another form and is it in fact possible to decide how suppletive a relation truly is? In order for the scale to be precise it is necessary to keep track of the exact amount of shared phonological material in each suppletive word pair, yet this theory has not been proven functional. In order to rule out this issue entirely I opt to focus on the word pair rebenok - deti, which is etymologically unrelated and therefore undeniably completely suppletive. Based on what I accomplished earlier by describing the issues of inflectional versus derivational morphology, the notion of paradigm and the defective grading scale of suppletion I urge to define the notion of suppletion myself. In order to do so I, just like other researchers, tend to start from Mel’čuks (1994) example. The basic components of suppletion are the fact that it refers to a relationship between two unrelated lexemes (logical characterization) that are semantically completely regular (substantive characterization). In addition I urge to rule out the discussion of inflectional versus derivational morphology by introducing the notion of paradigm. The two lexemes that are in a suppletive relation towards each other have to share the same paradigm in order to be able to be called suppletive. Therefore derivatemes cannot be considered suppletive. Finally the grading scale is canceled out by excluding all word pairs that are etymologically related. In order to achieve full clarity on what suppletion is, it is necessary to rule out Mel’čuks (1994) notion of uniqueness. Instead I opt to include solely word pairs that are not etymologically related and thus share absolutely no phonological material. This makes for the following definition: suppletion is the linguistic phenomenon describing the relation between two linguistic signs of the same paradigmatic set that is grammatically maximally regular, yet etymologically unrelated and thus phonologically maximally irregular. After establishing a workable definition of suppletion it is possible to ask ourselves how it is possible for suppletion to arise in language. Therefore a diachronical vision is imperative. In order to discuss the causes of suppletion I refer to Juge’s work On the Rise of Suppletion in Verbal Paradigms (2000). The theories that are considered here are analogy, sound change and incursion. Analogy and sound change are easily ruled out as viable options in the case of rebenok - deti, since they both solely apply to word pairs that are etymologically related and share phonological material. Therefore incursion, denoting the possibility to incorporate word
50 forms belonging to one paradigm into a completely separate paradigm, is the only possible cause for suppletion. In order for a word form to infiltrate another separate paradigm it has to fulfill some premises: the lexeme needs to be lexically basic, of high frequency and a subject of morpho-phonemic irregularity. Only when those three criteria are fulfilled the lexeme can undergo a lexical split, resulting in it to break free from its original paradigm and consequently be incorporated into a new one. In this thesis I show how rebenok was able to fulfill the premises and therefore was able to break free from its lexical connection with rab ‘slave’ and later achieve full autonomy resulting in a second break-up with the form rebjata. In the third chapter I urge to provide an elaborate etymological background of the four lexemes that are of main importance to this paper, being rebenok, rebjata, ditja and deti. This does not only provide absolute clarity on the lack of an etymological relation between the current suppletive word pair rebenok - deti, it also proves the previous relation between rab and rebenok, rebenok - rebjata and ditja - deti. By achieving clarity on this matter it is possible to rule out any insecurities in regard to the etymological relations between these forms. Therefore a technical chapter like this was paramount to support the argumentation of this thesis. Chapter four is devoted to providing a time-line of the lexemes in question based on the work of Čumakina et al. (2004). This theory describes the stages in which a suppletive relation can appear and disappear in language. It is a lexical development that is organized in three simple stages. The first stage is the presence of a completely full regular paradigm. With ‘full’ I refer to the fact that the paradigm does not have any empty cells and does not show any particularities. Suppletion is absent. In the second stage a change occurs. The paradigms break and one lexeme infiltrates the other paradigm. Accordingly, suppletion is present. The third stage lastly describes the complete take-over of the paradigm by the foreign lexeme, ending up in a completely new maximally regular paradigm. By comparing the results of a number of several databases it was possible to draw up a time-line describing the three stages of the lexical development of rebenok - deti. Stage one lasted from approximately the 13th century until the 17th century in which ditja - deti were a completely regular paradigm. It is however in the 17th century that the first forms of robja denoting ‘child’ were attested. Consequently the second stage probably happened approximately in the 18th century, when the frequency of use of rebenok already highly exceeded the use of ditja. This stage is currently still ongoing. Suppletion is present. A third stage, in which rebenok takes over the entire paradigm, is highly unlikely to occur because of the high frequency of the lexeme deti. No quantitative evidence has been found that suggest that the current plural of deti could be taken over, since it still exceeds the use of the form rebenok itself. In chapter five we focus directly on the causes of suppletion. In order to do so we take a closer look at the technicalities of the semantic development of the lexemes in question. Previous research pointed out that for the lexemes to acquire a new lexical entry they have to achieve autonomy. Autonomy is achieved through basicness, frequency and morpho- phonemic irregularity. Since the paradigm of ditja - deti has been broken up by the lexeme of rebenok, it is useful to discuss the evolution for this lexeme primarily. Accordingly it is possible to conclude that its predecessor robja already addressed something similar to the notion of ‘child’ in the 16th century. Sources show, however, that the word rebenok itself denoted ‘boy or girl’ in the 18th century, which is quite a diverging semantic. In addition we
51 found that the lexeme for child always denotes proper and improper kinship terms, meaning that it does not only denotes someone’s child, but also children in general. The polysemy, thus the multitude of meanings, that we find in this lexeme is not all too surprising since it serves as a cause for its high frequency of use. Consequently the other premises were also met by the lexeme and it was fit to achieve autonomy. Its plural rebjata could be argued to have undergone a similar process. It is however also likely that the lexemes rebenok and rebjata since the 16th century developed separately. This would explain their lack of paradigm and the high frequency of both lexemes. Finally the word form ditja is said not to have acquired a separate lexical entry howsoever. It did on the other hand started to diverge in type of use, namely to more literary or poetic contexts. This could have caused the defect in the paradigm of ditja - deti, which was then quite easily broken up by the strong form rebenok. In order to support this suspicion a bit more I opt to zoom in on the specific aspects of meaning. The linguistic field of meaning is namely quite a specific one that is of main importance to our cause. Thus, I focus on the importance of referential meaning, i.e. the word we use refers directly to the person/object in real life, in combination with social, connotative and affective meaning. By analyzing these different type of meanings it is possible to conclude that the word ditja most likely acquired a different social meaning from its previous plural deti. This means that the lexeme achieved a more formal statute and therefore became less frequent in use. The diverging of social meaning is the probable cause of the breakup of their paradigm. More specifically because the lexeme rebenok became more and more a general lexeme that is used widely in spoken and written language and was therefore ideal to take over the place of ditja. In addition to social meaning, connotative meaning is suspected to be of great importance. Connotative meaning refers directly to the meaning of the word that it has acquired thanks to society and the workings of stereotypes. Thus, in this case meaning goes above the referent in the real word and focuses more on what people connect the object/person with. Connotative meaning is therefore extremely difficult to measure, but is not less important. It is highly likely one of the main motors of language change, since it drives people to prefer one lexeme over another. Finally the notion of affective meaning provided some more clarity on the influence of semantics onto the frequency of use of lexemes. By turning to the field of psychology it was possible to define the notion of affective meaning as the emotion that slumbers in the lexeme itself. More specifically the term ‘emotion’ denotes the cooperation of the emotional reaction triad - meaning physiological arousal, motor expression and subjective feeling -, action tendency and cognitive evaluation. In addition to this it is important to point out the temporariness of the emotion that makes that we do not call it an emotional state, but an emotional period. When measuring the affective meaning of certain lexemes it is possible to account for all the concepts that are denoted by emotion itself. A measurement, however, has proven to be problematic. This is mostly due to the fact that affective, just like connotative meaning, is not a fixed state. Meanings can change depending on time, region and mostly depending on the speaker. A measurement would only be possible when the focus lies on a specific group of people of a specific age from a specific region. In that case it would be useful to conduct such a research and make some obvious statements in regard to particular lexemes, yet for this research such a measurement was impossible to conduct. Yet, it is possible to conclude that a measurement would have most likely provided us with comparable
52 data that would show a reason for the preference of rebenok over the word form ditja. This in addition to the conclusion we made earlier in the research regarding the defective nature of the paradigm ditja - deti due to their diverging social meaning proves the superiority of the lexeme rebenok and why it was able to break the paradigm.
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