Slavistische Beiträge ∙ Band 82 (eBook - Digi20-Retro) Alan Timberlake The Nominative Object in Slavic, Baltic and West Finnic Verlag Otto Sagner München ∙ Berlin ∙ Washington D.C. Digitalisiert im Rahmen der Kooperation mit dem DFG-Projekt „Digi20“ der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, München. OCR-Bearbeitung und Erstellung des eBooks durch den Verlag Otto Sagner: http://verlag.kubon-sagner.de © bei Verlag Otto Sagner. Eine Verwertung oder Weitergabe der Texte und Abbildungen, insbesondere durch Vervielfältigung, ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlages unzulässig. «Verlag Otto Sagner» ist ein Imprint der Kubon & Sagner GmbH. Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access 00046936 S l a v i s t i c h e B eiträge BEGRÜNDET VON ALOIS SCHMAUS HERAUSGEGEBEN VON JOHANNES HOLTHUSEN UND JOSEF SCHRENK REDAKTION: PETER REHDER Band 82 Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access 00046936 ALAN TIMBERLAKE THE NOMINATIVE OBJECT IN SLAVIC, BALTIC, AND WEST RNNIC VERLAG OTTO SAGNER • MÜNCHEN 1974 Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access 00046936 Published with a subsidy from the James B. Duke Endowment Fund Center for Russian and East European Studies University of California, Los Angeles ISBN З8769О O94 8 Copyright by Verlag Otto Sagner, München 1974 Abteilung der Firna Kubon und Sagner, München Druck: Alexander Gro3mann T Ysenburgstraße 7 יMünchen 19 8 Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access 00046936 To the memory of my father John Timberlake and the memory of my friend Pat Fogarty Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access 00046936 CONTENTS Page 1. Introduction 1 2. The syntactic environment 5 3. The noun phrase 56 4. The nominative object rule 83 5• The reanalysis of the nominative object in North Russian 104 6• Genetic perspective: Indo-European 123 7• Genetic perspective: West Finnic 155 8. Typological perspective 205 9• Conclusions 219 Notes 230 References 2 50 Sources 263 Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access 1. Introduction The nominative is the case of the subject of the sen- tence, and of any word qualifying the subject, whether attributively, in apposition, or as predicate. 2 William Dwight Whitney, A Sanskrit Grammar (Leipzig 1889), §267. This work is the investigation of a single problem in syntax and grammatical categories.* Because of the nature of the particular problem, the work is necessarily synchronic and diachronic in approach. The problem is exemplified by the following sentence type, a characteristic feature of North Russian dialects: (1) zemlja paxat1 nom. inf. ,it is necessary to plow the land (nom.)1 (2) voda pit1 nom. inf. ,it is necessary to drink water (nom.)1 This sentence type is striking because the semantic object of the infinitive is in the nominative case instead of the accusative. This construction, traditionally referred to as the nominative with infinitive, is one of the basic problems of Russian historical and dialect syntax. Constructions which are at least superficially similar are found in dia- lects of Lithuanian and Latvian, and in Standard Finnish and other West Finnic languages. Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access This construction raises two questions: synchronically, what is the structural status of the construction in North ־Russian, and diachronically, what is the historical relation ship of the constructions in North Russian, Lithuanian and Latvian dialects, and West Finnic. The obvious interpretation of the nominative in (1) and (2) is that it must represent, at least historically, the grammatical subject of a sentence in which the infinitive is the predicate. Under this interpretation, which is univer- sally adopted in the literature, the sentence type would be analogous to constructions like the English:* (3) John is easy to please or (without adjective) to the idiomatic English: (4) that's for me to know, and for you to find out as well as to the German: (5) er ist nicht zu betrügen Under this interpretation, the nominative is motivated as the grammatical subject, and the problem is trivial. In this study, I will examine eight structural proper- ties of the nominative with infinitive construction. These properties show that the nominative in this construction is not the grammatical subject; it has none of the properties of a grammatical subject except case. It is rather a nominative object. I will argue that the nominative object appears only in environments which systematically lack a grammatical subject? in terms of formal rules, the nominative object Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access represents the failure to specify the object as accusative in these environments. The use of the nominative object is motivated in the sense that, in these environments which systematically lack a grammatical subject, there is no con- flict between the use of the nominative for object and the more basic use of the nominative for grammatical subject. The use of the nominative for object in North Russian is then typologically distinct from the English and German con- structions in (3-5). Diachronically, this interpretation of the nominative with infinitive suggests that the construction originated as a borrowing from West Finnic, in which the nominative object is without doubt native; the nominative object was also bor- rowed into dialects of Lithuanian and Latvian which were contiguous with West Finnic. Theoretically, this study focuses on the function as opposed to the form of the nominative object rule — that is, on the relationship between grammatical categories (case, grammatical subject, and animacy), rather than on formal rule schemata. The study is organized in the following way. The eight structural properties of the nominative with infinitive in Old Russian are discussed in §2 and §3; the hypothesis of the nominative object is presented in §4. In §5 the later his- tory of the nominative object in contemporary North Russian dialects is examined. Subsequently, Lithuanian and Latvian Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access are discussed in §6, and Finnish in §7. The typological perspective is explored in §8, and some general conclusions are suggested in §9• Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access 2. The syntactic environment 2.1 The nominative with infinitive is attested in contem- porary North Russian (hereafter NR) dialects in the extreme north, at or above the 60th parallel, and also in some areas to the south, both in a large triangular region (contiguous with the northern region) from Pskov to Smolensk to Vologda, and in a pocket around Rjazan1. The construction is now disappearing rapidly under the influence of the standard 3 language, which does not have the construction. Historically, the nominative with infinitive is attested 4 primarily in legal and official documents composed in the NR area 5 from the twelfth century into the eighteenth century, 6 7 when it disappeared from the literary language. It should be emphasized that these dates refer only to the use of the construction in the literary language, and do not necessarily reflect the structural status of the construction in the spoken language of the dialects to which it was native. After the construction disappeared from the literary language it is reflected in folk texts and recorded by dialectologists. In the next three sections (§§2-4) I will examine only the early period of attestation of the nominative with infin- itive? for the sake of simplicity, I will call this period, approximately until the end of the sixteenth century, the Old Russian (OR) period. I will limit my attention to OR texts composed in the North Russian area. Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access There are two reasons for this chronological limitation* First, with this limitation the construction can be studied in the context of a relatively complete linguistic system, as reflected in texts; citations fremi contemporary dialects are unfortunately always given in secondary sources as iso- lated sentences, with no context and minimal information about the other syntactic features of the dialect. Second, and more importantly, it seems that the con- struction changed radically at the end of the sixteenth century, so that the structural properties of the construction in modern dialects are not all the same as those of the con- struction in Old Russian. The nature of this change has О been poorly understood. Accordingly, I will devote a separate section (§5) to documenting the existence of this change and to specifying what kind of change it is. 2.2 The first detailed study of the nominative as object for Russian is by Bicilli (1933), although the problem was recognized earlier by numerous other scholars. In his article Bicilli formulates a synchronic rule for the occur- enee of the nominative in Old Russian; his rule may be taken as the starting point for our investigation. Bicilli recognizes two cardinal properties of the nom- inative with infinitive. First, the rule seems to be limited stem nouns in the singular־in its application to feminine a and to feminine i-stem nouns in the singular with a modifier. Alan Timberlake - 9783954793280 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 05:59:20AM via free access ־This apparent limitation to feminine nouns may be signifi ־cant; or it may be at least in part accidental, since nomina tive and accusative are not distinguished morphologically for all declension types and genders• In §3.1 I will discuss the true nature and the significance of this limitation, but until then citations will be restricted to feminine singular nouns, for which the rule can be seen to operate unambigu- ously.