Clitic doubling of the proposed direct object in Bulgarian

Slavic Grammar from a Formal Perspective

2002

This paper returns for a second look at the colloquial Bulgarian syntactic construction coined "na-drop" in Vakareliyska (1994a): i.e., omission of the Dative ("Dat") marker na in Dat object clitic doubling constructions ("OCDs"). The focus of the study presented here is on word order and other discourse parameters for OCDs in general, and for na-drop constructions in particular. Part 1 of the paper examines regular OCDs; Parts 2 and 3 are devoted specifically to na-drop, and to indications of a generational change in increased acceptability of na-drop in broadening contexts.

Formal Description of Slavic Languages, 2007

The talk will analyze the emergence of the second position requirement (2P) on clitics in Slavic. Adopting the common idea of a uniform source will also show that 2P and V2 exhibit remarkably similar stages in their diachronic development. Moreover, the talk will demonstrate that there are two types of 2P cliticization: one of them consists in Illocutionary Force/Clause Type checking; the other is a "generalized" 2P effect, unrelated to any feature checking mechanism.

Zbornik Matice srpske za filologiju i lingvistiku, 2023

This paper presents quantitative evidence of object-verb (OV) orders leading to the clause final position of the verb in Kratka vsemirna istorija od Georgija Magaraševića, profesora (1831), written in Slavonic-Serbian, and argues that OV orders arise not (only) as a stylistic feature of the so-called baroque configuration of the sentence, but due to linguistic factors. We show that grammatical factors influencing the rates of OV orders are statistically significant. Finally, we argue that since neither OV nor VO comes with a unique information-structural interpretation (IS), the frequency and 'oddity of' OV orders comes from the fact that what is IS/pragmatically marked are not discourse referents (terms) but predicates, and that the relevant IS notion is predicate focus. While some uses of predicate focus marking are difficult to motivate, our corpus offers evidence that predicate focus can be employed as a means of indicating discourse subordination and narrative discourse development.

Anton Zimmerling. Slavic Clitic Systems and Word Order Typology. Guest talk given at the University of Chicago, Department of General Linguistics, 04.11.2010.

The talk discusses interactions of clitic typology and word order typology, with focus on the Slavic languages. Slavic word order systems with clitics will be compared with typologically similar systems attested in other areas. The general aim is to classify Slavic word order systems with clitics on the basis of syntactic constraints without sticking to hypotheses about language-specific properties of prosodically deficient elements and to provide a viable typological classification, which can be verified by data from other world‘s languages. A salient characteristics of South Slavic, West Slavic and Old East Slavic languages are constraints on the placement of the so called clusterizing clitics. Clusterizing clitics make up strings arranged in a rigid order according to a principle called Clitic Template, the permutations are excluded as ungrammatical. Cf. Old Russian Čto=ti=s’a=jesm’=byl otstupil bratu svoemu 'That you indeed had given up these in favour of your brother‘. In Slavic languages, only clauselevel clitics have clusterizing properties. Slavic clusterizing clause-level clitics are represented by the following categories of elements: 1) short forms of argument and reflexive pronouns 2) auxiliaries 3) particles. Strings of clusterizing clitics have a fixed position in Slavic main and subordinate clauses and tend to take clausal-second position (2P). There is an important research line basing on the hypothesis that prosodically deficient elements, proclitics and enclitics, are also syntactically deficient and constitute a natural class definable in UG (Zwicky 1977). Recent studies of the syntax-prosody interface show a gradual increase of the emphasis made on the prosodic component at the expense of syntax. However, some constraints on the placement of clitics directly or indirectly entail constraints on the placement on non-clitic sentence categories. If constraints of the latter type are straightforwardly explained as an outcome of the allegedly purely prosodic or merely morphological ordering of clitics, there is a risk to overlook syntactic mechanisms of linearization. I argue that most Slavic languages lack grammaticalized constraints on the placement of (non-clitic) verbal forms in sentences with the basic word order, but such constraints tend to arise in sentences with derived word order, producing non-initial sequences [Verb - Clitic] and [Clitic – Verb] in main clause declaratives.

Lingua

This paper aims to establish the syntactic status of the particle ta that occurs in Early Modern Bulgarian (EMB) texts from the 17th century. We point out that, in EMB mono-clausal structures, ta marks the border between topic and comment (in Lambrecht's, 1994 terms). Descriptively, we use the term intra-clausal for ta in mono-clausal constructions, and inter-clausal when ta is a clause coordinator or subordinator.

2005

Сибирский филологический журнал. , 2018

The paper concentrates on the word order in Evenki, in particular, in the verb phrase: verb (V) and direct object (O). The original order of V and O in Evenki (an Altaic language) is OV. This word order was rather strict in the beginning of the XX-th century. Since then, the word order has continually been getting more and more variable. Based on spontaneous oral stories recorded in the beginning of the XXI-th century, we compare contexts with OV and with VO and try to formulate conditions, under which each of the orders is preferred. According to the authors of grammars and monographs on Evenki and Evenki syntax, the VO order emerges in case of focus or emphasis on V or on O. Alternatively, V or O can be focalized by focus particles =dV̅, =kA, etc. Our results partially support those claims. When V is focused, it is often placed close to the beginning of the sentence, and its arguments, including O, are post-verbal. When O is contrastively focalized, it can follow V. If V or O are focalized, focalizing particles can be added to them. There are, however, other cases of VO that can be found in a story (narrative). When the narrator just lists sequential events, the OV order is used. The VO order is used when the sequence of event is broken because of a turning point in the development of the plot, or because the narrator retreats from the main line of the story, or in concluding sentences that do not belong to the narrative itself. These cases do not fall under the focusing O/V explanation mentioned above. Also, if the whole predicate (the whole V+O constituent) is emphasized, the VO order is preferred. We list examples supporting the rules mentioned. These rules are consistent with a discourse-oriented approach rather than with a derivational approach, in which OV would be regarded as basic, whereas each case of VO would be derivable from OV based on grammatical or information structure rules. So we conclude that a shift to two word orders (OV (unmarked) and VO (marked)) is emerging in the spoken language. We mention some other shifts to VO order in the narrative in the speech of young narrators.

Anton Zimmerling. Towards the Definition of the Bulgarian Word Order System // Balcania et Slavia, Vol. 1, № 2 (2021), 239 - 256., 2021

The world's languages with clitic clusters pattern with four major types of the word order systems, depending on the presence or absence of the 2P condition and the parameter of clitic-verb adjacency. Bulgarian has a double-focus system of clitic placement (2P condition and clitic-verb adjacency), which has typological parallels outside Europe but lacks direct counterparts in modern European languages. Neither the analogy with standard 2P languages without clitic-verb adjacency nor the analogy with the Romance systems with vP-internal clitics captures the profile of the Bulgarian clitic syntax. Historically, the rise of the clitic-verb adjacency is an innovation of Bulgarian, but its exact time and triggers are unclear. The language of the Wallachian letters (ca. 1386-1509) has a marked tendency towards the clitic-verb adjacency and is typologically similar to Modern Bulgarian but still has residual #XP-CL-[Y]-V orders. This idiom spoken by the L2 speakers of Middle Bulgarian cannot be viewed as a source of the Modern Bulgarian but hints that the clitic-verb adjacency parameter could develop in the history of Bulgarian because of the contact influence on the part of some Non-Slavic clitic systems.

Lingua, 2010

The paper offers an analysis of Bulgarian relative clauses introduced by the invariant complementizer deto 'that', whose distribution also extends to factive contexts. Using reconstruction as primary evidence for movement, I review the basic facts for its presence (amount readings, idiom interpretation, binding and scope) and absence (Principle C) and argue that both a raising and a matching analysis must be available for the derivation of deto-relatives. I also discuss the distribution and structural properties of resumptive clitics which are shown to block reconstruction in all types of contexts and hence to be compatible with a matching derivation only. Given the structural ambiguity in the derivation of Bulgarian complementizer relatives and in search of a unified treatment of their potentially ambivalent behavior, the paper applies analysis of relative clauses, which postulates two identical copies of the relativized Head (internal and external) and exploits different movement options to account for the raising and the matching derivations. It is then argued that such a proposal, which also exploits distinct CP positions, can successfully accommodate all of the observed reconstruction effects (or lack thereof), including the option of resumption. The paper also offers a discussion of factive clauses introduced by the same complementizer and proposes that they are best treated as hidden relatives embedded under a more complex structure involving a PP projection and a silent D head. #

Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2024

Loss of illocution, the presence of a clause-initial connective and word order are usually taken to be indicators of structural asymmetries in clause combining. In this exploratory study, we aim to operationalize the relation between word order and clause type, using Russian, Polish, and Slovene as representatives of the three major Slavic branches. On the assumption that clause-initial function words may indicate subordination, we analyze the distribution of the presumably unequivocal complementizers że (Pol.), čto (Ru.) and da (Slv.), and compare them with Pol. niech, Ru. pust’ and Slv. naj. These elements function as illocutionary force indicating devices for directive speech acts, but at the same time show complementizer-like properties when introducing a clause that follows a clause containing a complement-taking predicate. Using corpus data from two different diachronic stages we try to establish diachronic and cross-linguistic patterns that provide information on possible links between word order and the ‘complementizerhood’ of a clause-initial element. Our findings reveal that the concepts of word order and connective, i.e. the very concepts, that are often used for diagnosing subordination, seem to be ill-defined and need to be reconsidered on the basis of thorough empirical research.

2013

The paper presents an HPSG account of the unexpressed object alternation (UOA) in its cross-linguistic English – Bulgarian aspect. Valence alternations, also known as ‘diathesis alternations’, or ‘multiple complement realizations’, are defined by B. Levin as ‘alternations

Locative Inversion and Verb Movement in Russian. // BASEES 2007 Conference. Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, UK. 31 March – 2 April, 2007

This paper discusses formal and functional characteristics of the so called Locative Inversion (LI) in Russian. This phenomenon is typical of free word order languages, which don't have the Verb-Second constraint but nevertheless frequently make use of linear orders where verbal forms take second position. In Russian, 'V2-like orders' are triggered by movement of locative adverbial into sentence-initial position (labeled SpecCP or TopicP in different formalisms). The neutral word order in Russian is Subject -Verb -Loc, cf. Красивая девушка (S) стоит (V) у окна (L) lit. "An attractive girl (S) stands (V) by the window (Loc)", but if the sentence begins with a locative adverbial, the prescribed order will be Loc -Verb -Subject: У окна (L) стоит (V) красивая девушка (S), lit. "By the window (L) stands/is standing (V) an attractive girl (S)". With intransitive verbs, word order Loc-Subject-Verb is bad -*У окна красивая девушка стоит/курит, lit. "By the window an attractive girl is standing/smoking", so that LI in this case is obligatory. LI has been discussed in a number of papers by Pesetsky, Babyonyshev etc, but the comprehensive description of this phenomenon in Russian is missing. We will argue that with transitive predicates, LI is optional -У окна красивая девушка (S) курит (V)

2019

Presentative constructions in Serbian allow two patterns [presentative particle NPGEN] and [presentative particle CLi NPiNOM]. This paper proposes derivations of these patterns. The premise is that the choice between the two patterns is determined by the the type of inert v0. Namely, the first pattern is derived if inert v0 can assign partitive case, i.e. v0 [PART], while the latter pattern is derived if v0 cannot assign partitive case. A special focus is put on the [CLi+NPi] pattern since it represents a case of the co-occurrence of a pronominal clitic and a co-indexed NP, which is not characteristic of Serbian. It is argued that the relationship between the NP and the co-indexed clitic is that of agreement. The X0 and the NP establish a relationship in which X0 assigns nominative case to the NP and the NP values X0’s [uφ:]. This agreement is taken to be the same kind of agreement that holds between an NPNOM and the X0 which is in charge of agreement with participles in Serbian. Th...