251 4 81MB
English Pages 513 [516] Year 1991
Languages in Contact and Contrast
Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 54
Editor Werner Winter
Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York
Languages in Contact and Contrast Essays in Contact Linguistics Edited by
Vladimir Ivir Damir Kalogjera
Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York
1991
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Languages in contact and contrast: essays in contact linguistics / ed. by Vladimir Ivir ; Damir Kalogjera. — Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1991 (Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 54) ISBN 3-11-012574-9 NE: Ivir, Vladimir [Hrsg.]; Trends in linguistics / Studies and monographs
Deutsche Bibliothek Cataloging in Publication Data Languages in contact and constrast: essays in contact linguistics / edited by Vladimir Ivir, Damir Kalogjera. p. cm. — (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 54) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-89925-714-3 (acid-free paper) 1. Languages in contact. 2. Contrastive linguistics. I. Ivir, Vladimir. II. Kalogjera, Damir. III. Series. P130.5.L35 1991 90-27042 410-dc20 CIP
© Copyright 1991 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-1000 Berlin 30 All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Typesetting: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin — Printing: Gerike GmbH, Berlin — Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin Printed in Germany
To honour Professor Rudolf Filipovic
Preface
The present volume is a collection of invited papers in contact linguistics intended as a fairly representative cross-section of the field. Indeed, the contributions included here, over forty in number, reflect the diversity of interests and recent preoccupations of their authors and demonstrate the vitality and lively nature of this steadily growing discipline. Contact linguistics has come to be understood more broadly than it used to be, and it now comprises not only the study of language contact in the narrow sense but also of contrastive relationships between languages; hence the title of this volume. While the study of languages in contact traditionally focused on the effects of linguistic borrowing and mutual influence of the linguistic systems involved, more recently the emphasis has shifted to the bilingual speakers, who are the locus of language contact and for whom contrastive relationships between their native language and the foreign language with which they find themselves in contact are crucial. It is these relationships that to an important extent determine the outcome of the process of borrowing: first of all, they determine whether a particular item will be borrowed at all, in what phonological or graphological shape, with what meaning; next, what will be its fate in the borrowing language, as it struggles for a place in the receiving system and continues to live in constant interaction with other items already in that system; finally, what will be its impact on the part of the receiving system into which it is eventually accommodated. Apart from such systemic concerns, contact linguistics in its new orientation is also interested in the behaviour of the contactee — who may be a foreign-language learner, translator, bilingual dictionary-maker, contrastive or typological linguist, or just an ordinary speaker who has been exposed to a foreign language and now wishes to make use of some of its resources in his or her native language. For any contactee, again, contrastive relationships will be crucially important, regardless of whether he or she is aware of them or not. Both strands of contact linguistics — the study of borrowing and of contrasting — are well represented in the present volume and exemplified in analytical papers presenting material from a number of Indo-European languages and covering different levels and aspects of linguistic description, as well as a wide range of language-contact and contrast phenomena. Both synchronic and diachronic analyses are offered of various phonological,
viii
Preface
morphological, syntactic, semantic, lexical, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and stylistic problems of languages in contact. Problems of bilinguism and foreign-language acquisition are dealt with, as are more general problems of descriptive models for contrastive analysis and contact linguistics. Theoretically oriented papers form an important group in the volume and examine the rationale of contact and contrastive linguistics, their relationship, their place among the linguistic disciplines, possible models of description, methodologies, terminological distinctions, etc. Several papers take a broader view and consider the social and cultural context in which language contact takes place. The authors and the editors take great pleasure in dedicating this volume to Professor Rudolf Filipovic, a scholar who has acted with a pioneering force to make the study of languages in contact and contrast a unified undertaking. Vladimir Ivir Damir Kalogjera
Contents The European absolute superlative, an orphan of grammar, of the lexicon, and of history Robert Auster lit z
1
West European loanwords in Modern Latvian Juris Baldunciks
15
A hypothesis: the notion of "multibehavior" Andrei Bant as
25
Fact or not fact — that is the question in the semantic interpretation of gerundive nominals Rolf Berndt
41
Odmah — a shifter of Serbo-Croatian in intralingual and contrastive perspective Henrik Birnbaum
61
Language contact: some reactions of a contactee Wayles Brown Contrastive analysis of terminology and the terminology of contrastive analysis Ranko Bugarski
69
73
South Slavic terms for conjurors and sorcerers Joseph L. Conrad
83
Some notes on a Bulgarian model of expanded contrastive analysis Andrei Danchev
87
A. P. Chekhov's short story Sutocka and two Serbo-Croat translations: The problem of translation versus interpretation 103 Car in Davidsson Theoretical contrastive linguistics and typological characterization Läszlo Dezsö
115
Interradical interfixes: contact and contrast Wolfgang Ulrich Dressler — Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi
133
Some remarks on Middle-English influence in Icelandic Eyvindur Eiriksson
147
X
Contents
An outline of a cognitively-based model of phonology Stig Eliasson
155
Cartoons about language: a case study of the visual representation of sociolinguistic attitudes 179 Joshua A. Fishman Americanisms, Briticisms, Canadianisms, New Zealandisms, and Anglicisms in contemporary German Hans Galinsky
195
Language contact in the prehistory of English Eric P. Hamp
221
Collocations in monolingual and bilingual English dictionaries Franz Josef Hausmann
225
Contrastive methods in contact linguistics Vladimir Ivir
237
The "monitor model" and the role of the first language Carl James
247
On the form and meaning of the Serbo-Croatian modal morati D amir Kalogjera
261
Reasons and opportunities for communication in the foreignlanguage and second-language classroom William R. Lee
271
Between language contact and language development Dora Macek
281
The lexicon of the Split dialect Thomas F. Magner
289
Zu Phrasemvarianten in der kroatischen Sprache Josip Matesic
301
Dictionary making: the ideal versus reality Samuel C. Monson
311
Vokalsysteme in Kontakt. Was verdankt der vegliotische Vokalismus der slawo-romanischen Symbiose? 317 Zarko Muljacic The designation of spherical objects in five European languages: an essay in contrastive semantics Dietrich Nehls
329
Contents
xi
A case of multilingualism in Eastern Belgium Peter H. Neide
335
Language contact and foreign language acquisition William Nemser
345
On the struggle of underlying vowels for a voice in surface phonetic structure 365 Midhat Ridjanovic English in Finnish: television subtitles Kan Sajavaara
381
Politeness strategies and contrastive foreign language teaching Tatiana Slama-Cazacu
391
On revived words in the OED Supplement Knud Sorensen
407
Common features in the morphological adaptation of English loanwords in migrant Serbo-Croatian Hans-Peter Stoffel
417
Linguistic models and information theory Owen Thomas
431
Language contact and code-switching in the bilingual personality Renzo Titone
439
Contrastive reflexes in contact linguistics Olga Miseska Tomic
451
Transfer grammar: from machine translation to pedagogical tool Rudolph C. Troike
469
Encouraging the development of bilingual proficiency for Englishspeaking Americans 477 G. Richard Tucker A contemporary view on the compromise system of Serbo-Croatian learners of English 483 Mirjana Vilke Croatian and Serbian church communities in Milwaukee Charles A. Ward
493
Subject index
499
The European absolute superlative, an orphan of grammar, of the lexicon, and of history Robert Austerlitz
This volume is dedicated to Rudolf Filipovic, who has had more than an ephemeral vision of Europe as a self-contained linguistic area. Europe is a veritable laboratory of fermenting, interacting linguistic motion, in time as well as in space. The present paper is an attempt to draw attention to a neglected pan-European subject, that of how the absolute superlative (English very, French tres, German sehr), a rootless, floating grammatical category, attaches itself or fails to attach itself to better integrated categories, in grammar and in the lexicon. Thus, Italian molto 'very', 'much' has a home, whereas French tres stands alone; molto has grammar (molt-e, molt-i) and polysemy ('very [adv.]', 'much/many [adj.]'), whereas tres [ίτε] at best shares some phonetic similarity with one or two lexical items which reside at a considerable distance from it (tressaillir 'thrill, wince, start', tresor [tre-] 'treasure') and with one functionally related grammatical element (trop [tro] 'too, in excess'). It is then the difference between the profiles — grammatical and semantic — of tres and molto which will occupy us. The discussion is synchronic and geographical, with the inevitable diachronic questions which a synchronic-geographical approach conceals within itself. The grammatical category of the absolute superlative is in one way or another a disiectum membrum both of the grammar and of the lexicon of all European languages: it seldom occupies a clearcut position in a morphological paradigm or in a lexical-semantic subsystem. Rather, the forms which mean 'very' in modern Europe (1) are symbiotic with one or another more firmly established lexical-grammatical entity, as in the case of Ital. molto — I will call this a case of transparency, or (2) lead completely independent lives, as in the case of Fr. tres, which is monosememic and grammatically unanalyzable — I will call this a case of opacity, or (3) occupy an intermediate position, as in English, where very may be reminiscent of verily, veritable, veracity, verisimilitude to the etymologically alert layman, but is taken for granted by (and therefore opaque to) the average innocent, na'ive speaker.
2
Robert Auster H t z
We know that the classical languages had individual words which were used to signal this category — Lat. valde, summe, multum, Greek mala, pänu, sphodra. Yet, analytic constructions of this kind must have occupied a secondary position because the category of the absolute superlative (very A) seems not to have been kept hermetically sealed off from the relative superlative (A-esi, the most A).1 Thus, nobilissimus meant both 'the most celebrated' and 'very celebrated' — cf. modern Italian usage — and valde nobilis, valde bene presumably served to supply stylistic nuances. Perhaps it is known when our modern, analytic superlative crept into Europe and where the fashion originated. It seems fairly obvious that its rise is connected with the process of deparadigmatization which flooded Europe from the early Middle Ages on — Italian del popolo, al popolo vs. Latin populi, populo. The very meaning of the absolute superlative as a grammatical (modal) and notional category eventually attracted the attention of philosophers; see the article superlatif in the Encyclopedic (1770, vol. 33: 149 — 153), which seems to have sent its authors (one of whom was Nicolas Beauzee, 1717 — 1789, who is enshrined in the history of linguistics as well) into a philosophical frenzy. Furthermore, the mechanisms (forms, words, and multiples of these) which serve to express this category are in constant competition with each other, viz. English very, a most, truly, greatly, awfully, terribly, really. These competitors are mostly propelled by forces emanating from style (novelty, power, elegance, exaggeration); in short, they are creative. Two examples from the intensive life of very deserve to be mentioned. One is that of vachement (literally) 'in a cow-like manner' = 'very'. It is attested since 1930 and still in vogue. At least one parallel form has surfaced elsewhere; see below, language [15]. The other is from present-day metropolitan New York, where a playful and irreverent mock-Spanish form, [muwcow], is in vogue among creative speakers: mucho tired 'very tired'. This borrowing is an instance of (probably intentional) mistaken identity: in Spanish, 'very' is not mucho but muy; Spanish mucho means and, incidentally, formally resembles, English much 'much'. The resulting comedy — to those who can appreciate it — therefore renders New City [muwcow] all the more creative. This brings up two related questions. One concerns the rate of change at which various mechanisms which serve to form the superlative replace each other. The other is that of standardization and its freezing effects on language and on creative processes. Both questions are huge, would lead us too far afield, and are only mentioned to stimulate thinking. The
The European absolute superlative
3
life of these superlatives vaguely resembles that of deictics: they replace each other, yet they remain the same; they lose their literal meaning and tend to be replaced by words with more piercing content — hence the frequent connotations of extremes, exaggeration, violence, strength, hardness, as we shall see. In order to keep the dimensions of this presentation within reasonable limits, the following aspects of the question will be omitted or treated only in passing: (i) Expressive superlatives of the horribly, terribly, German furchtbar, Italian straordinariamente type. These are all transparent and suggest questions in stylistics. Furthermore, they are simply too long by nature to serve as normal superlatives, (ii) Most superlatives formed by means of prefixation, except in Celtic, (iii) Etymologies, e. g., German sehr < Middle High German sere 'painful, violent', cf. Engl. sore. The temptation is, of course, to include them throughout and to contrast a historical etymon with a living semantic profile. Partly for reasons of space and partly for reasons of discipline etymologies will be eschewed and introduced only when they are relevant to the synchronic discussion or when they are exceptionally enlightening. However, since the tabu on mixing synchrony with diachrony may survive here and there, it ought to be said it will be assumed that the na'ive speaker makes unprofessional diachronic judgments, that he etymologizes by synchronically associating one form with another, for better or for worse. The disequilibrium in coverage — just how many and which forms are introduced into the discussion — is a byproduct of available space and of my own limitations. Judgments about transparency and opacity are also my own and subject to revision. Certain boundaries, such as that between very and quite, Italian molto and assai, French ires content vs. bien content will be observed but trespassed on occasion, if necessary. The words corresponding to very in various European languages will now be reviewed and evaluated for transparency and for other indices. Judgments on selection (dialects, number of competing forms) and on exhaustiveness are my own. The reader is alerted to the use of the symbol //. A statement such as "French fort 'very', /'strong'" means only that the adverb fort 'very' is lexically-semantically associated with the (in this case homophonous) adjective fort 'strong', that this is a case of transparency. The statement is not an etymological one. Therefore, read the symbol // as 'is associated by the na'ive native'. In addition to transparent and opaque four other terms will be used. They indicate semantic appurtenance and are: quantitas, as in Italian
4
Robert Austerlitz
molto; magnitude, as in Czech velmi; potestas, as in French fort; and totalitas, as in Basque gustiz 'very', //guztia 'all'. The term "competitor" will be used to indicate words which vie with one or another variety of very in function. "Synonym" would be inexact in this context and raises the question of the validity of synonymity. The languages discussed are numbered from [01] to [40].2 The order of presentation is a compromise between the geographical and the genetic one. It will describe three large, curved strokes: (1) from the Baltic through the three Slavic areas (East, West, South), to the Danubian-Carpathian area, (2) from the Eastern Mediterranean westward as far as the Atlantic and back to the Western Alps, (3) from the British Isles, through Germanic territory as far as Fenno-Scandia and South to the Baltic again.
1. From the Western Baltic to the Danube and the Carpathians Baltic. Lithuanian [01] puikai is transparent, /'splendid, abundance, pride' and labai seems to be opaque, as far as can be judged. Similarly, Latvian [02] visai is transparent, /'whole, all' (totalitas) but Joti (juoti, liotai) is opaque. East Slavic. Ukrainian [03] duze is transparent, //duz- 'strong, powerful' (potestas). Belorussian [04] also has duza, with the same profile as its Ukrainian cognate, vel'mi (transparent, magnitude — see West Slavic below [06, 08, 09]), and nadta, presumably transparent ('over' plus a deictic element). Both Russian [05] forms, ocen and zelo can be considered opaque. (Etymologically, the two are connected with 'eye' and potestas or 'violence'.) West Slavic. It is difficult to judge whether Upper Serbian [06] jara is associated v/ithjery 'bitter, sharp' in the native mind; the two are related. Two competing forms are transparent: wjele /'much' quantitas and wulcy /'large' (magnitude). Polish [7] bardzo (-rdz- < -rz-) 'very' can hardly be associated with its etymon (*'swift') and is therefore opaque, unless bardziej '(the) more, rather' is taken to form a paradigm with it. Slovak [08] vel'mi is transparent, /'large, big' (magnitude).3 Czech [09] velmi has the same profile as its Slovak cognate. Two competitors, velice and moc are transparent, respectively magnitude and potestas.
The European absolute superlative
5
South Slavic. Slovene [10] has a multitude of forms: zelo (see Russian [05], with the same profile), celo (transparent), /'entire' (totalitas), and has (opaque, archaic, and marginal), to mention only three. Croatian and Serbian (Serbo-Croatian) [11] has vr/o, which is opaque, veoma, which is transparent (magnitude, see West Slavic and Byelorussian), puno (transparent, totalitas) and two other forms which are especially interesting. One is jako, which adumbrates the deictic system but will be considered opaque here. The other is eminently transparent; mnogo 'very' = 'much'. Macedonian [12] mnogu and Bulgarian mnogo [13] have, like [11], the classical polysemy 'very' = 'much', i. e., quantitas. Rumanian [14]foarie is difficult to evaluate. It is reminiscent offorfä 'force, energy' and a cognate verb, both of which are learned words based on Italo-French. Thus, in the popular language, foarte 'very' is opaque and in the language of the educated it is transparent. By the side of foarte, Rumanian has the truly transparent tare 'very' = 'strong' (potestas), with lightly rustic overtones. Compare this last form with jako [11] and igen [15]. Hungarian [15] has two competing forms, nagyon and igen. The first of these is transparent (//nagy 'large' [magnitude]), but the vocalism of its suffix is irregular. This is the colloquial, informal, unmarked variant. Igen is more bookish (but can also be folsky, dialectally). It is also transparent, but stretches, semantically (and grammatically), into two unrelated directions: //igen 'in excess, too' and //igen 'yes'. On the purely formal plane, igen is reminiscent of the deictic sub-paradigm ugy 'so, that way': ugyan 'though, (how)ever':: igy 'thus, this way': *igyen (obsolete; fifteenth century:) 'thus, so'. Now, if igen can be assigned to the deictic system (note the lacuna therein), it is reminiscent of the deictic shadows cast by jako [11] and tare [14]. Geographically, igen (as a crypto-deictic) would point to the South and to the East, while nagyon (magnitude) would point to the North (cf. [08, 09, 06]). Note also the recent popular creation ällati 'beastly, bestial(ly), animalesque', used for 'very, which is reminiscent of French vachement mentioned above. This completes one curved movement on the map, from the Baltic through East, West, and South Slavic to the Danubian-Pannonian area. We may do well to remember that two indices were expecially well represented: magnitudo (Belorussian, Czech, Slovak, Serbian, Hungarian) and quantitas in the South.
6
Robert Auster Hi z
2. From the Levant to the Atlantic and the Western Alps Quantitas continues to be prominent in the other parts of the South. Albanian [16] shume 'very', //shume 'much, sum'; (Modern) Greek [17] polu 'very' = "much". This feature continues into (Osman-)Turkish [18] with fok, which has the same profile as Greek polu. Maltese [19], with its vestigial diglossia, presents a few problems in the interpretation of the available information, but all the tokens for 'very' seem to be transparent: A colloquial form, hafna, hafni, /'with both hands' (Arabic hafna 'a handful, measuring with both hands'). One dialect has haqq 'truly, verily; very' (with a semantic overlap also found in the British Isles). Finally, wisq 'much' can also serve as 'very' (quantitas, although the Arabic etymon, wisl 'width, extent', would point to magnitudo). Italian [20] molto is the classical case of transparency through quantitas: molto 'much' = 'very'. Its lonely competitor, assai, is also polysemous, but with a different spectrum (/'enough'), which is difficult to tease out synchronically (cf. French assez and the Latin etymon). Sardinian [21] assäs belongs to this last-mentioned group; bene seems obvious (if it has the same model as French bieri) and meta must remain unresolved for the moment. Catalonian [22] molt has the same classical spectrum as Italian, whereas Castilian (Spanish) [23] muy is subtly opaque: muy 'very' and mucho(s) 'much, many' are in complementary distribution (proclitic adverb vs. adjective-and-nominal) and probably sensed to be connected somehow, but the purely formal side of the parallelism is irregular. Portuguese and Gallego (Galego, Galician) [24] display the classical transparency/quantitas profile: polysemy in Portuguese muito 'very = much' and formal bifurcation in Galician moito 'much' vs. moi 'very'. The plethora of forms in Basque [25] is almost intractable, in part simply because of lexicography (the language is not standardized) and in part because of the elusive semantics of the Basque root. The following five forms (uncritically gleaned from the four main dialect areas) have been isolated from the copious sources with the kind cooperation of a thoroughly informed native informant: 4 (1) Oso, also /'whole, entire' (totalitas); (2) bizi-ki, ffbizi 'life'; (3) guztiz, //guztia 'all' (totalitas); (4) agitz 'maximal, in the highest measure', cf. aunitz 'much' (quantitas); (5) arrats and arrunt, perhaps meaning also 'completely' (?totalitas), otherwise difficult to evaluate. Most of these forms, then, are transparent; the
The European absolute superlative
7
index 'life' (2) seems to be unique. In addition to these, (6) -kote serves as a suffix or enclitic for 'very' (send-kote 'very strong', maiz-kote 'very often'), (7) partial reduplication for purposes of intensification seems to be fairly productive (zuri-zuria 'very white', bene-benetan 'very genuinely') and (8) interrupted complete reduplication is also at work: arin-bai-arin 'very soon', bero-bai-bero 'very warmly'. Type (7) is mentioned because it is also known at two other ends of Europe (Turkish, Finnish). French and Alpine Romance. French [26] tres is completely opaque and only the etymologist will connect it with Latin trans. There are two competitors, both transparent: the literary and ornate fort (potestas, cf. [14]) and the mild bien (cf. [21]), which may not even belong here. Occitan (Modern Provencal) [27], like French, also has for> d "3 cd i·"
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singular and plural); (f) ways of forming the singular (in the case of the pluralia tantum and nouns "countable by special means"); (g) the opposition concrete — abstract (less relevant in English grammar, except for substitutes); (h) the opposition proper name — common noun (again less relevant, given the grammatical behavior of some geographical and proper names); (i) gender (including the common gender) and its consequences (possible substitutes), its partial correlative; (j) the type of genitive employed, including also the "implicit/unmarked" genitive; (k) relations with possessive, numerical, and demonstrative determiners, specific modifiers (with due attention to restrictions of collocability), obligatory prepositions (1) preceding or (m) following certain nouns, etc. (cf. Table 1). 1.2. On the basis of the tables which included all these elements, we further refined an existing classification of nouns — that proposed by Professor L. Levi^chi of Bucharest University (Levi^chi 1970, 1971). We identified a number of subpatterns and variants of the eight classes of nouns established there (Banta§ 1978: 55 — 130). A complete inventory of the patterns, subpatterns, and sub-subpatterns of behavior of nouns led us to establish 45 (sub)categories of nouns in contemporary English, differing from each other in at least one of the ten main elements considered (Bantas forthcoming; cf. Table 2, abbreviated). 1.3. On the other hand, even a cursory glance at a page of a "grammaticized" dictionary of English (such as Hornby et al. 1975; Procter 1978; or even English — Romanian dictionaries such as Dictionar Englez — Roman pentru uz $colar ['English —Romanian dictionary for schools'] by Irina Panovf, Editura $tiintificä sj Enciclopedicä, 1975) will impress upon us the idea that English verbs, adjectives, adverbs and, with a vengeance, nouns involve numerous differences of grammatical behavior between their meanings. 1.3.1 To put it differently, the relation between word and context materializes in English (more frequently than in other languages) in the following bipolarity: on the one hand, the choice of the meaning of a polysemous word in a certain context is guided not only by situational, circumstantial elements, etc., but especially by the respective grammatical micro-context — determiners, modifiers, objects, substitutes, prepositions, etc.; on the other hand, conversely, the utilization of a certain meaning of a polysemous word often entails the need to arrange an adequate micro-context for it (the above-mentioned elements, or the
A hypothesis: the notion of "multibehavior"
29
agreement with the verb, or in the case of adjectives, the restrictions or differences in the use of degrees of comparison, of a certain type of gradation, the exclusively attributive or predicative use, etc.). 1.3.2. As shown in an earlier paper (Bantas 1971), even an apparently simple word such as salt, whose polysemy is not highly developed, has a grammatical regimen differing at least partly for each of its six meanings. In other words, each meaning places it into another category or subcaTable 2. Code of semantic and grammatical features differentiating the 45 categories of nouns in point of grammatical regimen 1. 2. 3. 4.
Form Meaning Agreement Semantic features
5. Countable (Pluralization) 6. Pluralization/ Singularization 7. Determiners
8. Genitive 9. Gender 10. Substitutes
singular = sg; plural = pi singular = sg; plural = pi singular = sg; plural = pi; sg/pl according to determiners Concrete = Cone; Abstract = Abs; Animate = An; Human = H; Inanimate = In Countable = [ c ] ; Uncountable = [ u | ; By special means [csj Normal = Norm; Special = spec All = all; Numerical = num; Definite Article = Def/D; Indefinite article = Indef/I; Zero = 0; Possessives = Poss; situation article = sit Article Synthetic = S; Analytic = A; Implicit = Impl Masculine = m; Feminine = f; Neuter = n; Common = com he, she, it, they
Abbreviations and signs ! X M
0 A Abs ace. An.
[c~| com cone
[es]
= = = = = — = = = = = =
especially rare(ly) only zero (article) Analytic abstract according to animate countable common concrete countable by special means
(continued overleaf)
D/Def. del. exc. f H l/Indef Impl In m n Norm
= definite (article) = determiner(s) = except = feminine = human = indefinite (article) = implicit (genitive) = inanimate = masculine = neuter = Normal
numerical occasionally plural possessive synthetic singular the situation (definite) article | u | = uncountable
num occ. Pi Poss S sg sit
= = = = = = =
30
Andrei Bantas Table 2. (continued) Semantic and grammatical features of nouns Class-Pattern (Levitghi-Bantas.)
1
2
3
4
1
11 HUMANS
sg
sg
sg
H
2
I1A PROFESSIONS: teacher; nurse
sg
sg
sg
H
3
I1B RELATIVES
sg
sg
sg
H
12 ANIMALS (sex unspecified)
sg
sg
sg
An -H
I2A ANIMALS (sex specified)
sg
sg
sg
An -H
13 OBJECTS (emotional speech)
sg
sg sg Cone (except semantically collective)
I3A CRAFT, CARS, PLANES, etc.
sg
sg
sg
Cone
I3B sg PARTS OF THE BODY, CLOTHES, PERSONAL BELONGINGS
sg
sg
Cone
14 TWO-FOLD NOUNS (concrete — abstract)
sg
sg
sg
Cone
10
I4A PRECIOUS STONES
sg
sg
sg
Cone Abs
11
15 (cf. V2) COUNTABLE ABSTRACTIONS (RESULTS OF WORK)
sg
sg
sg
Abs
12
16 SEASONS, MONTHS, DAYS (capitalized)
sg
sg
sg
Cone Abs
No. Regimen
A hypothesis: the notion of "multibehavior"
5
6
7
8
9
10
Norm
sg all pl-0
S, XA Impl
com
he, she
Norm
Indef ! Predicatives, Appositions
S, XA IMpl
com
he, she
Norm
Poss
S, Ά
mf (cousin com)
Ξ
Norm
sg all p!0
! A, S
n
it
Θ
Norm
sg all
! S, A
com
he, she
m m m
(personified)
m m m
Norm (exe. aircraft)
sg all p!0
A
n
it
Norm
sg all p!0
A
f
she
Norm
! Poss
A
n
it
A
n
it
Norm 0 as materials
A
n
it
Norm
sg D Indef sg pl also 0
A
n
it
Norm
!0
Impl, S, A
n
it
Norm !0 meals also V, dishes also IV
mi m
[u]
m
etc. Note: It will easily be noticed that no two categories out of 45 are entirely alike.
31
32
Andrei Bantaf
tegory of nouns, another one of the 45 patterns and subpatterns mentioned before (although the maximum guidance obtained even from the most "grammaticized" dictionary — Longman — is usually confined to "uncountable" and "countable"). This can be illustrated even more convincingly by the distribution into five different classes of behavior of some twenty meanings of the word board. 1.3.3. Table 3 gives the distribution of eight meanings of the noun board into class I (individual nouns), one meaning into class II (pluralia iantum), four meanings into class IV (nouns of material — in two subclasses of the same pattern), three meanings into class V (abstractions and other abstract nouns) and four meanings into class IV (collective nouns) — all of them in the Levi^chi classification. 1.3.4. On the other hand it is worth noting that the sixth class — that of collective nouns — taken in itself displays a diversified behavior, as shown in Chelaru-Ioni^a — Banta§ (1980): the abstract meaning of nouns like parliament, government, group, crew — used particularly in definitions — follows the regimen of abstract individual nouns; the concrete sense, used especially in descriptions, has the regimen of a concrete individual noun; the collective meaning — used especially with plural verbs — is normally evidenced by their use with verbs of action or state; a possible fourth meaning — that of a building, apt to appear with collective nouns denoting institutions — has the same grammatical regimen as sense 2 (cf. Table 3). 2.1. Each of the elements described in the tables presenting the grammatical regimen of classes or subclasses into which are distributed the meanings of polysemous nouns may pose different problems. We could exemplify by the difficult aspect of countability and the means of numericalization of those nouns which accept numerical determinatives and those which reject them (a problem that does not arise in other languages, where nouns are generally indifferent to the type of determiners accompanying them). 2.1.1. According to our investigations (Bantas 1976), in English one may establish a genuine scale or hierarchy of nouns according to the extent to which countability is manifest: briefly, (a) normally countable nouns, (b) nouns countable through special means, (c) partly countable nouns, (d) countables which involve semantic differences between plural
A hypothesis: the notion of "multibehavior"
ϋ
T3 '>
D
•a c£ JJ
^^ ^H
33
C ^
J2 ΙΛ 1
3
c
o 's o-E
C cd
^"s >>>
|
13 h .xo
>
1
o \£S· ·-
w G D. , 3 T3
ou WK
^^
oof
>
c 'E
?.§> TII .^· (Λ c ·—Ϊ5QJ "^ Λ S
S" "
'Sro §>^
χ 8 aS. .2-·§ε er O W5 O
u
3
Lull >
G
•^H
c/i
iu "3
Sε 43 0
Φ
f noun ncount
(Kiparsky — Kiparsky (_ John 's being ill. ) 1970: 158-159)
What are the "facts" referred to by the gerundial /Mi-clauses "with initial NPs" (or other determiners) in utterances like the following: (13)
The Heritage Foundation ... worries most about the whole world going Communist. (The Guardian, Oct. 13, 1985)
(14)
John's winning the race is unlikely/doubtful.
(15)
They advocated his leaving the country.
(16)
What can we do to prevent this disease spreading!
(17)
The House of Representatives voted against aid being given to the splinter elements in Angola.
The following examples illustrate the possibility of putting one and the same gerundial construction to various uses and demonstrate, in our opinion, the complete untenableness of attempts to ascribe some kind of "typical" meaning to a particular construction type of gerundive nominals. Compare:
50
Rolf Berndt
(i)
determinerless gerunds
(18a)
Losing your job understandably provoked your anger. The fact/ circumstance that you lost your job ... (I fully understand that) what fills you with fear is losing your job (the possibility/danger that you may lose your job/of losing your job). Losing your job causes great distress. If you lose your job that (can) cause(s) great distress.
(18b)
(18c) (19a) (19b) (20a) (20b) (21 a)
Being unfairly dismissed aroused his indignation. The fact that he was/had been unfairly dismissed ... Being sacked is distressing. If one/a person is dismissed that is distressing. Having studied history was very useful for his career as a diplomat (the fact that he had studied history ...). Having attended Harvard can be helpful. (Schachter 1976) If a person has attended Harvard that can be helpful.
(21b)
They failed me for not giving proper signals (for the reason that ..., because (of the fact that) ...). Not giving proper signals can be fatal for a driver.
(ii)
gerunds with expressed subject
(22)
I don't like him coming home so late all the time (the fact/it that he comes home so late all the time).
(23)
I don't like people disturbing me when I'm working. I don't like it if/when people disturb me while I'm working.
(24)
I don't like his going there. Γ is going there. I don't like the fact/it that he < goes there. (. is in the habit of going there. I don't like his habit/practice of going there. I don't like it when he goes there. (?) I don't like the idea of his/him going there. (?) I don't like his idea/plan/intention of going there.
(25)
I would like John's doing so. (Kiparsky — Kiparsky 1970: 157) I would like it if John were to do so. (Kiparsky —Kiparsky 1970: 157)
Fact or not fact — the semantic interpretation of gerundive nominate
51
It is beyond all doubt, then, that "there are also non-factive predicators that allow the Poss-ing gerundive construction" (Mihailovic 1976: 79). And it is not to be doubted either that, in particular contexts or with particular predicates, determinerless gerunds can be used to refer to "facts", too. According to Kiparsky and Kiparsky "only factive predicates" "can have as their [subjects or] objects the noun [phrase] [the] FACT' (Kiparsky—Kiparsky 1970: 145) "with a sentential complement" consisting of a f/zar-clause" (Kiparsky —Kiparsky 1970: 144) (the so-called "basic form" (Kiparsky —Kiparsky 1970: 159)) or a gerund, which through ".Facr-deletion" (Kiparsky —Kiparsky 1970: 158) may be either transformed into a "simple ί/ζαί-clause" (Kiparsky-Kiparsky 1970: 159), "a factual thaiclause", or into a (non-appositive) gerund — a "factive gerund". But what about gerunds "with expressed subjects and auxiliaries" used for purposes other than references to "facts" and thus, obviously, not describable as "fact gerunds"? What about the "basic form" they can be said to be derived from? Or, more precisely, perhaps, what are the peculiarities of their underlying semantic structure and those of gerundial /M/-clauses without determiners when not used to refer to "facts"? Calling them "activity gerunds" and thus contrasting them with "fact" or "factive gerunds" does not solve the problem; not only because there are many instances in which the gerund ("with or without initial NPs), although not "used factively" does not "refer ... to actions or events" (Kiparsky —Kiparsky 1970: 146) as such; but also, and even more so, because setting "actions", "activities", "events" "conditions", etc. against "facts" simply makes no sense, in our opinion. And neither do threefold distinctions like those between "facts", "propositions", and "events" (in the broad sense of "processes, activities ..., states, conditions ..., etc.") which are said to be referred to by the predications embedded into "factive", "prepositional", and "eventive predicates" (cf. Peterson 1982). If "factivity" is excluded for such basic types of states of affairs as intentional and non-intentional events — actions and processes — and states (± intentional), it will become rather difficult, I am afraid, to tackle the problem of what can rightly be called a fact and what can not. To posit "basic semantic categories" of certain kinds like "(being an) event" on a par with "(being a) fact" (Peterson 1982: 238) seems to us to make little sense. But "basic semantic categories" of certain kinds, we are convinced, do play a role in the "interpretation of gerundive nominals". 4.1. Obviously it is whole states of affairs, embedded in others or linked with them by a particular relationship (like a cause/reason — effect/result,
52
Rolf Berndt
a "conditional", or condition — consequence, or a purpose relationship, for example) that can be expressed in the "condensed form" of nominal /Mr-clauses or, partly, appositive gerundial clauses with a preposition inserted after the head noun which they follow and explicate. For example: (26a) (26b)
Being backed by my friends is a great comfort to me. The fact of being backed by my friends is a great comfort (to me). (Curme 1931: 485)
The gerundial clause itself, as has been pointed out, "can often be paraphrased with a ί/ζαί-clause" (Leech 1974: 298): (26c) (26d)
That I am backed by my friends is a great comfort to me. The fact that I am backed by my friends is a great comfort. (Curme 1931: 485)
or, to quote the example from Kiparsky — Kiparsky 1970: 158 — 159): /τ? \ (27a) v ' (27b) (27c)
**u r * 6 [off John s being ill. J I regret that John is ill. I regret John's being ill.
Where such paraphrases are admitted, the gerundial /Mi-clause has also been described as a "reduced alternative construction" replacing a "full clause" (Curme 1931: 343), ultimately a that-apposiuve clause (or socalled "noun (phrase)-complement clause"), which explicates the head noun of the noun phrase into which it is embedded (a construction described as "explizierende" or "erl uternde" Attributs tze in German grammars). The question arising in this connection concerns the character and function of the "head nouns" of nominal phrases permitting explication through a "complement", or appositive, thai-clause as well as its replacement by an /TVG-gerundial clause with initial preposition and optional deletion or dropping of the "head of ... the appositive clause" (Quirk — Greenbaum 1973: 270) or, in short, "abridgement to a[n Ordinary' nominal] gerundial clause" (Curme 1931: 345). To reduce the number of head nouns admissible in these cases to just one, viz. the FACT, is, quite obviously, simplistic.
Fact or not fact — the semantic interpretation of gerundive nominate
53
States of affairs reflected in the mind and made the objects of linguistic utterances do not exist "as such" but have certain "existential characteristics". They can be distinguished according to their mode of being, their time of existence, their frequency of occurrence, etc. They may exist as a single actual fact or as a possibility; they may be generally existent, or may be recurrent, or may not, or not yet, exist except in the mind, and so on. And they can be classified, or categorized, on the basis of these characteristics. It is exactly this, in our opinion, that is expressed (or expressible) by "abstract head nouns" like FACT and many others, which may thus be interpreted as a kind of "category markers" assigning the states of affairs denoted to some particular class or category of states of affairs with (a) particular distinguishing feature(s). The relevant distinctions that can be made in this connection include those which possess the characteristic or property of: — being (having been) actually existent), being a state of affairs that has (had) actual existence [and may (have) produce(d) a particular effect or be(en) the result of some other happening, etc.] referable to as a FACT, CIRCUMSTANCE, REASON, RESULT,
etc.:
(28)
I appreciate his treating the subject realistically.
(29)
Tom's coming late annoyed his mother.
(30)
The professor was pleased about all his students having passed the final examinations.
(3la)
(The fact of) his being elected President surprised all of us.
— being a state of affairs the actual existence of which is (has been) alleged, "an alleged fact" — ALLEGATION, ACCUSATION, CHARGE, etc.; compare examples (5b) to (5e) • or a state of affairs which is (was) reported to have (had) actual existence: the NEWS, REPORT [which produces a particular effect, etc.]: (31b)
(The news of) his being elected President surprised all of us.
— being a recurrent state of affairs, a HABIT, a(n established) PRACTICE, etc., [towards which a particular attitude is assumed, etc.]: (32)
I am opposed to (the practice of) creaming off the cleverest pupils and sending them to a special school.
54
Rolf Berndt
— being (the mental picture of) a state of affairs the actualization/ realization of which is demanded (without reasons given, etc.) — DEMAND: (33)
I insisted on my demand that he (should) take the bill down at once. I insisted on his taking the bill down at once.
or a state of affairs whose realization is (was) demanded as necessary for something else to happen; "a required condition" or "condition set up laid down" — CONDITION: (34)
He made his agreement to buy our house dependent on us leaving all the furniture in it.
• or a state of affairs the realization of which is objectively necessary for the bringing about of something else — a (necessary) CONDITION: (35)
The establishment of a durable and just peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved without Israel withdrawing from all occupied Arab territories.
• or a state of affairs whose realization is a burning question/problem and on the solution of which the achievement of some particular goal, etc., depends — the QUESTION (of whether or not X succeeds in doing Y): (36)
The future of mankind depends on its putting an end to the arms race and making the principles of peaceful coexistence the binding guidelines of international politics.
— being a mentally reflected state of affairs whose actualization represents a TASK, AIM or GOAL, the accomplishment or attainment of which requires the fulfilment of certain conditions, etc., (purpose relationship between two states of affairs): (37)
(The task/goal of) improving the standard of living and educating a new man in our society cannot be accomplished without further developing democracy and personal initiative.
— being a mental picture of a state of affairs the future realization of which has been contemplated, considered, decided upon, planned, sug-
Fact or not fact — the semantic interpretation of gerundive nominate
55
gested, etc.; "a proposed undertaking or goal", "a proposed or suggested course of action", "a contemplated act", etc. — IDEA, PLAN, SCHEME; INTENTION, WISH; MOTION, PROPOSAL, SUGGESTION, DECISION, etc. [towards which a particular attitude is assumed, etc.]: (38)
Do you advocate keeping all children at school till the age of sixteen?
(39)
They supported increasing the base pay of servicemen. (We)
(40)
My father will never agree to my spending a holiday abroad before I'm sixteen.
— being a mentally anticipated state of affairs whose coming into existence is hoped or wished for, an OPPORTUNITY, CHANCE, etc.: (41)
I would greatly appreciate (the chance of) coming into the ward and having such facilities.
— being a potentially existent state of affairs the actualization of which at some time in the future is, objectively speaking, within the range or not beyond the bounds of possibility — (a real) POSSIBILITY, (a real) DANGER, RISK, etc.:
(42)
Today millions of people are greatly worried about a nuclear war (possibly) destroying the whole world.
— being a mental picture of a state of affairs whose coming into actual existence in the future is more or less possible or probable, or thought to be so, or is (to be) expected (and which, or the thought or idea of which, arouses certain feelings or calls forth other reactions on somebody's part, etc.) — POSSIBILITY (assumed or real), DANGER, PROSPECT, OUTLOOK, IDEA, etc.: (43)
The little girl was frightened (at the idea of the possibility) of her mother not coming back.
(44)
The miser was so afraid of (the possibility/danger of) his money being stolen that he watched over it day and night.
(45)
When cutting cloth for my suit, leave enough at the edges to provide for (the possibility of) my getting fatter.
56
RolfBerndt
(46)
He feared the military junta's declaring him a danger to public security.
(47)
She is very happy about (the prospect of) going to England for a year in 1991.
4.2. Paraphrasability of gerundive /TVG-clauses with nominal or appositive ί/ζαί-clauses (or "derivation" from an appositive gerundive nominal construction through "deletion" of "the head of the appositive clause") obviously does not exist if the gerundial clause has "conditional meaning" (Frank 1972: 321). For example in cases like (48)
Bringing up that subject will only cause trouble.
or if it is used (a) to denote the conditioning state of affairs in a generally existing conditional relationship, that is for reference to the case of the existence of a particular state of affairs — the occurrence of a particular event (action/process) or the existence of a particular situation — in general, which produces some particular effect whenever becoming actually existent, e.g., (49)
Thermally decomposing refuse costs more than burying it.
(50)
Not having children makes less work — but it makes a quiet house.
(51)
Being overcharged for anything enrages her.
(52)
Peter's being rude to his mother always provokes her into shouting at him.
or (b) to denote the conditioning state of affairs in a purpose relationship — a task, plan, intention, etc., which, if to be realized, requires the realization of some other state of affairs: (53)
Realizing your proposal necessitates borrowing money.
or (c) to refer to "counterfactual conditions" in the past or conditions contrary to expectation, tentative conditions, etc. the realization of which somewhere in the future would have a particular consequence or produce a particular effect, e.g.
Fact or not fact — the semantic interpretation of gerundive nominate
57
(54)
Catching that train would enable us to see Mr. Tailor at the airport.
(55)
His intervening in this matter wouldn't improve your condition.
(56)
Dispersing instantly would have been the thing to do. (Thompson 1973: 377)
(57)
Father would be furious at Peter's failing the examination.
4.3. Mere absence of existential characteristics like "being (or having been) actually existent" or "existing in the mind as something the future actualization of which is planned, demanded, required, hoped for, expected, feared, or presents a real possibility, etc." is apparently not a sufficient basis for the setting up of particular subcategories or subclasses of states of affairs. Consequently, there seem to be no ("category-marking") "abstract head nouns" whose semantic content is made explicit by (ί/ζίζί-appositive clauses or) gerundial /M7-clauses used to refer ("merely") to the realization (the bringing or coming into actual existence) of a particular state of affairs — the performance of a particular action, the occurrence/happening of a particular non-intentional event, or the existence of a particular state or condition — some time subsequent to the time of speaking or the time spoken of: ι suggest < , . . , . . . S , [ bringing the meeting to an end.
T «maaPQt ί (th£lt)
(59)
WC bring the meetin
t0 al
r , f that they should start early. We advised J \ to start early. their starting early.
(60)
He pretended ignorance to avoid being fined for breaking the law.
(61)
What can we do to prevent this disease spreading?
(62)
You can count on the weather being fine when you go there in September.
The present paper does not lay claim, of course, to full coverage of all the questions connected with the "semantic interpretation" and alternative constructions of gerundive nominals. Nothing has been said as yet, for example, about gerundial clauses which, although referring to events
58
RolfBerndt
that actually happened, can apparently not be paraphrased with thatappositive clauses or be used appositively themselves. Compare Gathering quietly around the campfire each night was nice. (Thompson 1973: 377) Being arrested by the police ] . ,_ , , „ . iU . , 4 .. > was an unpleasant experience. (Schachter Crossing the picket line J 1976: 235) Tearing up my paper dolls was mean. I enjoyed going to the beach yesterday. (Schachter 1976: 215), etc. It is hoped, however, that some aspects of the "grammar of English gerundive nominals" have been put into the right perspective.
References Adams, John R. 1977 Abstract nominalizations in general sentences of English (DAb 37.4325-A) (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania) (unpublished dissertation of 1976). Curme, George Olivier—Hans Kurath 1931 A grammar of the English language 3: Syntax (Boston —New York: D. C. Heath and Company). Frank, Marcella 1972 Modern English. A practical reference guide (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall). Fräser, Bruce 1970 "Some remarks on the action nominalization in English", in: Roderick A. Jacobs —Peter S. Rosenbaum (eds.), Readings in English transformational grammar (Waltham, Mass. — London: Ginn & Co.), 83 — 98. Kastovsky, Dieter 1981 "Generative Grammatik und Fremdsprachen Unterricht: Infinitiv und Gerundium", in: P. Kunsmann —O. Kühn (eds.), Weltsprache English. Festschrift fur Kurt Wächtler (Berlin: Erich Schmidt), 151-174. 1982 Wortbildung und Semantik (Düsseldorf: Schwann). Kiparsky, Paul —Carol Kiparsky 1970 "Fact", in: Manfred Bierwisch — Karl Erich Heidolph (eds.), Progress in linguistics (The Hague: Mouton), 143 — 173. LDCE 1978 Longman dictionary of contemporary English (London: Longman). Leech, Geoffrey 1974 Semantics (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Leech, Geoffrey —Jan Svartvik 1975 A communicative grammar of English (London: Longman).
Fact or not fact — the semantic interpretation of gerundive nominate
59
Lees, Robert B. 1960 (1963) The grammar of English nominalizations (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics; The Hague: Mouton). Lewandowska, Barbara 1975 "On some properties of action nominals in Polish and their English equivalents", Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 3: 167 — 176. Mihailovic, L. 1976 "Passive sentences in English and Serbo-Croatian — part II", in: Rudolf Filipovic (ed.), The Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian — English Conlrastive Project A: Reports (Zagreb: Institute of Linguistics) 10: 48 — 108. Pak, Ty 1974 "The fictivity of Kiparskian factivity", Studio Linguistica 28: 1 —7. Peterson, Philip L. 1982 "Anaphoric reference to facts, propositions, and events", Linguistics and Philosophy 5: 235-276. Poldauf, Ivan 1972 "Fact and non-fact", Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics 18: 3 — 14. Quirk, Randolph — Sidney Greenbaum — Geoffrey Leech —Jan Svartvik 1972 A grammar of contemporary English (London: Longman; New York: Seminar Press). Quirk, Randolph — Sidney Greenbaum 1973 A concise grammar of contemporary English (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). Radden, Günter 1974 Transitive nominalizations (Trier: L.A.U.T.). Schachter, Paul 1976 "A nontransformational account of gerundive nominals in English", Linguistic Inquiry 7: 205-241. Thompson, Sandra A. 1973 "On subjectless gerunds in English", Foundations of Language 9: 374 — 383. Wonder, John P. 1970 "Ambiguity and the English gerund", Lingua 25: 254 — 267.
Odmah — a shifter of Serbo-Croatian in intralingual and contrastive perspective Henrik Birnbaum
As is well known, it was Roman Jakobson who, following Otto Jespersen's suggestion, reintroduced and gave new meaning to the term "shifter" as designating a set of grammatical units in which the general meaning cannot be defined without reference to the specific message.' Adopting C. S. Peirce's basic view of semiotics and taking into account A. W. Burks' discussion of the American philosopher's classification of signs into symbols, indices, and icons, Jakobson identified shifters as items which belong to the larger class of indexical symbols. As a typical example of shifters, which thus are those constituents of a linguistic code that necessarily refer to a given message (C/M), Jakobson pointed to the personal pronouns. He further argued against E. Husserl and K. Bühler, who had claimed that words of this class lack a single general meaning and must be treated as mere indices. Moreover, Jakobson took exception to the traditional Humboldtian conception of personal pronouns as forming part of the most elementary and primitive stratum of language. Instead, he suggested that indexical symbols — among them the personal pronouns — be considered a complex category where code and message overlap. In support of his definition of shifters Jakobson pointed out that "pronouns belong to the late acquisitions in child language and to the early losses in aphasia." Even though the very notion of general meaning (Gesamtbedeutung) may need to be reconsidered,2 Jakobson's precise definition of shifters not only remains valid, but is a valuable tool in analyzing the morphosyntactic and lexical structures of language.3 However, Jakobson did not elaborate on other grammatical forms or lexical items qualifying under his definition of shifters, except to point out that a tense form such as the preterit, signaling an event prior to the delivery of the message, also falls into that category, given its duplex (C/M) structure. With this in mind, I would like to propose that temporal adverbs may also be considered shifters, in view of their indeed shifting meaning dependent on the specific context in which they are used. Thus, here too the message determines the precise semantic function of a constituent of
62
Henrik Birnbaum
the linguistic code. It goes without saying that the range of potential meanings expressed by temporal adverbs varies greatly contingent upon the extralinguistic factors determining their use. One such lexical item, allowing of a variety of connotations, is, I submit, the Serbo-Croatian word odmah, literally meaning 'immediately, at once', but in reality applicable to a much more broadly conceived time in the future. One way of determining the semantic value of odmah is both to take into consideration the specific meanings adduced for that word in the authoritative dictionaries currently available and to examine the synonyms which can be substituted for odmah in various contexts. In the Recnik srpskohrvatskoga knjizevnog jezika, odmah is glossed as meaning: 1) ovog casa, istog trenutka, smesta; vrlo brzo, uskoro; and 2) neposredno uz nesto, sasvim blizu (prostorno). Illustrating these two semantic nuances the dictionary adduces the following examples: Cim sam popio, odmah izadjem and Hocete li skoro? ... Odmah ce deset (sati), on the one hand, and, on the other, Odmah do kapije pragovi su strazarnice. Further, the same dictionary cites the form odmaha as an archaic variant of odmah.4 In the comprehensive Rjecnik hrvatskogo Hi srpskoga jezika published by the Yugoslav Academy in Zagreb the following synonyms are quoted for those instances where odmah has a temporal meaning: onaj cas (oncas), taki, and namah. For the additional spatial sense the same dictionary gives only neposredno and, further, cites the following example as unclear in regard to its semantic value: Virovati i ufati u son ... ovo je odma(h) protiva zapovidi Bozjoj. As a separate item the dictionary also lists odmaha, noting only "isto sto odmah" but citing some examples where the longer form is used.5 Conversely this dictionary cites oncas as having the meaning of odmah as well as "isto sto ovaj cas, t. j. sad, odmah", and iznenada, u jedan put.6 Similarly the Rjecnik quotes odmah, taj cas, and bez otezanja as synonyms of taki, noting that this adverb probably goes back to the phrase taki cas and that it also exists in Slovenian.7 Finally, for the meaning of namah, it is only stated that it means the same as odmah.9 It is worth noting that in the more recent thesaurus of Serbo-Croatian odmah is listed as synonymous with has, brzo, and odjednom, while odmah appears as one of the possible synonyms of these three items.9 It is, moreover, interesting that this dictionary of Serbo-Croatian synonyms and related words does not also indicate that the item sad(a) can frequently be substituted for odmah. Considering the various uses and overall synonymy of SCr. odmah, we can distinguish between a primary, temporal, and a secondary, spatial, meaning of this adverb; only when used with reference to time a further
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distinction between absolute (deictic) and relative (anaphoric) connotation can be perceived. When expressing a spatial relation, odmah is always used in a relative sense. Thus the following lexical items can be regarded as synonyms or near-synonyms of odmah: taki, namah, oncas, has, brzo, odjednom, neposredno, and sad(a), while ocas and sm(j)esta can be used in a function very close to that of brzo and odjedanput, umah, and naprecac occasionally will be used in a meaning very similar to that of odjednom. Turning now to the lexical denotation of the immediate and near future in some other Slavic languages, the word abije, abije is by far the most frequent relevant item used in Old Church Slavonic. The synonym sejici is attested only in the Codex Assemanianus among the canonical Old Church Slavonic texts, and it is furthermore found also in the Russian Church Slavonic Ostromir Gospel Book.10 Modern Bulgarian has a variety of lexemes denoting the immediate future. The most common word expressing immediacy in Bulgarian is vednaga, but other lexical items, too, connote the same general meaning. Among the latter are, in particular, nezabavno, and, in a slightly different usage, neposredstveno. In addition, several words meaning 'now' can be substituted for vednaga with reference to the immediate future. As synonymous with the adverb vednaga the collectively authored Bälgarski, tälkoven recnik cites the phrase v sästija mig as well as the word nezabavno, while bärzo and vednaga are in turn given as having the same meaning as nezabavno.^ For the entry vednaga in the dictionary published by the Bulgarian Academy, the following items and phrases are cited as roughly equivalent: nezabavno, neposredstveno sled nesto, koeto stava Hi e stanalo; v sästija mig, v sästija moment, tutaksi, exemplifying each semantic nuance of vednaga with an appropriate quote from Bulgarian literature.12 The more recent dictionary of synonyms in contemporary literary Bulgarian issued by the Bulgarian Academy quotes tutaksi, nezabavno, momentalno and neotlozno as having the same semantic function as vednaga and glosses vednaga with the phrases neposredstveno sled nesto, koeto stava Hi e stanalo, and bez nikakvo bavene sled nesto. For the specific connotations expressed by the synonyms or quasi-synonyms just listed the same dictionary adduces these phrases: sävsem bez bavene sled nesto, pocti ednovremenno s nesto (for tutaksi); neposredstveno sled nesto, kato se izbjagnat drugi dejstvija, koito bixa protocili izvärsvaneto na nesto (for nezabavno}', pocti v sästija mig s drugo nesto (for momentalno); and bez da se udälzava vremeto, ne -käsno ot opredelen srok (for neotlozno). For each of these usages examples are again cited from modern Bulgarian literature.13
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Checking the relevant evidence in Macedonian, only vednas is given in the collectively authored Serbo-Croatian-Macedonian dictionary as the exact equivalent of SCr. odmah, whereas SCr. neposredno is rendered by Maced. neposredno, direktno. For the quasi-synonym sad(a) the same dictionary has only sega, which is also the counterpart of the SerboCroatian word in Bulgarian.14 Conversely, Maced. vednas is rendered by SCr. odmah and odjednom, while vednaga is adduced as a dialectal synonym of vednas. Maced. neposredno is glossed with the same word in Serbo-Croatian as well as SCr. direktno.15 At the other end of the South Slavic linguistic area the closest equivalents meaning 'immediately' are Sin. takoj and nemudoma. The comprehensive Slovenian dictionary published by the Slovenian Academy is not yet complete as far in the alphabet as takoj. The same dictionary glosses the adverb nemudno as the equivalent of nemudoma. The latter, more common expression is paraphrased with the clause "izraza, da se dejanje zgodi brez odlasanja."16 The Slovenian-Serbo-Croatian dictionary by J. Veskic lists Sin. takoj as corresponding to SCr. taki, odmah and smesia, and Sin. nemudoma as the equivalent of SCr. odmah and bez oklevanja.^1 Going the other way, the Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian dictionary compiled by J. Jurancic lists the following equivalents: SCr. odmah = Sin. takoj, SCr. sm(j)esta = Sin. takoj and SCr. sad'(a) = Sin. sedaj.™ Turning to West Slavic, the most common word expressing the same meaning as SCr. odmah in Polish is zaraz 19 which, like its Serbo-Croatian equivalent, can be used both temporally and spatially; cf. Ja zaraz przyjdg 'I'll come right away/immediately', On stal w kolejce zaraz za nim 'He stood in (the) line immediately behind him'. Mostly a spatial sense is conveyed by Pol. bezposrednio, although that adverb, too, can occasionally be used in a temporal sense. In modern Polish the adverb tuz has only a spatial usage; cf. On stal tuz za mna/przede mna/obok mnie 'He stood immediately (just) behind/in front of/next to me'. On the contrary, Pol. natychmiast has a purely temporal meaning, its syntagmatic etymology notwithstanding. Primarily temporal is also the expression od razu. However, as compared to the use of zaraz, it is more restricted: the latter can be employed both in absolute and relative usage, whereas od razu is mostly limited to a relative usage; cf. Kiedy przeczytalem jego list, ja zaraz/od razu zrozumialem ο co chodzi 'When I read his letter, I immediately understood what he meant (literally, 'what it is about')'; but Czekaj na mnie tarn, ja zaraz przyjdg 'Wait for me there; I'll be there right away'. As quasi-synonyms for a purely temporal zaraz some other lexemes or phrases can also be used, e. g., rychlo/rychle, wnet, niezwlocznie, nie-
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bawem, and, of course, w tej chwili (as opposed to chwilowo 'for the time being'). Of other West Slavic languages, Czech too has a fairly wide range of lexemes expressing immediacy. Among such words are hned, ihned, and okamzite. As in Polish, rychle can be considered at most a quasi-synonym for the meaning expressed by SCr. odmah. Similarly, Slovak uses ihned' as well as hned' and okamzite as the most frequent synonyms conveying that meaning. Finally, considering the East Slavic data, I . I . Tolstoj lists nemedlenno, totcas, and srazu as the Russian equivalents of SCr. odmah.2Q However, in actuality, Russian has of course a much richer set of lexemes connoting immediacy. Thus an up-to-date Russian thesaurus lists the following semantic equivalents or near-equivalents: nemedlenno, nemedlja, nezamedlitel'no, neotlozno, neotlagatel'no, bezotlagatel'no, srazu, totcas, sejcas, and, marked as colloquial, siju minutu, siju sekundu, tut ze, as well as razom, this last item being marked as substandard.21 The above listing does not reflect any ranking according to frequency, needless to say, as srazu and sejcas are clearly the items most frequently used. Also nemedlenno is used relatively often, but usually only in a stylistically marked context. From a semantic point of view, sejcas is the most problematic word since it can express both the immediate future and genuinely present time. Thus it is also a synonym for Russ. teper' 'now'. Though undoubtedly used more frequently in everyday speech with the meaning 'immediately', this semantic function of sejcas is in historical terms secondary, as it is derived, or rather transferred, from the earlier meaning 'now'.22 The use of Russ. tut ze corresponds roughly to that of Pol. tuz, the two items being of the same origin. In Ukrainian, the closest lexical items corresponding to SCr. odmah are nehajno, nevidkladno, as well as, with a slightly different meaning, bezposeredn'o and prjamo. It seems, though, that Ukr. zaraz, too, has a meaning very close to nehajno; yet in its primary usage it appears to be a virtual equivalent of Ukr. teper 'now'.23 In modern Belorussian the most common counterparts of SCr. odmah are zaraz (za) and, in a restricted usage, sledam. Moving on now to some West European languages, the most frequent German words for 'immediately' are sofort and (so)gleich. While sofort und sogleich are indistinguishable from a stylistic point of view, the bare gleich belongs to a somewhat more colloquial usage. Moreover, only gleich, but not the adverbs with so-, can be used in a spatial function. Germ, flugs is also rather colloquial, but today perhaps a bit obsolete.
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Even more dated is alsobald, which, if at all used today, is perceived as belonging to an elevated style. In Swedish (adduced here as a representative of the Scandinavian languages) the three closest equivalents of SCr. odmah are genast, strax (substandard also straxt), and the phrase med detsamma. In more formal usage ögonblickligen (literally 'instantaneously', corresponding to Germ, augenblicklich} expresses the same meaning. Further, Sw. omedelbart (literally 'directly', corresponding to Germ. unmittelbar} can be used in that sense, both temporally and spatially.24 In English the most common equivalents of SCr. odmah are, of course, immediately, at once, directly, and, more colloquially, straight away, right away, or mere right used in conjunction with a preposition or adverb; cf., e.g., right after, right before; right afterward. Forthwith is used only in a highly formal style (as is Germ, umgehend). In French, the most natural equivalents of SCr. odmah are immediatement and tout de suite, with the latter having a somewhat more colloquial coloring. Tout de suite has only temporal meaning, whereas immediatement in addition can be used to express a spatial relation. Yet another synonym is sur-le-champ, meaning 'at once, immediately', thus closest in meaning to tout de suite. Turning finally to another member of the Romance language family, and one in some respects closer than French at least to the Croatian variant of Serbo-Croatian, namely, Italian, the most common words expressing temporal immediacy are clearly subito and immediatamente, while adesso 'now' only occasionally can take on that meaning as well. However, particularly subito has a great number of synonyms and nearsynonyms — both single words and phrases — used in the same of nearly the same meaning, all' instante and d'un (ratio or a un trat to among them.25 The preceding brief survey of synonyms and near-synonyms of SCr. odmah, as well as the exploration, albeit sketchy and selective, of some lexical and phraseological equivalents of the Serbo-Croatian word under scrutiny in a number of other languages, both Slavic and non-Slavic, should suffice to convey at least a general idea of the semantic range covered by SCr. odmah. In other words, it is by resorting to both intralingual substitution and the kind of contrastive analysis so successfully championed by the scholar whom we honor with this volume,26 that we hope to have been able to demonstrate, if only in a tentative manner, the variety of meanings implicit in the lexical item discussed here. We have seen that SCr. odmah functions, for all intents and purposes, as a genuine shifter in Jakobsonian terms. In fact, we can observe a pragmatic
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flexibility in the use of this item which reflects the needs and exigencies applicable to many a situation in the context of Yugoslav reality. Viewed as a shifter, then, SCr. odmah commands at least two different time dimensions. On the one hand, it can refer to a time in relation to the absolute present or, secondarily, to a moment referred to in a given speech act; cf. will do it immediately' and did it immediately'. On the other hand, SCr. odmah can also be conceived of as a shifter in the sense that it may refer to a shorter or a longer period of time, or rather, to a precise moment as opposed to a time span of shifting length; cf. the ambiguity of a sentence such as Pozabavit cuj Pozabavicu se tim problemom odmah (literally Til take up this matter right away') which can imply action within the next few minutes, today, or within a near, but undetermined, future. Of course, SCr. odmah should, on certain occasions, be capable of expressing unequivocally a very narrow sense of temporal immediacy. Academician Rudolf Filipovic is indeed among those who, in the proper context, will use and respond to the Serbo-Croatian word in only its narrowest and most precise sense. For this all those of us who have the privilege of knowing him and having professional dealings with him are certainly most grateful. Notes 1. Cf. Roman Jakobson, Selected writings, II: Word and language, The Hague & Paris, 1971: 131-133. 2. Cf. Henrik Birnbaum, "Gesamtbedeutung — A reality of language or a linguistic construct?", Scando-Slavica 32 (1986): 139-159. 3. For a critical assessment and extended application of the concept of shifters as defined by Jakobson, see in particular two recent papers presented at the First International Roman Jakobson Conference (New York, October 1985) by Olga Toshio Yokoyama, "Shifters and non-verbal categories of Russian", and Hermann Parrel, "Deixis and shifters after Jakobson" (to appear). 4. Recnik srpskohrvatskoga knjizevnog jezika. Knj. 4, O-P, Novi Sad, 1971: 48. 5. Cf. Rjecnik hrvatskoga Hi srpskoga jezika ... sv. 37, Zagreb, 1919: 620. 6. Ibid., sv. 38, 1922: 953. 7. Ibid., sv. 75, 1962: 18-19. 8. Ibid., sv. 32, 1913: 428. 9. Cf. Sinonimi i srodne reci srpskohrvatskog jezika, Belgrade, 1974: 469, 12, 83, and 465-466. 10. Cf. Linda Sadnik and Rudolf Aitzetmüller, Handwörterbuch zu den altkirchenslavischen Texten, Heidelberg/The Hague, 1955: 3 and 118, s. vv. See further Slovnik jazyka staroslovenskeho, 1, Prague, 1958: 3, with numerous examples; ibid., 36, Prague, 1983: 55. The additional synonym nekisno is not found in Old Church Slavonic proper, but
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11. 12. 13. 14.
15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
23.
24. 25. 26.
Henrik Birnbaum occurs in the more recent Church Slavonic texts Slepcanski Apostel and the Nicodemus Gospel Book. Cf. op. at., 3rd ed., Sofia, 1976: 78 and 504. See Recnik na balgarskija ezik, 2: V., Sofia, 1979: 73, 5. v.. Cf. M. Dimitrova and A. Spasova, Sinonimen recnik na sävremenija bälgarski knizoven ezik, Sofia, 1980: 85-86. See Dordi Milosev — Branislav Gruik — Mile Korveziroski — Boris Blagoeski — Aleksandar Dzukeski, Srpskohrvatsko-makedonski recnik, Skopje/Cetinje, 1964: 204 and 221. Cf. Recnik na makedonskiot jazik so srpskohrvatski tolkuvanja, I: A-N, Skopje, 1961, 56 and 495, s. vv. See Slovar slovenskega knjiznega jezika, 3: Ne-Pren, Ljubljana, 1979: s.v. Cf. J. Veskic, Recnik slovenacko-srpsko-hrvatski, Belgrade, 1932: s.v. See Janko Jurancic, Srbohrvatsko-slovenski slovar, Ljubljana, 1955: s.v. Cf. Julije Benesic, Hrvatsko-poljski rjecnik, Zagreb, 1949: 541. Cf. Il'ja I. Tolstoj, Serbskoxorvatsko-russkij slovar' (3rd edn) Moscow, 1970: 329. Cf. Slovar' sinonimov russkogo jazyka v dvux tomax, T. 1: A-N, Leningrad, 1970, 642-643. For a recent detailed study of the semantic relationship between sejcas and teper', see Igor A. Mel'cuk "Semanticeskie etjudy. I. 'Sejcas' i 'teper" v russkom jazyke", Russian Linguistics 9:2 — 3, 1985: 257 — 279. Actually the meaning 'now' is not, strictly speaking, primary with sejcas since its original, literal meaning was, of course, '(at) this time'. See M. L. Podvez'ko, M. I. Balla, Anhlo-ukrajins'kyj slovnyk, Kiev, 1974: 258 and 347. See further Slovnyk ukrajins'koji movy, I: A-V, Kiev: 1970: 141; III: Z, 1972: 287; V: N-O, 1974: 262 and 275; VIII: Pryroda-rjaxtlyvyj, 1977: 368. Cf. Svensk-serbokroatiskt lexikon, [Stockholm, 1985]: 164 and 454; Svensk-kroatiskt lexikon, [Stockholm, 1985]: 159 and 438. Cf. Niccolo Tommaseo, Nuovo dizionario de' sinonimi della lingua italiana, Naples, 1935: 990-991. Although contrastive analysis has so far, for the most part, implied comparison and juxtaposition of data found in two languages only, it goes without saying that contrastive evidence taken from several, or at least more than merely two, languages often will yield additional typological insights. For an exemplification of this approach, cf. my essay, "Contrastive linguistics and language typology: the three-way approach", in: Dieter Kastovsky — Aleksander Szwedek (eds.), Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries. In honour ofJacek Fisiak (Berlin—The Hague —New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1986), vol. 2: Descriptive, contrastive and applied linguistics, 1133 — 1145.
Language contact: some reactions of a contactee Wayles Browne
In the course of work on the contrastive grammar research projects organized by Prof. Dr. Rudolf Filipovic, I was frequently asked my opinion of examples in my dual capacities of linguistic colleague and of English-speaker. My involvement was more peripheral with another favorite project of our distinguished honoree's, the English Element in European Languages. From time to time I could serve as a perhaps salutary theoretical sounding board for this project's contributors, but my usefulness as informant was rather more limited and did not go beyond occasionally confirming or denying that a purported source word existed in English. None of my colleagues thought to ask me my opinion of various sorts of adaptation. At the same time, though, observing what various European tongues had done with 'my' words, I found I had quite distinct judgments about satisfactory and less satisfactory instances of adaptation from the point of view of a speaker of the source language. I have been able to tease out a number of different origins for these judgments. Some of them are accidental and not strictly linguistic in origin, but others may be of theoretical and not merely anecdotal interest. Contemporary linguistics seeks all possible sorts of evidence about the knowledge that speakers have of their native language, and reactions to an L2's adaptations may offer one more window into this knowledge. First, an example of a non-linguistic, or not-strictly-linguistic, reaction. The typologically rare dental fricatives /Θ/ and /δ/ occur frequently in English words. L2s not endowed with corresponding sounds replace these either with dental stops /t/, /d/ or with fricatives at other points of articulation, usually /s/ and /z/. The distance between /Θ/ and /s/ in terms of articulatory or distinctive features is no greater than between /Θ/ and /t/. And yet /s/ gives the impression of a far less satisfactory replacement than /t/. To take an example a bit outside the normal loan-word area: the playwright Galsworthy had become familiar to users of many European languages even before the recent TV "Forsyte Saga" series. Englishspeakers find humor in the Russian version of his name, Golsuorsi, but not in a Serbo-Croatian rendering with -// (even though -di would be preferable in view of the original voiced /-δι/). The fact is that the
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confusion of /Θ/ and /s/ is a frequent fault in English children's speech (called "lisping"); the palatalized quality of Russian /s'/ only enhances the impression of a speech impediment. /Θ/ — /t/, on the other hand, has no such unfortunate associations. Moving closer to linguistics proper: part of a speaker's knowledge concerns diaphones in his/her language, i.e., the correspondences of sound units across its dialects and standards. My own Eastern New England pronunciation lacks postvocalic [r] in words such as bar [ba:]. But knowing that many varieties of English have [r] here, I am happier to see, e. g., Hungarian borrowing this word as bar [ba:r] than as *ba. The r contributes to the recognizability of the word. A somewhat more complex example: most of the languages represented in the English Element project's corpus lack the vowel /ae/ so familiar in English. When faced with an /ae/ word, they replace it with /e/ or /ε/ (The English Element in European Languages II, passim). Indeed, those few instances where L2 /a/ (or /a/) renders this vowel are commonly analyzed (ibid.) as representing loans taken in through the written medium rather than through direct oral borrowing. And yet an English-speaking listener much prefers this latter rendering. This preference seems only in part due to knowledge of the spelling, which of course uses a for both /ae/ and /a/ (or /a:/ — length will be ignored for present purposes). Another source is knowledge of the range of English pronunciations: a speaker who has been exposed to various English dialects and standards knows that the same lexical item can appear unpredictably with either of the two low vowels. Thus can't general American /kaent/, Eastern New England and RP /ka:nt/; dance general American and some Eastern New England /daens/, RP /da:ns/. Scotland and northern England are felt to have nothing but /a/ for other people's /ae/, although the reality is, of course, more complicated. Even apart from geographical variations, there are individual ones; in one and the same area, one speaker may say /'slavik/ while another has /'slaevik/ and a third vacillates. In some instances the choice correlates with the degree of nativization of a foreign item: the city name /mi'laen/ is more Anglicized, /mi'lan/ more (pseudo-)Italian. (Real Italian is /mi'lano/.) Similarly, it has been observed that in the 1960s and 1970s, American-English speakers who were more sympathetic to the problems of the Vietnamese tended to speak of Viet Ν/α/m, whereas the more militaristically-minded would say Viet N/ae/m. No such interchanges and confusions are known in English between the two vowels /ae/ and /ε/. Physically close though they may be, all
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pronunciations of English keep them clearly apart. Accordingly, encountering an L2 rendering with /ε/, the English-speaker has the impression of a wantonly second-best choice. 'Everybody knows' that 'foreigners have /a/ where we have /ae/'; why don't the foreigners know that too? Another variable that has to be taken into account in studying the reactions of an LI-speaker to L2 treatments is how much the speaker knows about the given L2 and its possibilities. Thus, consider English words containing er, ir, ur /ar/ (or, taking into account diaphonic variation, /at/ ~ s: ~ 0:1). A speaker unfamiliar with the Serbo-Croatian vowel system, shown the two renderings of English flirt /fbrt/, would presumably prefer flert over flirt. One aware of the existence of vocalic III would wonder: why not *flrt1 To the English-speaker's ear, SerboCroatian III has much more of an /a/ quality than /e/ or /i/ do. Deeper acquaintance with Serbo-Croatian phonology would show that /£/ never follows /!/. However /r,/ does follow most other consonants. Why then gerla, when the language could just as well have *grla < E. girl! Reference Filipovic, Rudolf (ed.) 1982 The English element in European languages 2: Reports and studies (Zagreb: Institute of Linguistics).
Contrastive analysis of terminology and the terminology of contrastive analysis* Ranko Bugarski
1. Introduction Contrastive analysis, in the modern sense of this term, started out as the comparative study of grammatical and phonological systems of pairs of languages for pedagogical purposes. Contrasting lexical systems came later and in a more limited fashion, so that it has still not quite caught up with the scope of contrastive investigations of grammar and phonology. This imbalance is amply documented in serial publications associated with large-scale contrastive projects.' Within lexical studies as a whole, the contrastive analysis of terminology appears to have been particularly neglected. From among the various possible reasons for this neglect we may single out two which seem especially important. First, the pedagogical origin of contrastive analysis in its entirety from the very start implied concentrating on points of grammatical structure and pronunciation, while the terminological part of the lexicon remained more or less wholly outside these considerations. And secondly, the internationalization of scientific terminology in itself seems to have created the impression that there was little enough to contrast in this area anyway. But such an impression must have been mistaken, or at least misleading, for several reasons: the fact that terminological internationalization, far from being a unified process, is differentiated according to the large linguistic and cultural zones of the contemporary world; the dynamics of synchronic variation and diachronic change underlying terminological systems; the tension resulting from the double life of many items as lexemes of the general language and terms in terminological systems; and so on (cf. Akulenko 1977). * This article is in part based on a paper published in Serbo-Croatian as Bugarski (1982). It is a great pleasure to dedicate it to Professor Rudolf Filipovic, a scholar whose outstanding creativity, energy and organizational ability have done so much to shape English studies and contrastive linguistics in Yugoslavia.
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Be this as it may, however, the last few years have witnessed a salutary increase of interest in the contrastive analysis of terminology in various parts of the world, including Yugoslavia. In this multilingual country the focus has tended to be on contrasting and translating sociopolitical terminology (cf. Ivir 1978 ch. 8; Mikes et al. 1983; Bugarski 1985). Terms from other walks of life and from various professions are sometimes also approached in this spirit.2 Increasing activity in the field of linguistic terminology, which will be our concern in this paper, merits special mention. 3
2. Problems in contrasting terms In general, it would appear that terminological problems differ significantly, at least in some respects, as between the natural, physical and social sciences, with linguistics in particular occupying a special place. Basically a social science, linguistics incorporates certain elements of the exact sciences; in this context it is exceptional owing to its metalinguistic role, as the only discipline forging its terminology out of its own subject matter. From this point of view, the practical difficulties of working out a terminology are perhaps the least in the case of linguistics, in that as a rule the same persons fill both the principal roles in standardizing terminology — those of subject specialist and language specialist. However, it seems that from another and crucial standpoint these difficulties grow as we move from the natural and physical sciences, via the social sciences, to linguistics in its special position; this standpoint is symbolized by the notion of tertium comparationis. Let us try to approach this problem from further afield, and with the help of a rough comparison. With a view to achieving repeatability of experiments and commensurability of research results, geneticists throughout the world have apparently agreed to conduct certain kinds of tests always on the same microscopic plant, selecting for the purpose, from among a vast number of similar simple forms of life, a specific bacterium known as Escherichia coli. They therefore know exactly what they are talking about, and that they are all in fact talking about the same thing. But if this is possible with creatures of nature, the creations of culture resist such a procedure. Among the latter is language, whose many aspects make it far more difficult, and indeed often impossible, to assume that all linguists are studying the same phenomenon. Even if they were all concerned with just one of the existing languages, the processes
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of variation and change that it is constantly subject to would inevitably affect the comparison of different results. In this sense, then, geneticists are in a far more favorable position than linguists. Getting closer now to our own concerns, in the "hard" sciences and in technology experts can frequently identify without hesitation the tertium comparationis of the terms for a given object in different languages. In cases where the tertium comparationis leads on to a clear extralinguistic referent, this may even be done by ostensive definition — for example, by pointing to a screw or other material object with different names in the two languages. But the situation is different in the "softer" sciences, here including linguistics, where the place of tertium comparationis is typically occupied by more abstract concepts, which by their very nature are in numerous instances partially dependent on the particular language in which they are expressed, so that their link with extralinguistic referents is considerably more delicate. Simplifying, we might say that in the first case we have to do predominantly with a material, concrete, individual and nomenclatural order of things, and in the second with more conceptual, abstract, systematic and strictly terminological phenomena. And finally in the domain of linguistics itself, we find that the distinction between theoretical and applied contrastive analysis is relevant here. According to some influential schools of thought, such as the Polish, the theoretical approach to contrasting takes as its point of departure universal (we would rather say: more general) linguistic features and looks at how some feature χ is manifested in La and how in Lb (cf. Fisiak 1981: 2). By contrast, pedagogical contrastive analysis bypasses the categorial level in favor of a linear approach resulting from direction: one starts from a given item in one language (usually L2 for the learner), whose equivalents are sought in another language (usually the learner's L,) and then checked by back-translation. Thus in lexical contrastive analysis, within the theoretical approach one might begin by establishing the conceptual organization of the segment of extralinguistic reality differentially covered by sets of lexemes under study in the two languages being contrasted, relating the individual items to this background. On the other hand, contrasting for pedagogical purposes, where more general categories are not regarded as necessarily or immediately relevant, would adopt a different procedure. In this case one would take a lexical item in one of the languages and, by direct bilingual lexical comparison (i.e., without previously defining the corresponding semantic field), derive matching items from the other language; these would then be submitted to the back-translation test.4
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If the difference between theoretical and applied contrastive analysis is seen in this light, it seems clear enough that a serious investigation of issues relating to tertium comparationis requires elements of the theoretical approach, in the terminological section of the lexicon even more so than in general vocabulary — because of such well-known terminological desiderata as clarity, precision, systematicity, avoidance of ambiguity, etc. But this gives rise to a number of problems, the nature of which can only be hinted at here by citing a few examples taken at random from the field of linguistic terminology. We may begin with Saussure's classic division of langage into langue and parole. It is well known that other languages in which linguistic literature is written as a rule have only two lexemes which can be readily terminologized for this purpose (English language and speech, German Sprache and Rede, Serbo-Croatian jezik and govor, etc.). The lack of coincidence between a three-term system and a two-term one is in such a case not merely a mathematical, or even just a terminological problem: it is also a conceptual problem, and in a way relevant to this discussion. For what, for example, is to be the tertium comparationis for the French term langue and the Serbo-Croatian term jezik, if one does not know which Serbo-Croatian term should correspond to French langagel Similarly, the question whether langage or parole are to be terminologically rendered as govor is by no means only a nomenclatural dilemma, but rather an issue affecting the understanding of Saussurean linguistic theory. 5 In this small but for the science of language essential lexical field, for French the term in some way existed before the linguistic concept (at least potentially, in the form of an available lexeme of the general language), while for the other languages the concept came before the term. It would perhaps not be too much of an exaggeration to estimate that the development of theoretical linguistics in the twentieth century might have taken a somewhat different course if the three items cited had not been at hand in the French vocabulary at the time Saussure was rethinking the science of language.
3. Terms used in contrasting Discrepancies between languages of the kind just noted legitimately raise the question of the terminology of contrastive analysis — that is to say, in this instance, of the metalanguage of the contrastive analysis of terminology. We shall not be concerned here with the familiar difficulties
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of defining such fundamental linguistic categories as word, sentence, case, gender, aspect, tense, etc., so that they may be meaningfully applied to a wide range of structurally diverse languages. Let us rather note, first of all, that even within a single language basic grammatical terms are often used inconsistently, which is then reflected in seeking their equivalents in other languages. A frequent source of such variation are differences in the use of the same terms by representatives of different schools (cf. terms like "phrase" or "derivation" in traditional and transformational grammar). In extreme cases there can be remarkable diversity, such as we find in the dozen Serbo-Croatian equivalents of the English term "noun phrase", internationally symbolized as NP.6 It is interesting, though, that the category of noun phrase is clear enough in itself, regardless of terminological variation. The reverse situation, where the same term may point to significantly different concepts, is to be found with traditional terms like "clause", "predicate" or "complement" (and their cognates in other languages), which are often employed in confusingly different ways. We may ask, then, what exactly constitutes a tertiwn comparationis in cases like these. The general answer could be that it is a more or less definite, or perhaps even rather vague, notion of the given syntactic category or function. The content of this notion may be fixed by being tied up with a specific term in some language, but rarely so that it preserves its value both intralinguistically and interlinguistically, through regular equivalents in the latter instance. If we are contrasting two languages, any differences in analytical terminology may cause nonnegligible differences in research results; in other words, the terms used affect the outcome of contrastive work. May one suggest at this point that the elaborate edifice of grammatical terminology, like the rest of language, is subject to visitations by the familiar ghost of Benjamin Lee Whorf? 7 To illustrate yet another kind of problem, we may now turn to some of the key terms used by contrastive linguistics. We find that the term "contrastive linguistics" itself has shifted considerably, over the last fifteen years or so, from a purely pedagogical to a partly theoretical reference. Contrastive linguistics could at present be broadly defined as the systematic synchronic study of similarities and differences in the structure and use of two or more language varieties, carried out for theoretical or practical purposes. Such a definition would take account of some of the more recent developments, such as contrasting functions in addition to structures, or varieties of the same language as well as distinct languages.
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As for the goals, theoretical purposes point to domains of linguistic typology and language universals, where common but variously manifested features are studied, whereby one registers differences against the background of presumed similarities. On the other hand, pedagogical purposes, particularly in foreign language teaching and translation, take as their starting point different linguistic manifestations, seeking to discover what they still have in common and thus to establish similarities across the given differences. Applied to the various levels of language structure and use, these complementary perspectives give rise to subdisciplines such as contrastive phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, etc., some of which may be subsumed under the heading of contrastive grammar. On this view, the earlier term "contrastive analysis" either becomes superfluous or acquires a narrower meaning, denoting perhaps the analytical methodology of contrastive linguistics. Finally, the term tertium comparationis itself has gained currency in international use, but the corresponding concept has not been sufficiently elaborated or operationalized to date. It will scarcely do merely to insist in very general terms on a common formal and/or semantic basis of contrasting. A more thorough analysis of this essential requirement would presumably specify the notion of tertium comparationis by stating at least the reasons for, and criteria of, the contrasting in addition to the common features — but so that these features are the starting point and not the result of the process of contrasting, for otherwise a vicious circle would ensue (cf. Krzeszowski 1984, Janicki 1986). Considering that contrasting linguistic and speech phenomena takes place at different levels, it is easy to see that refining the fundamental notion of tertium comparationis across this array of language varieties, structures and functions is an extremely complex task; but it is a crucial one facing the whole field of contrastive linguistics. In fact, the impact of sociolinguistics and pragmatics has made life more complicated — but also, one would like to hope, more meaningful — for contrastive linguists as for many others. The days of easy generalizations, of whole languages, ideal speakers and undifferentiated speech situations seem to have gone; one is increasingly likely to have to ask first whose language is to be contrasted, for what purpose, and when it is really comparable to what other variety. The intrusion of actual speakers and social contexts onto the territory of contrastive studies may yet cause reverberations much louder than the ones we are beginning to
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hear, with considerable implications for the entire pursuit, affecting not only the notion of tertium comparationis but also related basic concepts like "contrast" or "equivalence".8
4. Conclusion The points just made may be regarded as supporting the argument that, contrary to views often held, the real problems of terminology are often not so much in the widespread practice of utilizing different terms for the same concepts, as in the difficulty of establishing what still is, and what may well no longer be, the same concept. In other words, it can be hard to determine exactly how one is to understand the meanings of the terms conventionally used by a scholarly field at any given stage of its development. The greatest danger here seems to lie in the frequent failure to note gradual and often imperceptible shifts in concepts underlying the terms in general use within such a field. In itself, this is a natural consequence of the dynamics of variation and change, particularly in the social sciences. But when experts start talking about different things while using the same terms, this can be far more detrimental to full understanding than employing different terms for notions that may reasonably be taken to be the same or equivalent. So in order to avoid this kind of situation, it is necessary to redefine from time to time the field's central concepts (rather than simply replacing one set of terms with another), whereupon suitable terminological solutions can usually be found. As shown by the case of "contrastive linguistics" itself, the real troublemakers are typically not the terms themselves but rather the concepts variously associated with them. The road to a good terminology naturally opens up only after basic agreement as to the concepts has been achieved. Finally, it would seem to follow from our entire discussion that the contrastive analysis of terminology presupposes the terminology of contrastive analysis, since it cannot be carried out without it. But the terminology of contrastive analysis likewise in some way presupposes a contrastive analysis of terminology, even if only an informal and intuitive one, because without this there would be no guarantee — especially in linguistics — that what is being contrasted are truly comparable things. If a way out of this circle of mutual presupposition can be discerned, it will most likely be in the systematic elaboration of the metalanguage of contrastive analysis, and one which will be international in the highest possible degree. We may then conclude that, while for many practical
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purposes (particularly outside linguistics itself) the applied approach to contrasting lexical items may suffice, proper contrasting of linguistic terminology calls for a concentrated effort involving elements of the theoretical approach. This task remains despite all the normal and familiar differences in language structures, sociocultural factors, and schools of linguistic research and description. If its importance is overlooked, not the least pernicious consequence will be that tertium comparationis will extend its lease of life as the evil spirit of contrastive linguistics, equally uncontrollable under any of its various guises. Notes 1. Cf. esp. the publications of the Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian-English Contrastive Project (edited by Rudolf Filipovic) and the journal Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics (edited by Jacek Fisiak). As examples of lexical contrastive studies see, however, Berndt (1966), Ivir (1968, 1976), Ivir - Tanay (1976), larovici (1974), Roos (1976), Nowakowski (1977), Dimitrijevic (1977), Krzeszowski (1981) and Hlebec (1983). 2. Cf., e.g., Vukovic (1980) for kinship terms or Pervan - Stambuk - Pilkovic (1983) for electronic engineering. 3. The most important recent set of papers on linguistic terminology by Yugoslav scholars is to be found in Mikes (1983); for a contribution in English see Bugarski (1986). 4. For further discussion of the latter approach and examples see Ivir (1976; 1978: 109-113). 5. The translation of Saussure's Cours into Serbo-Croatian caused a debate on the rendering of such key terms; see especially Jankovic (1972). 6. Details are given in Bugarski (1983). 7. Possible links between linguistic relativity and contrastive investigations in the grammatical domain are discussed by Mikes (1977). 8. Janicki (1986) contains an exemplification and elaboration of a sociolinguistic approach to contrastive studies. On equivalence in connection with translation see Ivir (1981), and for an overview of the current debate on equivalence in contrastive studies generally, Oleksy (1986).
References Akulenko, Valerij Viktorovic 1977 "Naucno-texniceskaja revoljucija i problema internacional'noj terminologii [The scientific-technical revolution and the problem of an international terminology]", in: Ivan Konstantinovic Beloded et al. (eds.), Naucno-texniceskaja revoljucija i funkcionirovanie jazykov mir a (Moskva: Nauka), 73 — 84. Berndt, Rolf 1966 "Lexical contrastive analysis", Brno Studies in English 8: 31 —36.
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Bugarski, Ranko 1982 "Kontrastivna analiza terminologije i terminologija kontrastivne analize — jedan aspekt teorijskog pristupa prevodjenju termina [The contrastive analysis of terminology and the terminology of contrastive analysis — one aspect of a theoretical approach to the translation of technical terms]", Prevodilac 1.3: 13-18. 1983 "Sociolinguistic issues in standardizing linguistic terminology", Language in Society 12: 65-70. 1985 "Translation across cultures: Some problems with terminologies", in: Kurt R. Jankowsky (ed.), Scientific and humanistic dimensions of language: Festschrift for Robert Lado (Amsterdam: Benjamins), 159—163. 1986 "Notes on the terminology of applied linguistics", in: Kastovsky — Szwedek (eds.), 1147-1153. Dimitrijevic, Naum R. 1977 "Problems and implications of contrastive analysis of vocabulary and culture", Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 7: 133 — 144. Fisiak, Jacek (ed.) 1981 Contrastive linguistics and the language teacher (Oxford: Pergamon). Hlebec, Boris 1983 "A contrastive study of one dimension adjectives in English and SerboCroatian", Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 16: 73 — 82. larovici, Edith 1974 "Overstatement, understatement and contrastive analysis", in: Dumitru Chi(oran (ed.), The Romanian-English Contrastive Analysis Project: Further developments in contrastive studies (Bucharest: University Press), 145 — 163. Ivir, Vladimir 1968 "Serbo-Croat — English false pair types", Studio Romanica et Anglica Zagrabiensia 25 - 26: 149 -159. 1976 "Contrastive analysis at the lexical level", in: Gerhard Nickel (ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Applied Linguistics (Stuttgart: Hochschulverlag), 2: 151-163. 1978 Teorija i tehnika prevodjenja [Theory and practice of translation] (Sremski Karlovci: Centar Karlovacka gimnazija). 1981 "Formal correspondence vs. translation equivalence revisited" Poetics Today 2.4: 51-59. Ivir, Vladimir — Vlasta Tanay 1976 "The contrastive analysis of collocations: Collocational ranges of make and take with nouns and their Serbo-Croatian correspondents", in: Rudolf Filipovic (ed.), The Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian — English Contrastive Project: Reports 10 (Zagreb: Institute of Linguistics; Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics), 20—49. Janicki, Karol 1986 "Tertium Comparationis in contrastive sociolinguistics", in: Kastovsky — Szwedek (eds.), 1233-1246. Jankovic, Srdjan 1972 "Za adekvatno prevodjenje lingvistickih tekstova [Toward an adequate translation of linguistic texts]", Pregled 62: 1333 — 1351.
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Kastovsky, Dieter — Aleksander Szwedek (eds.) 1986 Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries 2: Descriptive, contrastive and applied linguistics (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter). Krzeszowski, Tomasz P. 1981 "What do we need lexical contrastive studies for?", Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 13: 133 — 148. 1984 "Tertium comparationis", in: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Contrastive linguistics: prospects and problems (Berlin: Mouton), 301—312. Mikes, Melanija 1977 "Jezicka relativnost i kontrastivna istrazivanja [Linguistic relativity and contrastive investigations]", Godisnjak Saveza drustava za primenjenu lingvistiku Jugoslavije 1: 41 — 55. Mikes, Melanija (ed.) 1983 Kontrastivna jezicka istrazivanja: II simpozijum [Contrastive linguistic investigations: Second symposium] (Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet). Mikes, Melanija, et al. 1983 "O terminologiji iz oblasti medjunacionalnih odnosa [On the terminology of interethnic relations]", in: Melanija Mikes (ed.), 201—217. Nowakowski, Mirostaw 1977 "The lexicon and contrastive language studies", Papers and Studies in Contrastive linguistics 6: 25—42. Oleksy, Wiestaw 1986 "Some recent approaches to equivalence in Contrastive Studies", in: Dieter Kastovsky - Aleksander Szwedek (eds.), 1405-1420. Pervan, Maja — Anuska Stambuk — Mara Pilkovic 1983 "Kontrastivna analiza semantickih vrijednosti nekih elektronickih termina u engleskom i nasem jeziku [A contrastive analysis of the semantics of some electronic terms in English and Serbo-Croatian]", in: Mikes (ed.), 167 — 173. Roos, Eckhard 1976 "Contrastive collocational analysis", Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 5: 65 — 75. Vukovic, Gordana 1980 "Nazivi za obelezavanje srodnika (na materijalu srpskohrvatskog, slovackog, madjarskog i nemackog jezika) [Kinship terms (on the basis of Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Hungarian, and German data)]", in: Vesna Beric et al. (eds.), Kontrastivna jezicka istrazivanja: simpozijum (Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet), 253-265.
South Slavic terms for conjurors and sorcerers Joseph L. Conrad
Despite expectations brought on by advances in modern medicine, the practice of healing and harming by magic charms is one which has not entirely disappeared from the daily life of remote villages in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The analytical literature on this phenomenon in the South Slavic territories is thorough (for an introduction, see especially monographs and longer articles by Tihomir Dordevic1 and Mixail Arnaudov2, but certainly not large. It is almost non-existent in English-language scholarship: prior to 1978 there were no substantial treatments of South Slavic charms and charming; only three analytical studies of Yugoslav charms and folk healing have appeared since then. 3 Two English-language examinations of related Bulgarian materials were published in 1987.4 Thus far, Slovene charms and charming have not been treated analytically in English.5 South Slavic terminology for conjurors, sorcerers, magicians, healers, etc., presents an interesting case for study: the various terms are largely concentrated in only four semantic clusters:6 I. Speaking: OS1. bajati, II. Knowing: OS1. vedeti, OS1. znati, III. Charming: OS1. carati, OS1. voroziti,
IV. Reversing: OS1. vrascati, OS1. v'rati,
which may imply a reversal of the situation or the truth (cf. Russian vrat', to tell lies, with the concomitant understanding that the person lied to understand the falseness of the speaker's claim). South Slavic terms for conjuror in the first category are Bulgarian bajac/bajacka, Macedonian basnarica (the masculine form is rare, as almost all Macedonian conjurors are female), Serbo-Croatian bajalacl bajalica; Slovene bajalica does not signify a conjuror, but the term exists in the meaning of 'divining rod' for locating underground water. In the second category: Bulg. vester/vestica, Maced. vesterica and vestica, SCr. v(j)estacjv(j)estica, Sin. vedez; Bulg. znaitel/znaitelka,
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znajnik/znajnica, and znaxar; if they exist, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian forms from znati are so rare as to be unattested. In the third category: Bulg. carodeecjcarodejka, SCr. carobnjakf carobnica, Sin. carovnik/carovnica; and Bulg. vrazalec/vrazenica, Sin. vrazarica; Maced. vrazalec/vrazalica refer to fortune-tellers. In the fourth category, there are Bulg. vrac/vracka, vracar/vracarka, vracovnik/vracovnica, SCr. vrac, vracar/vracarka, and Sin. vrac. Of these terms, roughly half are devoted to agents of positive works and half to those of negative actions. While the given term's valency may vary from region to region, the Bulgarian designations bajac/bajacka, znaitel/znaitelka, znajnik/znajnica, and znaxar, are most often applied to conjurors who heal and do other positive magic (e. g., increasing fertility in the family and/or among the livestock). In Serbian and Croatian, the corresponding positive wonderworkers tend to be called bajalac/bajalica, and in some areas (Croatia and Bosnia) vracar/vracarka, but the latter are sometimes considered capable of negative actions as well.7 The SCr. v(j)estac/v(j)estica is generally thought to be responsible primarily for "black" magic, or harmful deeds. Similarly, the Bulgarian vester/veslica and vrazalec/vrazenica are considered agents of harm. In the case of the Slovene terms, carovnik/carovnica and vrazarica refer to doers of evil magic; the vedez is the person who knows the secrets of healing. The Bulgarian carodeec/carodejka, and Serbo-Croatian carobnjak/carobnica are found more often in literature (especially in that for children) than as active terms for witch-doctors. While these are the four major semantic groupings, there are several unrelated terms; among them are Bulgarian brodnica, thought to stem from the stagnant water gathered at a ford (brod) for use in negative charming rituals; mamnica, from the verb mamja, Ί cheat, deceive, entice', etc., because of the conjuror's reputed activity of stealing milk from other persons' cows. In addition to Bulgarian zaklinatel for sorcerer or conjuror of black magic, there are mag'osnik/mag'osnica, derived from Greek magos and/ or indirectly from Latin magus via German or Russian, and valsebnik/ v lsebnica, derived from OS1. vl-bs'ba 'charming', which in turn stems from νίτ,χντ, 'sorcerer', which is itself very likely a borrowing from Old Icelandic vglva 'seer' (fern.). In Yugoslavia there are likewise numerous terms from non-Slavic languages: Slovene and Kajkavian Croatian have coprnjak/coprnica, derived from German Zauber 'magic'; Slovene and Dalmatian Croatian attest Strega/striga/striga, borrowed from Italian Strega 'witch', and there
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is the Bosnian term sehirbazica, which is a Balkan Turkism of Arabic sihir 'magic'. Thus while the majority of terms stem from only four semantic groups, there are others taken from the languages of neighboring peoples, a situation which reflects the complicated tradition of healing and harming in Southeastern Europe.8 Notes 1. For discussion of Serbo-Croatian charms and charming, see Tihomir Dordevic, Zle oci u verovanju juznih Slavena, Srpski etnografski zbornik, knj. 53. Drugo odeljenje. Zivot i obicaji narodni, knj. 23 (Beograd: Slovo, 1938); and his Vestica i vila u nasem narodnom verovanju i predanju, Srpski etnografski zbornik, knj. 66. Drugo odeljenje, Zivot i obicaji narodni, knj. 30 (Beograd: Naucna knjiga, 1953). 2. For discussion of traditional Bulgarian charming, see the reprinted essays of Mixail Arnaudov, in Studii värxu bälgarskite obredi i legendi, vol. I (Sofija: Bälgarska akademija na naukite [BAN], 1971), Part II, chapter 4: Brodnici-zitomamnici, pp. 255 — 288; and vol. II (Sofija, 1972), Part III. chapters 6 — 7: Rusalii i samanizäm, Rusalska nedelja i rusalski lekuvanija, pp. 157 — 214. For more recent information, see: Panajot Madzarov, "Bajanija i zaklinanija v repertoara na edna nositelka na folklor ot iztocnija djal na Strandza," Bälgarski folklor 4 (1978), 1: 50-56; Stoil Kosov, "Magii ot Razlozko," Bälgarski folklor 6 (1980), 4: 98-108; and Ginka Dimkova, "Narodni lecitelki-bajacki," Bälgarski folklor 6, 2: 53-63. 3. They are: Barbara Kerewsky Halpern and John Miles Foley, "The power of the word: healing charms as an oral genre," Journal of American Folklore 91 (1978): 903 — 24; J. F. Foley, "Epic and charm in Old English and Serbo-Croatian oral tradition," Comparative Criticism: A Yearbook edited by E. S. Shaffer Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 71—92; and Joseph L. Conrad, "Magic charms and healing rituals in Contemporary Yugoslavia," Southeastern Europe 9 (1982). 4. See Joseph L. Conrad, "South Slavic charms and charmers", Vtori mezhdunaroden Kongres po bälgaristika. Dokladi 15. Folklor (Sofija: BAN, 1988), 397-403, and "Bulgarian magic charms: Ritual, form, and content," Slavic and East European Journal 31, 4 (Winter, 1987), 548-62. 5. The standard work on Slovene folk medicine is Vinko Möderndorfer's Ljudska medicina pri Slovencih (Ljubljana: SAZU. 1964). More recently, Rado Radescek has treated the subject in somewhat popularized form in his Slovenske ljudske vraze (Ljubljana, Kmecki glas, 1984). My "Slovene oral incantations: Topics, texts, and rituals" will appear in Slovene Studies 12 (1990). 6. Sources include Bälgarski etimologiceski recnik (Sofija: BAN, 1962 —); Petar Skok, Etimologijski rjecnik hrvatskoga Hi srpskoga jezika, I —IV (Zagreb: JAZU, 1971 — 74); Max Vasmer, Etimologiceskij slovar' russkogo jazyka I — I V (Moskva, 1964); N. M. sanskij, Etimologiceskij slovar' russkogo jazyka (Moskva: Moskovskij Gosudarstvennyj Universitet, 1968 —); and Ute Dukova, "Die Bezeichnungen der Dämonen im Bulgarischen. II. Urslavische, südslavisch-dialektale und innerbulgarische Bildungen," Balkansko ezikoznanie 27 (1984): 2: 5-50. 7. If in the South Slavic regions many villages have two purveyors of magic, one for positive charms, the other for negative charms, it is not unknown for one to practice
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the other's art. These conjurors are both respected and feared in the village, and their often successful ministrations attest to the belief in their efficacy both on the part of the villagers and the conjurors themselves. 8. The East Slavic languages also have forms from the same major groups, cf. Russian (bajat' 'charm'), carodejjcarodejka, carovnik/carovnica, vedun/ved'ma, vorozej/vorozeja, 'healer', (vrac 'liar, deceiver'), and znaxar'/znaxarka. They attest a variety of other terms as well: Russ. bogomerzkaja baba, cernokniznik, eretik, koldunjkoldun'ja, kudesnik/kudesnica, lekar', porcainik, septun, volsebnik/volsebnica, volxv/volxvitka, and zagovornik. In addition, Belorussian has ved'mak, and Ukrainian xarakternik. For further discussion, see S. A. Tokarev, Religioznye verovanija vostocnoslavjanskix narodov XIX-nacala XX v. (Moskva—Leningrad: ANSSSR, 1957), 20—36; and A. Afanas'ev, Poeticeskie vozzrenija Slavjan na prirodu, III (Moskva, 1869; The Hague, Paris: Mouton, Slavistic Printings and Reprinlings, edited by C. H. Van Schooneveld, no. 214/3, 1970, 422-595). And, of course, many related forms can be found in the West Slavic languages, but these are outside the scope of this study. See also Joseph L. Conrad, "Russian ritual incantations: Tradition, diversity, and continuity", Slavic and East European Journal 33, 3 (Fall, 1988), 422-444.
Some notes on a Bulgarian model of expanded contrastive analysis1 Andrei Danchev
1. Introduction Contrastive linguistics in Bulgaria has a relatively long history — the first important work dates back to the 1950s and even to the 1940s — and the overall number of publications exceeds one thousand, about one hundred of which deal with Bulgarian and English. In addition to the main European languages, there are also contrastive studies of Bulgarian with, e. g., Finnish, Portuguese, Byelorussian, the Balkan languages and a number of Oriental languages such as Arabic, Vietnamese, Hindi, etc. (for details cf. the annual bibliographies of the bimonthly journal Contrastive Linguistics, published by the University of Sofia, as well as Danchev 1983a, 1984a, in press). Contrastive studies in Bulgaria have not been sponsored by any particular institution or organization. This accounts for the wide variety of topics and approaches, a situation which has revealed both advantages and disadvantages. The main centers have been the Universities of Sofia and Veliko Turnovo, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and a leading role in recent years has been assumed by the Institute for Foreign Students in Sofia. There have been some attempts at coordination, though, especially in the Contrastive Linguistics Seminar at the Institute for Foreign Students, where what has been referred to as the "expanded model" of contrastive analysis has been developed and applied over the past ten years or so (Danchev 1980a, 1983b, 1984b, in press; Danchev - Grozeva 1985, the latter publication with examples in German). When compared to the analytical models of the better-known contrastive projects in Europe, this particular model seems to come closest to the (now completed) Serbo-Croatian-English Project in Zagreb and in certain ways also to some other projects (e. g. in Rumania, Finland and elsewhere). Although the emergence of the Bulgarian expanded model can be regarded as an essentially independent development, a certain amount of outside influence is to be expected, of course, as our model
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was formulated more explicitly some time after most of the important work of authors such as Filipovic, Fisiak, Nickel, Sajavaara, Chiforan and others had already been published. The purpose of this paper is to describe briefly some of the main features of the Bulgarian model of contrastive analysis and to highlight some of its specific aspects vis-ä-vis some of the other (mainly the Yugoslav-English) models of contrastive analysis. The existing work in contrastive linguistics in this country can be roughly grouped into studies orientated towards 1) foreign language teaching, 2) typology and 3) translation theory. There are also various studies of a mixed nature. Although all the above-mentioned types are well represented, I shall concentrate on the first, in the context of which the expanded model of contrastive analysis has been developed. Before proceeding it may be necessary to specify that, though practically orientated, the expanded model does not exclude any potentially interesting theoretical issues. It will be recalled that although the division into theoretical and applied contrastive linguistics is accepted by quite a few linguists today (e.g. Fisiak 1981), it is sometimes rather difficult to keep the two aspects consistently apart.
2. Description and discussion To begin with, one of the most important similarities between the contrastive work in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia consists in the absence of any rigidly theoretical postulates. Referring to the Zagreb Project Filipovic states that "analyzers could use any approach that would enable them to reach the results desired" (Filipovic 1985: 27) and practically the same line has been followed in this country as well (for details cf. Danchev 1983a, 1984a, in press). Some topics call for a more structurally and others for a more generatively oriented approach, and more often than not a combined methodology has been found to work best. The possibility of using a compromise methodology has also been examined from a theoretical point of view (Filipovic 1967; Bugarski 1982; Danchev in press). The need to overcome some of the limitations and shortcomings of traditional contrastive analysis, discussed in a number of publications (e.g. Alatis 1968; James 1971; Danchev 1980a) led to some new developments such as, for example, the use of translation corpora. This is
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another important point where the Sofia model comes quite close to the Zagreb model. As pointed out by Filipovic, "languages can be effectively contrasted only on a semantic basis; specifically, on the basis of translation equivalence" (1985: 24). In fact, by falling back upon the universal translatability principle (Fjodorov 1953) and the various compensatory devices for achieving equivalence (cf. also Nida 1964; Todeva 1982; Danchev in press), the familiar difficulty of establishing comparatibility is easily obviated by means of translation (cf. also Halliday et al. 1964), where one of the languages serves as a metalanguage for the description of the other language (Danchev 1976), the semantic analysis functioning as tertium comparationis. It is indeed a well-known fact that the use of a translation corpus makes it possible to contrast effectively a number of non-congruent elements and structures in various languages, as, for example, the definite article in Bulgarian and English with its absence in Russian and other languages, the morphologically marked category of aspectuality in the Slavic languages with its varied exponents in other languages, etc. One of the main differences between the Zagreb and the other projects (including the Bulgarian one) still consists in the use of a standard computerized corpus by the Yugoslav contrastivists (probably the first to use one in Europe and maybe in the world) and the use of individual translation corpora, selected and compiled ad hoc by individual researchers (in this country and elsewhere) for specific topics and categories. The principles underlying the selection and size of such corpora have been discussed by Lingorska (1978) and more recently by Danchev (in press). Without claiming, of course, that such personal corpora are truly adequate substitutes for a universal standard corpus, they can nevertheless be said to allow a certain degree of latitude and flexibility as they can be supplemented, should the need arise, by specially construed examples, translated/interpreted by sufficiently competent bilingual informants. 2 The usual practice is to take published translations of all kinds of texts (mainly fiction though, as this is most easily available) of sufficient length to ensure representative samples. The minimum size of the corpus is often determined empirically by including new data (e.g. by doubling the original pilot corpus) until the analytical results cease to show any significant qualitative and/or quantitative fluctuations. Thus, for example, the corpus used by Benatova (1986) for a contrastive study of some prepositions in English and Bulgarian (from which the examples mentioned later have been taken) consists of 1,600 pairs of examples excerpted
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from 35 English-Bulgarian published translations of various texts (by different authors and translated by different translators) and the Bulgarian-English translation corpus has the same size. Some authors have also used the procedures of mathematical statistics. Together with the adoption of an English monoglot corpus, plans are being considered for preparing universal bidirectional English-Bulgarian and Bulgarian-English corpora (cf. Todeva in press for some details). The application of the expanded model usually proceeds in the following manner. In order to ensure a maximum degree of "naturalness", that is, the closest possible connection of the contrastive model with at least some of the relevant language teaching and acquisition processes, the analysis begins with a description and study of the respective learners' interlanguage (in terms of Selinker 1972). One will concur readily with Filipovic that "by error analysis we find just those areas of interference which offer serious difficulties to students of the target language and it is these difficulties which must therefore be studied specially" (Filipovic 1985: 19), but there are areas in which, as will be shown further on, the use of error analysis in the expanded model differs. As is usually the case, the analysis of errors goes through the three main stages of identification, classification and etiology. Worth noting is the fact that in addition to language levels and categories, the expanded model provides also for the classification of errors in terms of the four basic transformations — substitution, addition, omission,3 and transposition — familiar from transformational grammars and translation theory. By way of illustration one can take some frequent error types in the use of English prepositions by Bulgarian learners, e. g.,: (1) (2) (3) (4)
substitution: addition: omission: transposition:
* We talked for a film. *He promised to marry for me. */ was waiting 0 the bus. *This is the teacher whom about / told you. (This type is rarer with prepositions.)
L2: about L2: 0 L2: for L2: about whom
While most of the errors in the use of prepositions are typical above all of beginners and intermediate learners, some types are committed by advanced learners as well. The presentation of errors as faulty transformations makes it possible to describe the corpus of errors within the same frame of reference as
Some notes on a Bulgarian model of expanded contrastive analysis L2
BEIL
91
%
45.00 30.00 14.00 3.00 2.8 other elements and structures (for details cf. Benatova 1986). Figure I .
the translation corpus. As a matter of fact, the treatment of error types in terms of a translation theory conceptual framework can be singled out as one of the specific features of the expanded model of contrastive analysis. It must be specified here that such a description and classification is relevant mainly to meaningful language units such as morphemes and words, although it can be applied to phonological units as well. 4 The most frequent correspondences of, say, the preposition for in the Bulgarian-English Interlanguage (BEIL) can be shown as in figure 1. Together with its equivalents in the Bulgarian-English Interlanguage, the English preposition for forms a "fan" of correspondences. Whereas all the L2 for BEIL for correspondences are evidently correct, practically all the remaining correspondences (with the exception of some examples belonging to the "other elements and structures" types) will naturally be erroneous. Worth noting, though, is the fact that what can be termed the "dominant equivalent", which is the statistically most frequent one in the interlanguage and occupies the topmost position in the fan, coincides with the L2 element aimed at, in this instance the preposition for. Provided the teaching input and the learner intake do not differ too much from the quantitative parameters of the given element in normal L2 speech, learners are usually able to identify the dominant equivalent correctly. The identification of errors obviously necessitates the adoption of a reliable verification procedure. This is provided by the translation equivalents of the respective unit, which are extracted from the translation corpus. Since perception naturally precedes production in foreign language teaching and acquisition — the learner evidently hears and/or sees the foreign language text before trying to produce it (cf., e. g., Giunchi 1983) — it is with L2 —> LI translation that one ought to begin so as to approximate the natural process. In practical terms with would mean the establishment of all the statistically more important translation equiva-
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L2
LI
%
36.6 24.6 18.6 3.9 3.5 3.1 other elements and structures Figure 2.
lents of the given L2 element, in this case the preposition for. The correspondences may again be represented in the form of a fan (figure 2). As in their interlanguage (figure 1), learners are usually able to identify the dominant equivalent, in this case the dominant translation equivalent, correctly. It is again the topmost one in the fan of all the possible LI translation equivalents. The terms "fan" and "dominant translation equivalent" (used in Danchev 1980a) have been given preference rather than, say, "paradigm of translation equivalents" (cf., e.g., Levenston 1965) and "primary counterpart" (Arabski 1979), as the former terms are more conspicuously cross-lingual and make it possible to relate the model more closely to translation theory. At this point, after having set up the L2 —> LI fan of translation equivalents, the analysis changes direction. Although this is a very important step, various authors often fail to take it (cf., however, Filipovic 1967, 1984). In fact, quite a few translation corpus-based contrastive studies in this country and abroad do not go beyond the L2 —»· LI stage. As perception precedes production it is with the L2 —> LI translation that one ought to begin, but it would be too early to stop here, because the analysis would remain confined to a theoretical explication of the practical translation processes. Although necessary as a beginning, taken in itself this analysis does not contribute enough to the elucidation of the basic foreign language teaching and acquisition strategies. Prompted by the endeavour to bring the analytical model as close as possible to L2 production processes in class-room situations, the main thrust of the translation corpus analysis goes into the second stage, i.e., the LI —»· L2 contrastive analysis. Therefore, whereas until recently the L2 —>· LI translation corpus used to be larger than the LI —> L2 translation corpus, in the more recent contrastive studies using the expanded model the tendency has been to have an equal or even larger LI —> L2 translation corpus. This is in
Some notes on a Bulgarian model of expanded contrastive analysis LI
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L2
34.5 for 14.6 0 clause 13.00 12.4 about 8.00 of 7.8 to in 2.8 other elements and structures Figure 3.
accordance with the view that the analytical model ought to simulate as closely as possible the L2 production strategies, which are usually strongly influenced by the learners' LI. The adherence to a predominantly L2 —* LI analysis directionality would be justified if the contrastive study were aimed at supporting perception-centered foreign language courses (e. g., in classical languages). But as foreign language instruction in this country and elsewhere is mainly production-oriented nowadays, this should be reflected in the analytical contrastive model as well. By setting up the reverse fan of correspondences with the dominant translation equivalent in the LI of the original L2 element as the focal point, the researcher acquires a reliable verification standard against which he can match all kinds of errors. To put it briefly, a new set of correct correspondences, performed by competent informants, with which the incorrect correspondences established by incompetent informants (the learners) can be compared, becomes thus available. The fan of correspondences in figure 3 obtains in the case of the Bulgarian preposition ζα, which was seen to emerge as the dominant translation equivalent of far. The dominant functional equivalent is usually overgeneralized in accordance with the "one-to-one" simplification strategy favored by interlanguage speakers (Danchev 1980a; Anderson 1984) and is frequently substituted incorrectly for about (16.8%), to (9.00%), of (4.3%), and other prepositions (Benatova 1986). The change of direction also enables the researcher to determine the minimal intralingual paradigm of the respective L2 element, in this particular instance the position of the preposition for in the subsystems of English prepositions. By balancing the inter- and intralingual analyses the investigator can avoid the pitfalls of a prevailingly atomistic approach, one of the recurring criticisms levelled against contrastive linguistics. The
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minimal paradigm of for in English can, of course, also be determined on the basis of English alone by using reference grammars, dictionaries and various specialized studies. For example, the application of psycholinguistic criteria (word association tests) suggests with, against, of, during, after, from as the closest neighbors of for (Clark 1968; Fillenbaum — Rapoport 1971). On the other hand, from the point of view of both the contact (figure 1) and contrast (figures 2 and 3) with Bulgarian it becomes necessary to include also the prepositions about and to. The minimum paradigm of for needed for the Bulgarian-English contrastive analysis would therefore be for, to, about, of (for possible additions cf. Benatova 1986). Interestingly, the minimum paradigm set up by referring to English alone differs rather markedly from the paradigm set up by taking into account the Bulgarian-English cross-language analysis (another imbalance?). If necessary, the analysis can change direction again, now proceeding from one or more of the elements, closest to for. New fans of correspondences can be set up, thus gradually widening the scope of the analysis. However, since this usually involves vast amounts of new language material, difficult to handle, most researchers do not go beyond this stage, at least as far as the analysis of the translation corpus is concerned. After having established the basic fans of translation equivalents in both directions, the next important step consists in the comparison of the corpora of correct and incorrect utterances, that is, a return to error analysis, presumably deeper at this state. At several points so far translation theory has been referred to as an important component of the expanded model. The following two reasons for the inclusion of translation theory can be put forward. The first is fairly obvious and stems from the use of translation corpora. The analysis of translation examples and of translation equivalence generally will obviously profit significantly from being placed within the broader context of translation theory. The reason for applying translation theory to the analysis of the error corpus is undoubtedly less obvious. It will be recalled though that the expanded model envisages the use of a specific terminology (e.g., the terms "fan" and "dominant translation equivalent") as well as the classification of errors in terms of the four basic transformations (substitution, addition, omission, transposition), all this making for a certain degree of uniformity in the description of the error and translation corpora. At least half of all the errors can indeed be regarded as incorrect interlingual transformations (mostly unconscious calquing) under LI influence. Three out of the four examples mentioned
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earlier in this paper can be shown to be isomorphous with what could be viewed as the underlying LI forms:
(1)
substitution: * We talked for a film, (Nie) govorixnie za edin film.
L2: — about
(2)
addition:
*He promised ι 0 Imarry for me. L2: - 0 (Toj) obesta dcι st? ozeni za men.
(3)
omission:
*I was waiting 0 the bus. (az) cakax 0 avtobusa.
L2: -for
In these and many other examples (Benatova 1986) the isomorphism between the interlanguage (Bulgarian-English) and LI (Bulgarian) forms is quite conspicuous. Practically the same situation obtains also in the area of modal verbs (Nenkova 1983), articles (see Toncheva 1986 for English and Grozeva 1984 for German) and other categories. The claim that a significant percentage of all the errors is due to LI transfer (or imperfect translation, as will be argued further on) brings us to the moot point of the causality of errors. The ongoing disputes over the relative importance or unimportance of LI transfer versus various universal grammar strategies such as overgeneralization and other possible error causes seem to have left most investigators sceptical of the possibility of clarifying these matters in a reasonably satisfactory manner. It can be claimed, however, that the closer identification of transfer with translation offers some additional insights into the causality of errors. Thus, if examples such as *We talked for a film (and many others; cf., e.g., Richards 1971) were due to overgeneralization rather than to LI transfer/ translation, the isomorphism of the interlanguage and the LI forms would have to be accidental. However, the common feature nearly all such cases share is that the incorrectly substituted or added elements happen to be the dominant translation equivalents of the respective LI forms. The circumstance that in practically all instances of interlanguage and LI isomorphism the wrong choice of the learners is based on the dominant translation equivalent indicates that these correspondences are systematic, which could not have been the case if they were simply due to the overgeneralization of target language material (for more details on this issue cf. also Danchev 1988, 1989). Studies based on extensive corpora of both nurtured (in classroom situations) and natural (both historical and contemporary) language
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contacts suggest that transfer and/or translation play a much more important role than is commonly assumed (for some details cf. Danchev 1982,1984c, 1989) and that in a number of cases that have been attributed to overgeneralization or some other causes it is possible to identify the LI as the primary cause of interlanguage errors (cf. also Filipovic 1985: 21). The expanded model as described so far does not, of course, neglect any other, including mixed, causes of errors. The justification for the isomorphous treatment of the translation corpus and a largish part of the errors corpus is consequently based on the view that transfer and translation have a lot in common (cf. also Ivir 1979). Indeed, even a cursory look at the available literature reveals the fact that similar and sometimes even identical examples are often attributed alternatively to transfer and translation. This suggests that in addition to their diachronic identity,5 these two terms often mean the same thing on the contemporary synchronic level as well. In a previous paper (Danchev 1982) I have tried to show that there is no very substantial difference between transfer and the broader notion of translation (including calquing; cf. also Danchev 1980b, 1989). The apparent differences arise, rather, from different scholarly traditions in different research areas — the authors of language contact studies usually speak of "translation" (and "calquing"), whereas the authors of L2 acquisition studies usually speak of "transfer" (the latter term tending to fall into disrepute in recent years some authors have begun to use "borrowing" [e.g. Corder 1985] and other terms instead). The same phenomenon can evidently be approached from various points of view, this creating, as it were, fictitious differences. The expanded model consequently has three main components: systemic contrastive analysis, interlanguage description (including error analysis) and translation theory, which are closely integrated. Since interlanguage description occupies a rather important place in the expanded model, this raises the familiar question of its relationship to contrastive analysis. Of the three possible combinations: 1) complementary relationship, in which both types of analysis figure as independent disciplines, the results of which can be combined (Filipovic 1974), 2) contrastive analysis as subordinated to interlanguage description and 3) the latter as subordinated to contrastive analysis, it is the third one that characterizes the expanded model. The following explanation can be offered. Although in comparison to pure contrastive analysis interlanguage description can encompass more data, its potential scope thus being broader, from a methodological point of view contrastive analysis is
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autonomous, while interlanguage description is not. To put it differently, whereas contrastive analysis can be performed without interlanguage analysis, the latter cannot be performed without the former, as the identification of an interlanguage form inevitably presupposes the comparison to a form that is regarded as "correct", "acceptable", etc. Nevertheless the expanded model concentrates on the diagnosis rather than on the prognosis of errors (unlike the Zagreb model, and some other models too, where "predictions for learning are made", Filipovic 1971: 110) and generally on the study of the respective interlanguage without, of course, neglecting the correspondences between the LI and L2. The expanded model has thus proved suitable for contrastive studies aimed at assisting teachers, course designers, and writers of teaching materials. Notwithstanding certain remaining loose ends that need tying up, the Bulgarian expanded model of contrastive analysis offers the advantages of a more global approach to the empirical evidence. As has already been pointed out, the connection and comparison between the two corpora (errors and translation) is facilitated by the close kinship of the notions of transfer and translation as well as by the use of identical inter- and intralingual transformations. On a more general plane this approach reflects the view that translation plays a much more important role in language contacts and change (interlanguage errors can be considered as instances of change, albeit temporary) than has traditionally been believed (for examples and details cf. Danchev 1982, 1984c, 1989).
3. Conclusion To say that the Bulgarian model of expanded contrastive analysis shares some features with the Serbo-Croatian-English project would be a correct, though incomplete, statement. With its broad scope including psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and other evidence and with its generally communicative orientation this model also has certain things in common with the Rumanian, Finnish and some other former and still functioning contrastive projects. At the same time the Bulgarian model of expanded contrastive analysis has certain specific features of its own, some of which were pointed out and discused in this paper.
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Notes \. For helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper I am grateful to Dr. P. Benatova from the Department of English and to Dr. E. Todeva from the Laboratory of Applied Linguistics at the Institute for Foreign Students in Sofia. The responsibility for any remaining errors and shortcomings is, of course, mine alone. 2. It is clearly difficult to decide who is a truly competent bilingual informant. In our contrastive work we usually refer to Bulgarian native speakers who work with English professionally, e.g. as university lecturers or as professional translators and/or interpreters. In order to neutralize any possible idiosyncrasies the usual practice is to have at least ten different informants. English native speakers with a knowledge of Bulgarian have been consulted too. 3. The term "deletion", made popular by generative grammarians, could be used too. However, "omission" seems more appropriate, as it does not necessarily imply that a given form was originally present (e. g., somewhere in the deep structure) and was subsequently deleted. 4. Although in somewhat different contexts, the possibility of "phonological translation" has been mentioned by some authors, e.g., J. Catford (1965) and others. 5. The one-time semantic identity of "transfer" and "translation" (from Latin transferre 'carry' and its past participle translation) is reflected in the residual meaning of "translate" as 'to move or carry from one place or position to another' (in seventh place in Collins English dictionary, 1983). It is interesting to note that in some older editions of English dictionaries this meaning comes first.
References Alatis, James E. (ed.) 1968 Report on the nineteenth annual round table meeting on linguistics and language studies: Contrastive linguistics and its pedagogical implications (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press). Andersen, Roger W. 1984 "The one-to-one principle of interlanguage construction", Language Learning 34: 77-96. Arabski, Janusz 1979 Errors as indications of the development of interlanguage (Katowice: Uniwersytet Slaski). Benatova, Paulina 1986 Anglijskijat predlog 'for', bälgarskijat predlog 'za' i grupa svärzani s tjah predlozi [The English preposition for, the Bulgarian preposition za and a group of related prepositions] (unpublished dissertation, University of Sofia). Bugarski, Ranko 1982 "Generative structuralism", Acta Linguistica Hafnensia 17: 49 — 60. Catford, John C. 1965 A linguistic theory of translation (London: Oxford University Press).
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Clark, Herbert H. 1968 "On the use and meaning of prepositions", Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour 7: 421 —431. Danchev (Dancev), Andrei 1976 "Za njakoi strani na säpostavitelnite izsledvanija [On some aspects of contrastive studies]", Bjuletin za sapostavitelno izsledvane na bälgarskija ezik s drugi ezici 1: 7 — 26. 1980a "Kontrastivna lingvistika, analiz na greskite i cuzdoezikovo obucenie [Contrastive linguistics, error analysis, and foreign-language teaching]", Sapostavitelno ezikoznanie i cuzdoezikovo obucenie (Veliko Turnovo: Izdatelstvo na Velikotärnovskija universitet) 1: 11—31. 1980b "Za razsiren obseg na teorijata na prevoda [On a broader range of translation theory]", Izkustvoto na prevoda (Sofia: Narodna kultura) 4: 56 — 69. 1982 "Transfer and translation", Finlance 2: 39-64. 1983a "Contrastive linguistics in Bulgaria", in: Kari Sajavaara (ed.), Jyväskylä crosslanguage studies 9: 39 — 64. 1983b "Kam vaprosa za razsirenija model na kontrastiven analiz [On the problem of the expanded model for contrastive analysis]" in: Hristo Parvev et al. (eds.), Balgarski ezik za cuzdenci — aktualni problemi na obucenieto (Sofia: Institut za cuzdestranni studenti), 264—27 . 1984a "Säpostavitelnite izsledvanija v Bälgarija [Contrastive studies in Bulgaria]", Sapostavitelno ezikoznanie 9.5: 5 — 20. 1984c "Translation and syntactic change", in: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Historical syntax (Berlin —New York — Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers), 47 — 60. 1989 "Translation — a universal language two acquisition process? In Janusz Arabski (ed.), On foreign language learning (Wroclaw: Ossolineum), 69 — 82. in press Sapostavitelno ezikoznanie: Teorija i metodologija [Contrastive linguistics: Theory and methodology ] (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo). Danchev, Andrei (ed.) 1988 (ed.) Error analysis: Bulgarian learners of English (Sofia: Narodna prosveta). Danchev, Andrei — Maria Grozeva 1985 "Zum erweiterten Modell für kontrastive Untersuchungen", in: Germanistisches Jahrbuch für die Volksrepublik Bulgarien (Beiheft), 7 — 21. Fedorov, Andrej Venediktovic 1953 Vvedenie v teoriju perevoda (Introduction to translation theory) (Moskva: Vyssaja skola). Filipovic, Rudolf 1967 "Contrastive analysis of English and Serbo-Croatian", SRAZ 23: 5-27. 1971 "The Yugoslav contrastive analysis project", in: Gerhard Nickel (ed.), Papers in contrastive linguistics (Cambridge: University Press), 107 — 114. 1972 "A compromise system. A link between linguistic borrowing and foreign language learning", YSCECP Studies 5: 19-29. 1974 "The use of CA and EA to practising teachers", YSCECP Pedagogical Materials 2: 3-17. 1984 "What are the primary data for contrastive analysis?", in: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Contrastive linguistics. Prospects and problems (Berlin —New York —Amsterdam: Mouton), 107-117.
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1985
"The Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian-English Contrastive Project: theoretical and methodological considerations", in: Rudolf Filipovic (ed.), Chapters in SerboCroatian-English contrastive grammar (Zagreb: Institute of Linguistics), 9-36. Fillenbaum, Samuel — Amos Rapoport 1971
Structures in the subjective lexicon (New York: Academic Press).
Fisiak, Jacek 1981 "Some introductory notes concerning contrastive linguistics", in: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Contrastive linguistics and the language teacher (Oxford: Pergamon Press), 1-12. Giunchi, Paola 1983
"Understanding comes first", Rassegna italiana di linguistica applicata 15:
311-316. Grozeva, Maria 1986 "Vidove greski pri izrazjavane na kategorijata determinacija, dopuskani ot bälgari, izucavasti nemski ezik [Types of errors in the use of determiners made by Bulgarian learners of German]", Sapostavitelno ezikoznanie i cuzdoezikovo obucenie (Sofia: Institut za cuzdestranni studenti), 5 — 6: 66 — 74. Halliday, Michael A. K. — Angus Mclntosh — Peter Strevens 1964 The linguistic sciences and language teaching (London: Longman). Ivir, Vladimir
1979
"Remarks on contrastive analysis and translation", in: Horst Raabe (ed.), Trends in kontrastiver Linguistik P (Tübingen: Narr), 93 — 104.
James, Carl 1971 "The exculpation of contrastive linguistics", in: Gerhard Nickel (ed.), Papers in contrastive linguistics (Cambridge: University Press), 53 — 68. Levenston, E. A. 1965 "The translation-paradigm: A technique for contrastive syntax", IRAL 3: 221-225. Lingorska, Blagovesta 1978 "Po njakoi problemi na korpusa, prednaznacen za säpostavitelni izsledvanija [On some problems of a corpus to be used in contrastive studies]", sapostavitelno ezikoznanie 3.4: 3 — 14. Nenkova, Maria 1983 "Njakoi greski pri usvojavaneto na anglijskite modalni glagoli [Some errors in the acquisition of the English modal verbs]", Ruski i zapadni ezici 2: 40-49. Nida, Eugene A. 1964 Towards a science of translating (Leiden: Brill). Richards, Jack C. 1971 "A non-contrastive approach to error analysis", English Language Teaching 25: 204-219.
Selinker, Larry 1972 "Interlanguage", IRAL 3: 209-231. Todeva, Elka 1982 "Kam väprosa za prevoda i prevodnata ekvivalentnost [On the question of translation and translation equivalence]", Sapostavitelno ezikoznanie i cuzdoeszikovo obucenie (Sofia: Institut za cuzdestranni studenti) 4: 253 — 273.
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"Ezikovite korpusi — doslizenija, problemi i perspektivi [Language corpora — achievements, problems, and perspectives]", Säpostavitelno ezikoznanie 12. Tonceva, Elisaveta 1986 "Analiz na greski pri upotrebata na anglijskite clenni formi v mezdinnija ezik na bälgari [An analysis of errors in the use of the English article in the interlingua of Bulgarians]", Säpostavitelno ezikoznanie i cuzdoeszikovo obucenie (Sofia: Institut za cuzdestranni studenti) 5 — 6: 351 —360. Wardhaugh, Ronald 1970 "The contrastive analysis hypothesis", TESOL Quarterly 4.2: 123-130.
^
A. P. Chekhov's short story Sutocka and two Serbo-Croat translations: The problem of translation versus interpretation Car in Davidsson
1. Introduction A research project has been under way in the Department of Russian at Abo Academy the purpose of which is to study "form and content" in literary prose text with special reference to Chekhov's stories. A first report from the project was published in 1984 (Davidsson — Björklund), in which Chekhov's stories Scast'e (Björklund) and Sutocka (Davidsson — Björklund) were analyzed. Sutocka was published for the first time in 1886 in no. 10 of the humorous magazine Svercok. Thirteen years later, in 1899, when Chekhov was at the height of his career as a writer, he had an adapted version published in volume 2 of A. F. Marks' edition of his collected works. In all probability Chekhov reworked the story some time in early 1899 (Chekhov 1980: 188, letter no. 2771). The above report (DavidssonBjörklund 1984a) gives first an analysis of the pattern of composition of the tale in its later version seen against the background of the earlier version. The report also makes suggestions as to how the story should be interpreted. These suggestions are based on parallelisms and chains of chohesion in the text. Finally, an attempt is made to see to what extent the two existing Swedish translations of the story make possible the same interpretation as the original Russian text. The result of this was that the Swedish translations, by replacing the repetitions found in the Russian text with varying expressions, did not have sufficiently "strong" chains of cohesion and parallelisms to allow the same possibilities for interpretation. This paper will study two expressions found in the Russian text which have been actualised by two Serbo-Croat translations, C39 and L59.1 Using the same methods as those adopted in Davidsson —Björklund (1984a), an attempt will be made to clarify the role played by the expressions in the Russian text and their importance for different inter-
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pretations. This will be followed by seeing whether the expressions, in their Serbo-Croat form, permit the same interpretations as the original. Before addressing the problem of the expressions it is necessary to give a short resume of the contents of Sutocka (a short story of four pages) and a short description of the methods used.
2. The contents of Sutocka (Ά little joke') It is a cold sunny winter's day at about dinner time. The narrator — the story is told in the first person — and Nadezda Petrovna are standing on a hill that slopes away in front of them. (I) 2 The narrator persuades the frightened Nadja to ride down the slope with him. They push off on their sledge. When they reach maximum speed and the wind is whistling in their ears, he says in a quiet voice, "I love you, Nadja". (1.1 -2-2.2-3-4-4.1) Nadja, who is pale and more dead than alive after the ride, says that she never wants to ride again for anything in the world. But she recovers and begins to wonder whether she really heard those four words. The riddle gives her no rest. She wants to ask but the words will just not come out. Finally she says, "Let's take another turn". And again, when the sledge is halfway down the slope, he says in a low voice "I love you, Naden'ka". (5-5.1-6-7-7.1-7.2-7.3-8-8.1) Curiosity grows in Nadja. Did he really say those four words or was it just her imagination? When he asks if they should go home, he gets the surprising answer that she likes sledging. And so they take a third ride. And the four words are repeated in the same way as before. (9-9.11-10-10.1-10.2-11-12-12.1) The riddle remains a riddle. Is it he or is it the wind that whispers those words? The following morning he receives a note from her in which she asks him to fetch her if he is going up to the sledging slope. In this way they continue their sledge rides every day and every time the words are repeated. (13-13.II3-14-14.1) The four words take on the form of a narcotic for her which she cannot live without. The fear she feels at every ride only increases her enjoyment. Who it is who speaks the four words she does not know. She suspects both the man and the wind. But which of the two no longer seems to be important. The important thing is for her to hear them. (15) One day she fails to see him on the slope and decides to ride alone. She wants to see if she hears the words when he is not there. He stands
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hidden in the crowd and watches her riding down the slope. He sees how fear takes a grasp of her and deprives her of her ability to understand. (16). Then comes the month of March. The sledge slope disappears and sledging comes to an end. There is no longer anyone to say the words; the wind is no longer heard and the storyteller himself will soon leave for St. Petersburg, perhaps for ever. (17) One day around dusk he is in his garden, which adjoins the house where Nadja lives. He sees her come out onto the entrance porch and notices how she turns her sad gaze up towards the sky. She stretches out her arms and seems to pray to the wind to bring her the four words. He goes up to the fence, waits for a puff of wind and says half aloud, "I love you, Nadja". (18-18.1) Nadja is suddenly transformed. She shouts out and her whole face breaks into a smile. She stretches out her arms to the wind. She is glad, happy and so beautiful. (19) He goes in to pack. (20) That happened a long time ago. Now Naden'ka is married and has three children. But she has not forgotten when they went sledging together. It is the most beautiful memory in her whole life. (21) But now that he is older he cannot understand why he spoke those words, why he joked ... . (22)
3. Short introduction to the methods used in Davidsson — Bjorkhmd (1984) In her analysis of Chekhov's Scast'e ('Happiness') Björklund examines the interplay between the chains of cohesion in the text which arise when the connecting factors in the text are linked together linearly into semantic chains. This examination leads her to the interpretation that "happiness = to seek happiness" (Björklund 1984: 38-48). But the text can also be seen from another angle which opens the way to further interpretations. Since words/expressions in the text are compared with each other on the basis of similarity/dissimilarity, they become linked together in groups and form parallelisms. Among these parallelisms there are some that contain an element associated with knowledge or experience of a world which lies beyond the world of the text. Via such parallelisms Björklund has extracted from Scast'e the interpretations
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"happiness = technological development", "happiness = social justice" (1984: 73-76). On the basis of the results of her analysis of Seas t'e Björklund suggests a model of "text coordination" for literary texts. In this model there are three levels: i
The coherence level
ii
The semantic-thematic cohesion level
iii
The associative-aesthetic cohesion level
These three levels provide different kinds of information: 1.
Content-factual information
2.
Content-conceptual information
3.
Content-subtextual information4
A literary text is shaped in such a way that it makes possible interpretations on at least three levels. The first level mediates content-factual information, in other words, it is at this level that the text world is constructed. An example of the interpretation provided by such information is the account given of the content of Sutocka in section 2 of this paper. The second level, together with the content-factual information level, gives rise to content-conceptual information. The description of a world found in a text consists of words/expressions which have their referents to the world of the text. The words/expressions that refer to the same phenomenon in this world are linked together in semantic chains. The chains are intertwined into a network by different referents being linked by other referents that are common to them. An example of such contentconceptual information is the interpretation of Scast'e as "happiness = to seek happiness". The third level, in combination with the content-factual information and content-conceptual information levels, provides the content-subtextual information. Words/expressions can be linked together in another way than at the content-factual information and content-conceptual information levels. By comparison they can be associated with each other, grouped together and so form parallelisms. These parallelisms are to be found at all levels of language. They can provoke associations with a
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world which lies outside that of the text, they can be linked with knowledge or experience of the outer world and form new parallelisms, so enriching the text. Examples of such interpretations which this information, content-subtextual information, together with content-factual information and content-conceptual information, give rise to are interpretations of Scast 'e as "happiness = technological development" and "happiness = social justice". The literary text is seen as a complex network formed through interaction between its different elements within and between the different levels. Charting and "measuring" this interaction could serve as an instrument for determining the type and degree of artistry in a work of literature.
4. The phrase / love you The phrase / love you occurs six times in Sutocka: \.
Ja ljublju vas (5 times)
2.
Ja vas ljublju (once in paragraph 20)
As connecting factors of the semantic content "love" the phrases can be linked together linearly with other connectives in the text that refer to the same phenomenon, "love", and so form the cohesive chain "love". In the interpretation of Sutocka as "love is a riddle" (Davidsson 1984: 136—137) this chain is linked via the cohesive chains "he" and "she" with the cohesive chain "riddle". It is, then, content-conceptual information combined with content-factual information which leads to this interpretation. The phrases can, however, be regarded from another view-point. Since they are repeated, they are linked to each other by comparison and can be looked upon as parallelisms. The first five form parallelisms by dint of their similarity, the sixth and the last by dint of its dissimilarity from the five preceding: the word order SVO — SOV. Because the phrase has earlier, in five cases, formed parallelisms based on similarity, the last, which is based on dissimilarity, is unexpected and comes as a surprise. It therefore assumes a prominent position in the text and is strongly distinguished from the surrounding text, taking on a heightened associative "capability". It consequently opens the way to association, through the
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word order SOV, with the following poem by Puskin, which has a theme very reminiscent of that of Sutocka: Ja vas ljubil: ljubov' esce, byt' mozet, V duse moej ugasla ne sovsem; No pust' ona vas bol'se ne trevozit; Ja ne chocu pecalit' vas nicem. Ja vas ljubil bezmolvno, beznadezno, To robost'ju, to revnost'ju tomim; Ja vas ljubil tak iskrenno, tak nemo, Kak daj vam bog ljubimoj byt' drugim. (Puskin 1957: 133)5 As a result of this association a new parallelism arises, based on similarity, which is anchored in something outside the world of the text. A parallelism of this kind can only arise through knowledge or experience of the world that lies outside that of the text itself. The interpretation that this parallelism gives rise to emanates from the content-subtextual information together with the content-factual and content-conceptual information. In C39 and L59 the phrase is translated in all six cases by Ja vas volim. It is linked linearly with the other connectives in the text that refer to "love" to form the cohesive chain "love". Via the "strong" cohesive chains "he" and "she" the chain "love" is linked together with the "strong" cohesive chain "riddle", thus opening the way for the interpretation of Sutocka as love is a riddle. The C39 and L59 translations consequently make possible the same interpretation, i.e., love is a riddle as the original Russian text. It is different, however, with the other interpretation, which is based on the parallelism that arises in the Russian original from the association with the Puskin poem. In C39 and L59 the six phrases are naturally linked with each other by means of comparison based on similarity. But, since neither C39 nor L59 gives the reversed word order, the parallelism which is based on dissimilarity and which causes the phrase to stand out from the surrounding text is lost. It is true that a certain variation characterises the six phrases; in the second and last, Naden'ka is used as the form of the name whereas in the other cases the form Nadja occurs. This variation, also found in the Russian text, does not exert the same effect as the variation resulting from inversion of the verb and object.
The problem of translation versus interpretation Sutocka
1
N
109
C39-L59
2
N-ka
3
N
N
N N-ka
N N-ka
N
N
Figure l. The 6 cases of the phrase 7 love you Nadja/Naden 'ka'm Sutocka and in C39 — L59.
Put in the form of a diagram the differences in force between the parallelisms in the Russian text and in C39 —L59 might be illustrated as in figure 1. The numbers 1 to 6 represent repetitions of the phrase / love you. It is important to note that the form Nadja only occurs in the four cases marked with N while the form "Naden'ka" occurs altogether 19 times.
5. The phrase pokataja ploskost' In the Russian text the concept "sledge" occurs on 12 occasions altogether, partly in the form sanki (11 times) and partly in the form sani (once). The concept "to sledge, sledging" is expressed by words derived from kat- and occurs 11 times. In addition, there is also the derivative pokataja, which has the meaning 'sloping' in the phrase pokataja ploskosf 'sloping surface'. Table 1 shows all the positions of these san- and fcaf-words in Sutocka in the column on the left. They are given in the order in which they are found in the story and in the inflection in which they occur. In the other two columns are given the words by which 'sledge' and 'to sledge, sledging' have been translated in C39 and L59. It turns out that both C39 and L59 use derivatives of san- for 'sledge' (C39: 12 times, L59: 10 times), 'sledging' (7 times) and once for the verb 'to sledge'. For the remaining three occasions they have two different verbs with roots other than kat-. Pokataja ploskost' 'sloping surface' is rendered in C39 by strma ravan 'steep slope' and in L59 by strmina 'steep'. How important are these departures from the original text when it comes to interpreting the story? As can be seen from table 1 a "state of equilibrium" exists between the kat-group and the sort-group.6 The difference between them is contained primarily in the fact that the deviant word in the jaw-group comes last
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Table 1. C39
Sw/ocfca 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8 10. 11. 12. 13.
sanki sanki sanki sanki sanki
sänke sänke sänke sänke sänke / t/vt ~0 JC*f
sanki
sänke se spustismo sankanje > sankanje >
P/jfllfl i3U//rt.f
Oti/c/vC
je spustala se sankamo —> sankanje > 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 20
1+2 + 1
sankanje sanki sanej
katila katat 'sja katok 11 + 1
sanjke se spustismo sankanje ——> sankanje ——> sankanje ——> sankanje ——> sankanje ——» sanjkama sankanje ——> sanjke sanjki jureci se sanjkamo -—> sankanje ——>
sankax katok
sanjke
f/rnifp
sankama sankanje sankanje
&Ö/0&
sanjke sanjke sanjke se spustimo
C/7*j/lJt i)Uf f Lr/v
/cflf&ii &afo&
sanjke sanjke
sanki
katili katan 'e kalan'e
1 + 11
strmina sänke
projurimo
pr oka t im
.
15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.
strma ravan
pokataja
0 J7.
L59
> > > sankama > san/ce Jß/Z/C/'
18
In Sutocka the root kat- occurs in words 12 times: 11 times with the meaning 'to sledge, sledging', once with the meaning 'sloping'. For 'sledge' the common form 'sanki' is used 11 times and the form 'sani' once. In C39 words with the root son- are used 20 times both in the sense of 'sledging' and 'sledge'. Pokataja ploskost' is rendered by 'steep slope', 'to sledge' by three different verbs. In L59 words with the root son- are used 18 times in the sense of 'sledging, sledge' (in two cases 'sledge' has been left untranslated). For pokataja ploskost' the word 'steep' is used. To sledge' is rendered by three different verbs.
and in the other group first. In a similar fashion as with the deviant word order of the phrase / love you, so in this case, too, the deviant form takes on a prominent position. The first 11 forms of sanki are linked to each other by comparison based on similarity and are regarded as parallelisms. The deviant sani, on the other hand, is compared with the 11 preceding sanki and constitutes a parallelism based on dissimilarity. In this way sani is given a prominent position in relation to the surrounding text.
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The word occurs in paragraph 16 (see account of contents, section 2) when the girl has sledged down the slope alone and the narrator sees her getting up from the sledge: Ja vizu tol'ko, hak onapodnimaetsja iz sanej ... Ί only see how she rises from the "sledge" ...'. By using the word sani, the picture of fear expressed by the narrator's "I" is also seen from the girl's viewpoint: the "sledge" has grown in step with her fear. In similar fashion — but in reverse order — pokataja also takes on a prominent position. On the first encounter with the word it is certainly interpreted as 'sloping'. However, after the encounter with the 11 other words belonging to the kat-group with the meanings 'to sledge, sledging' which between them form parallelisms based on similarity, pokataja is given prominence by reason of its deviant meaning and the whole expression pokataja ploskosf stands out from the surrounding text. Under the influence of the other 11 kai-farms with the meaning 'to sledge' pokataja ploskosf becomes associated with the phraseological expression katit'sja po naklonnojploskosti, which might be translated literally by 'to venture out on a sloping surface' and which in Russian means 'to venture upon something that leads to one's downfall'. Pokataja ploskosf is therefore ambiguous in the text. It stands for both 'sledging slope' and also for 'downfall'. As has been indicated, it appears in the first paragraph and there signals the topic of the story: the two young persons' incipient love is on the road to its "downfall". The use of pokataja ploskosf in the Russian text would seem to be a play on words, "a little joke" with words so to speak, something which it is almost impossible to put over in translation. Neither C39 nor L59 give more than the concrete meaning 'slope' in their translations: C39
Od nasih nogu pa do same zemlje pruza se strma ravan ...
L59
Od nasih nogu po sve do zemlje vuce se strmina ...
6. The positioning of the expressions pokataja ploskost' and Ja vas ljublju in the story As pointed out above, the expression pokataja ploskosf appears in paragraph 1 and Ja vas ljublju, Naden'ka in paragraph 21. These paragraphs are both of about the same length (approximately 7 lines). Both expressions occur in the fifth line in their particular stretch of text. The phrase Ja vas ljublju, Naden 'ka also occurs five lines from the end of the story.
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8-9-10-11-12
Figure 2. The strong positions of pokataja ploskost', which opens the story, and of Ja vas ljublju, Naden'ka, which closes the story.
Both expressions serve to "stand out" by reason of parallelism based on dissimilarity from the rest of the text. In this way they are assigned a "strong position" in the story, from which they "open" and "close" the story respectively (see figure 2). Consequently, they form a parallelism based on dissimilarity (contrast). The last five lines of the text with the concluding words zacem ja sutil 'why I joked' cause the reader to return to the title of the story and to ponder on what the story is trying to say, what message it is trying to convey. In this way the reader may be tempted to reread the story ...
7. Summary of the results of the study The study of the translations in C39 and L59 of the two expressions Ja vas ljublju and pokataja ploskost' shows how great the difficulties are that face the translator of a literary text. At a first reading both C39 and L59 seem to render the Russian text in a correct and enjoyable fashion, which, it must be admitted, is the first thing that can be expected of a translation. It is only after repeated reading and comparison with the original text that possible shortcomings make themselves felt. It is the same thing as with any literary piece of art — but in reverse; it is only after repeated reading that the full breadth and depth of the work are revealed.
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Chekhov's texts challenge the reader to repeated perusal and examination of his work. One of the reasons for this is certainly latent in his storytelling technique, which betrays an almost "mathematical" skill in exploiting the possibilities offered by the language of combining form and content. After Chekhov's death Lev Tolstoy said in an interview, "I can assure you that when it comes to technique, Chekhov stands on a much higher plane than I. He is unique as a storyteller ... ."7 What exactly Tolstoy meant by "technique" is not clear but it may be assumed that the word alludes to Chekhov's masterly way of using his instrument, the language, to get his message across, by combining form and content. By studying the translations C39 and L59 I have directed attention towards the phrases described above. This constitutes in part a complement to the earlier analysis of the story (Davidsson 1984) and at the same time throws further light on Chekhov's storytelling technique. This paper does not bring our study of Sutocka to its conclusion. It is our belief that, with the aid of linguistic methodology, we have reached a stage in our research project that may lead to even greater understanding of Chekhov's intention in writing Sutocka and of the technique he uses to achieve his aims. Research of the type illustrated by this study should, in my opinion, be able to provide us with useful contributions to research into translation techniques. Translation is an extremely important part of that branch of linguistic research which deals with languages in contact.8 Notes 1. C39 refers to the translation published in Cyrillic in 1939 in Belgrade by M.M.Pesic and Kosara Cvetkovic. L59 refers to the translation by Ivan Kusan and Tomislav Prpic published in Latin characters in Zagreb in 1959. 2. The figures in brackets refer to the Russian text (Chekhov 1976). The paragraphs are numbered in consecutive order from 1 to 22. Replies, marked in the published version by dashes, are indicated by the figure for the immediately preceding paragraph and a decimal point: 1.1, 2.1, etc. A reply not actually spoken, marked in print by quotation marks, is indicated by two figures after the decimal point: 9.11, 13.11. 3. The unspoken reply is erroneously marked in Chekhov (1976) by a dash. 4. The terms, which are taken from Gal'perin (1981), are called in Russian: 1. soderzatel'nofaktual'naja informacija, 2. soderzatel'no-koncepluarnaja informacija, 3. soderzatel'nopodtekstovaja informacija. For references to other linguistic sources see Davidsson — Bjorklund (1984a).
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5. A linear translation is given by Walter Arndt in Pushkin Threefold (New York: Dutton, 1972): I used to love you: love has still, it may be, Not died down altogether in my soul; But may it not alarm you any longer; I do not want to sadden you with aught. I used to love you wordless, without hope, With shyness now, with jealousy now racked; I loved you so ingenuously, so dearly, As God may grant you to be loved by another. 6. It is worth mentioning here that this state of equilibrium did not exist in the first version. Instead of the verb forms prokatitn/katili the first version had proedemsja/proexavsi. 7. The quotation appears in Varencova — Sceboleva (1984: 6) without any details as to its origin. 8. Since I wrote this article, I have discussed the same topic in a lecture at the seminary in Helsinki, 2 — 3 June 1987, which is published in Studio Russica Helsingiensia et Tartuensia (Slavica Helsingiensia 6, 1989, 87-92).
References Björklund, Martina 1984 "Texten som konstverk. En analys av A. P. Cechovs berattelse Scast'e [The text as a work of art. An analysis of A. P. Chekhov's story 'Happiness']", in: Davidsson-Björklund 1984: 1-116. Cexov, Anton Pavlovic 1939 "Sala [A joke]", in: Sabrana dela 3 (Beograd: Narodna prosveta). 1959 "Mala sala [A little joke]", in: Sabrana djela 3 (Zagreb: Zora). 1976 "Sutocka [A little joke]", in: Polnoe sobranie socinenij i pisem. Socinenija 5 (Moskva: Nauka), 21-24, 489-490, 612-613. 1980 Pis'ma [Letters] 8. (Polnoe sobranie socinenij i pisem) (Moskva: Nauka). Davidsson, Carin 1984 "Vagen till konstverket (The way to a work of art)", in: Davidsson — Björklund 1984: 117-152. Davidsson, Carin —Martina Björklund 1984 A. P. Cechovs Lyckan och Ett litet skämt. Form och innehall [A. P. Chekhov's 'Happiness' and little joke'. Form and content] (Meddelanden frän Stiftelsens for Abo Akademi forskningsinstitut 98) (Abo Akademi). Gal'perin, Il'ja— Romanovic 1981 Tekst kak ob"ekt lingvisticeskogo issledovanija [The text as an object of linguistic investigation] (Moskva: Nauka). Puskin, Alexsandr Sergeevic 1957 Polnoe sobranie socinenij v desjati tomax [collected works in ten volumes] 3 (Moskva: Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR). Varencova, I. —Sceboleva, G. 1984 A. P. Cexov. Dokumenty. Fotografy [A. P. Chekhov. Documents. Photographs] (Moskva: Sovetskaja Rossija).
Theoretical contrastive linguistics and typological characterization Laszlo Dezsö
0. Preliminary remarks From the end of the 1960s up to the mid-1980s great advances have taken place in contrastive linguistics as well as in typology. Contrastive grammatical research has become a world-wide phenomenon. Strikingly different languages are contrasted with the great languages of the world and with one another. The majority of the literature has not been written in the great languages, which makes it practically impossible to survey. The field investigated by contrastive linguistics is immensely wide, therefore we have had to reduce considerably the set of questions to be discussed here. We will concentrate on typology, more specifically, on the application of typological characterization from the viewpoint of contrastive grammar. We will only briefly touch upon the question of how contrastive research is employed in typology and in the characterization of individual languages. We have had to reduce the number of the languages to be examined: we can consider only the Middle-East-European contrastive grammatical research. But if we take into account that this region played a pioneering role in the history of contrastive research and that the contrastive studies here have been on the increase ever since, then the necessary narrowing of the subject-matter does not amount to a considerable impoverishment of the topic indicated in the title of the paper and, at the same time, the statements to be made are more easily exemplifiable. The Serbo-Croatian language manifests a special relationship between our honoree, Professor Filipovic, and the author of this paper. For him, it is his mother tongue as well as the object of his research. For me, it is the language whose history I have investigated. The Hungarian-Serbo-Croatian contrastive grammar on typological principles marked the beginning of my contrastive research, so special attention will be paid to this language. We cannot give even a sketchy outline of the development of typological and contrastive research; therefore, we have chosen two periods for presentation: the beginning of the 1970s and that of the 1980s. We will only briefly refer to the 1960s and we will pick
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out only one set of questions from the mid-1980s, the set we consider instrumental as regards further development. Accordingly, the major issues in the paper will be the following. 1. Typology and the possibilities of its application in contrastive linguistics at the beginning of the 1970s. 2. Typology, typological characterization, and contrastive grammar in the 1980s.
1. Typology and the possibilities of its application in contrastive linguistics at the beginning of the 1970s 1.1. Typology in the 1960s The history of typology cannot be separated from that of general linguistics and from the changes of the principles of the description of language. That is why it is expedient to examine it in its relationship to general linguistics. This requires the analysis of the development of the trends that came about in the 1930s and 1940s and their relation to typology. The succinct treatment of the subject-matter inevitably leads to simplifications as regards even typological problems and a detailed elucidation of these questions will be offered elsewhere (cf. Dezsö forthcoming). In an early work of the outstanding American structural linguist, Edward Sapir (Sapir 1921) there is a chapter on typology discussing one of the fundamental questions of the morphology-oriented typology of the nineteenth century in such an exhaustive way that it has not lost anything of its timeliness and has proved to be classical as to both its methods and the kind of its typological approach. At the same time, it is undeniable that nineteenth-century typology handed down a much larger set of questions which have been answered differently by various European trends in the twentieth century. From a European, thus, perhaps, a simplified, perspective it seems that from the 1930s onwards the Bloomfieldian approach, which provided a more precise method of the description of language, became dominant. Typology did not have a role in it, so typological investigation was confined to being peripheral and focused on questions like the theory of relativity in language, a problem which is not meaningful for us. Still, it was the survival of the Sapirian heritage that resulted in the research of universale in the 1960s and thus became one of the determining factors in the large-scale development of typology in the following two decades. This trend owes its
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development to the work of Greenberg. It is the best-known trend in the development of typology and thus is not discussed here as much as it actually deserves to be (cf. Greenberg 1963). Of the structural linguistic trends in Europe, it was in the approach of the Prague School that typology was assigned a significant role. Universalism is the basic characteristic feature of Jakobson's and Trubeckoj's theories, mainly manifested in phonology. It was V. Skalicka who reformulated and developed, in grammatical descriptions, the study of types which he employed in the characterization of individual languages as well (e. g., Hungarian, Czech, Russian, Chinese, and Bantu languages). Unfortunately, although Skalicka himself was quite well-known, his works were not widely read. This was due to the fact that his most important works were written in Czech and those written in one of the major languages characterized less familiar languages (e. g., the description of Hungarian in Skalicka 1935 [1979]). The language barrier was no less problematic as regards the work of Vilem Mathesius. Already in the 1920s and 1930s, he wrote papers of basic importance that can well be regarded as the first representative works of contrastive linguistics (cf. Mathesius 1928 [1964], 1936 [1964]). In these, he established basic characteristics of two or more languages more successfully than contemporary typology could. His classical work on English grammar was written in Czech, and it was translated into English only decades later (Mathesius 1975). The prevalent grammatical principles of the 1950s were not favorable to the grammatical tradition of the Prague School. Though V. Skalicka's work had continued, it received a response only in the 1960s — and we consider that due attention has not been paid to him to this date. The leading figure of the Copenhagen School, Louis Hjelmslev, combined the reform of the principles of the description of language with the reshaping of general grammar, a branch of typology (Hjelmslev 1928). His monograph on case systems (Hjelmslev 1935, 1937) was a significant realization of general grammar conceived in this manner. From the 1940s, Hjelmslev gradually became interested in glossematics, a new linguistic theory, in which typology played a basic role. The literature on the history of linguistics usually does not pay enough attention to the role typology played in Hjelmslev's work, in the shaping and wording of his linguistic theory. In Soviet linguistics in the 1940s, I. I. Mescaninov and his disciples initiated a new trend of language typology in which the fundamental syntactic relations and their formal expressions were the focus of investigation. As typological research was closely related to Marrist theory, it became relegated to the background in the 1950s, due to the effects of
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the demolishing criticism directed at Marrism. Mescaninov published a booklet summarizing his typology only at the beginning of the 1960s (Mescaninov 1963). From this and his later books it is clear that the typological conception of the Mescaninov School has been one of the significant trends of the morphosyntactic study of types. Soviet structural typology at the outset at the beginning of the 1960s continued the traditions of the Russian and Soviet theory of language and grammar, relying, at the same time, on the findings of European and American structuralists. Boris A. Uspensky (Uspensky 1968) aimed at the revival of morphological typology. Significant research was carried out in Slavic linguistics. A universal grammatical conception was developed on the basis of Xolodovic's approach to grammatical theory (cf. Xolodovic 1979, which contains the author's selected writings). Its first objective was the analysis of causative constructions (cf. Xolodovic 1969). In this paper we cannot give a survey of the work of outstanding researchers, apart from a brief mention of the significant trends; consequently, the presentation is not complete. In sum, we can characterize the 1960s as a period in which, after an unfavorable period of two decades, there emerged favorable conditions for a remarkable development in typology, which we witnessed in the 1980s. The scope of typological research has gradually shifted to syntax. The research of universale has developed in addition to the study of types, and the traditions of general grammar have been carried on in universal grammar. The investigation of complex types has become the basic objective of the study of types and the morphology-based study of types in V. Skalicka's works is made use of in the characterization of individual languages as well. For the first time in the history of typology, notable research groups were organized: the Stanford project of universale coordinated by Greenberg and the Leningrad research team led by Xolodivic, followed by the Cologne project of the investigation of universale at the beginning of the 1970s. 1.2. The possibilities of the application of typology in contrastive grammar at the beginning of the 1970s As far as I can see, systematic contrastive linguistic research with theoretical claims was initiated in Vilem Mathesius' papers mentioned above. But the author's major work was written in Czech and, consequently, was far from being influential. On the one hand, the Czech language presented a problem for English scholars and, on the other hand, an
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English study could hardly arouse the interest of Slavists. E. D. Polivanov's works on contrastive linguistics have not been taken note of to this date. The first significant work evoking much response from Slavists was the two-volume Russian-Slovak contrastive grammar of Alexander V. Isacenko (Isacenko 1954, 1960), but this was mainly due to the author's important statements on Russian grammar. The Soviet dissertations and papers on contrastive linguistics have remained unfamiliar even to EastEuropean readers. As far as can be judged from the distance of twenty years, it was only Kruselnickaja's German-Russian contrastive linguistic study that met with some response, mostly due to its enlargement on the questions of the communicative analysis of sentence structure (Kruselnickaja 1961). The American contrastive linguistic research in the 1960s had an inspiring effect on East-Central-European linguistics and led to the establishment of contrastive linguistic projects in Yugoslavia, Poland, Rumania, and Hungary. It was also at this time that the Serbo-CroatianHungarian contrastive project was organized. As regards its profile, it was quite different from the others, whose "target-language" was English. In addition to this difference of target-language, there was also a disparity in terms of linguistic tradition. The author of the present paper took an active part both in the English-Hungarian and in the Serbo-CroatianHungarian projects. Below, by analyzing his own works of that time, from a distance of nearly two decades, he will set out to reconstruct the possibilities of the application of typology in contrastive grammar. Syntax became the focus of grammatical theory, which was favorable for contrastive research whose natural and primary domain is syntax. But this fact was unfavorable for the application of typology, in which syntactic investigation, though begun by that time, had not become the essential component of wide-spread research until the middle of the 1970s. It was also unfavorable that grammatical theories usually ignored the subject-matter as well as the results of typology; moreover, typological characterization fell beyond the boundaries of descriptive grammatical research. Of the prominent grammatical theories of that time, it was only Fillmore's case grammar that appreciated, partially at least, the questions investigated by typology. That is why typologists gave his theory a favorable reception. The so-called "deep cases", or, in current terms, semantic roles, constitute one of the components of typological approaches even today (cf. Comrie 1981: 56-59; Deze 1984: 18-21).
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The reliable and up-to-date description of two (or more) languages under examination in the form of either standard grammars or monographs on subsystems is a substantial factor of contrastive grammar on typological principles. In the case of languages strikingly different from a morphological point of view, like Hungarian, English, and SerboCroatian, it is essential that the functions of the forms should be reliably delineated according to at least relatively identical criteria, in order to make comparison possible. This is often not the case, and it is the task of a contrastive linguist to adjust the descriptions of the two languages in such a way as to meet this requirement. He often has to provide the descriptive analyses of the two languages if there are none or if they are not appropriate for comparison. When comparing Serbo-Croatian and Hungarian, at first we dealt with phenomena whose description had already been supplied in a form applicable for comparison in at least one of the two languages. However, the detailed comparison of English and Hungarian word order and intonation could not be carried out because of the formal differences between the two languages (English is an SVO language with fixed word order, while Hungarian is SOV with partly free word order), and because of the different criteria applied in the descriptive analyses of the two languages. In order to illustrate and enlarge on what has been said above, it is expedient to analyze a concrete work. This will be a book by the author of the present paper: Tipoloska razmatranja [Typological studies], which was published in 1971 (Deze 1971) as the first volume of the series "Serbo-Croatian-Hungarian Contrastive Grammar"; its task was to give an outline of the questions to be investigated in the series. (The reason why I have chosen to refer to my own publication is that it was the first contrastive volume applying typological criteria and its approach was typical of the day.) It was Hungarian linguistic research at that time, mainly my investigations, and the findings on Serbo-Croatian descriptive grammar, especially the works of Milka Ivic, that served as the basis for the comparison of the two languages. Mention has already been made of the typological background in the previous section. As to grammatical theory, I made use of Fillmore's case grammar but the whole approach was inspired most by the results of East European structural linguistics, undergoing a revival in the 1960s. This volume was an abridged version of a study written in Hungarian in which I presented a survey of my typological research in the 1960s (for a detailed description of certain questions, see Deze 1971, in English: Dezsö 1982, parts 1 and 2).
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The book comprises three chapters discussing the predicate and its arguments (pp. 7 — 49), the noun phrase (pp. 51—86) and the communicative organization of sentence structure and word order (pp. 83 —103). The first chapter describes the deep structure in the framework of case grammar. The surface realization of deep structure is executed with the help of grammatical relations: subject, object and adverbials. The formal expressions of the parts of the sentence in Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian represent two different subtypes of the nominative type and the classifications of the object and the adverbials are notably different in the descriptive grammars of the two languages. This compelled me to expand, by a more detailed analysis of the nominative languages, the syntactic typology of the Mescaninov School, in which the difference between ergative and nominative languages is prevalent. As two languages with case systems were to be compared, Hjelmslev's typological case theory was useful. On this basis, Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian can be described as representatives of two different types. In the characterization of the case system, and in the matter of distinctive features, however, I mostly drew on Jakobson's study of the Russian case system (Jakobson 1936). I made wide use of the findings of the Estonian-Russian contrastive grammar, one of the early outstanding works of Soviet contrastive linguistics, both in syntactic typology and case theory, although this grammar had not taken the results of typology into account (Pjall' et al. 1962). Hjelmslev's study drew my attention to the typological importance of local relations and cases. This led to the comparison of the third type of case systems with the others. Serbo-Croatian represents a well-known type of Slavonic verbal aspect and thus I set out to characterize the Hungarian aspectual system relying on the Slavonic aspect which is also related to determination. The Hungarian system of articles was to be confronted with the expressions of determination in Serbo-Croatian, in which there are no articles. However, both aspect and determination, as two kinds of actualization, are interrelated with the typology of sentence structure, with the morphological expression of the basic syntactic relations (through cases) and with the types of word order and the communicative organization of the sentence. The problems of word order and those of sentence structure manifest themselves in a peculiar way in sentences containing a copula or a verb of possession (habeo verb). Serbo-Croatian has habeo verb whereas Hungarian does not. According to Greenberg's well-known universals, the questions of word order are implicationally related to each other, but the internal order of attributes poses a further problem.
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The nominal syntagm realizes a subordinate proposition in the form of dependent clauses, participial constructions, or noun phrases with attributes. There are significant similarities in Hungarian and SerboCroatian with respect to the use of subordinate clauses, but the structures as well as the applications of participial structures and noun phrases with attributes are remarkably different. This field had not been, or had hardly been, examined from a typological point of view up to that time. For those who are familiar with typology, it is clear from the foregoing presentation that the phenomena under examination set off, in the manner of a chain-reaction, the need for the connection of the results of different subsystems investigated by different typologists on different accounts. This process was greatly enhanced by the fact that the two languages were different from a typological viewpoint in nearly every respect, but not so different as to preclude comparison. As the investigation focused solely on syntax, there was no place for a detailed analysis of Skalicka's types and only morphological paradigms organically related to syntax were examined. In my approach I could not rely on the universal grammar of the Xolodovic School as at that time it was still being developed. The methodological lessons of my book were important from the viewpoint of further research. It must be mentioned in the first place that, on the basis of the typological information available at that time, the typological characterization and comparison of the two languages was possible, which, though not entirely complete, provided important information about the two languages. It was also clear, at the same time, that even complex studies of types (like the typology of sentence structure or that of word order), were unable to encompass the whole of a grammatical system. Therefore, not even today do I believe that any of the complex typologies is capable of giving a profound characterization of the whole structure of a language: there exists no holistic typology in this relation. It was also evident, at the same time, that these typological systems can be jointly applied and that this is the only way of obtaining a large-scale typological characterization of a language. That is why it has remained one of the basic objectives of my further research to integrate the various findings of typology, aiming not at developing a general typology but at typological characterization and its application in contrastive grammar. In the course of this activity, it was only later that a problem emerged that I could not pay due attention to in the late 1960s. By the 1970s, large-scale development of typological research, the development and deepening of the conceptions which had only been in
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the making at the end of the 1960s, had brought into light the elucidation of theoretical problems and the theoretical-methodological characterization of different approaches (on this, see Dezsö 1982, part 3, which contains the papers from the 1970s in English). Typology at that time, similarly to typology at present, had failed to make important generalizations instrumental for a complete characterization of a language (e. g., aspect and determination). Such defaults can gradually be made up for by the development of the typology of aspectuality or that of determination. There remains, however, the question of whether the study of types, which, on the whole, is becoming more and more heterogeneous, is really a proper framework for the generalization of the results of typology. At that earlier time, this question had not arisen because I thought that grammatical theories, first of all case grammar, could be complemented with a typological component. My conception was that grammatical theories and typology, becoming more and more theoretical in nature, would be coordinated within the frameworks of grammatical theories (see Dezsö 1974). This was done only to a very small extent and rather late. Instead, typologies developed theoretical conceptions of their own. A gradual shift could be observed: it was not the study of types but the universal grammar that provided the most suitable framework for the generalizations of the findings of typology. They comprised a theoretical approach and they had a more or less explicit methodology (e. g., the conception of the Xolodovic School). As I have pointed out above, it seemed, at the beginning of the 1970s that a language could be characterized by a complex of typological parameters and by the exposition of their implications. Further research and the large-scale increase of typological information convinced me, much later, that the role of the system of particular intrinsic rules in individual languages is very important and that it constitutes the other complementary component of typological characterization, determining the idiosyncratic characteristics of a given language. This is the very field where contrastive linguistic research is significant. Mathesius was clearly aware of this as early as the 1920s (Mathesius 1928 [1964]). My book outlined the program of Serbo-Croatian-Hungarian contrastive research from a typological point of view, but the work itself was not a contrastive grammar. It was illuminating for linguists of theoretical claims but was hardly of any use for teachers. That is why after the fifth volume of the Serbo-Croatian-Hungarian contrastive grammar, I published another book (Dezsö 1986), which gives a survey of the results of the research so far and which can probably be referred to by language
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teachers, too, provided they are sufficiently familiar with grammar. The grammatical-theoretical introduction in this later work of mine is quite short. It is detailed, however, in its analysis of the grammars of the two languages with special respect to the dissimilarities between their syntactic approaches and descriptions and to the explanation of the extent to which they are justified by the fundamental differences between the systems of the two languages. Only passing mention is made of general typology, much more is made of the peculiarities of the two languages, as a survey of the results of contrastive research. I have dwelt relatively long on the problems of the relationship between typology and contrastive linguistics in an early stage. But at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, the literature of both fields was easy to survey, though the basic problems had already emerged. Their revelation was easier than it is today since the literature has expanded immensely. The sets of questions raised by them have become extremely intrinsic and the simplification of complicated questions is far from fully convincing.
2. Typology, typological characterization and contrastive linguistics in the 1980s 2.1, General typology In section 1.1., we concluded the short survey of the history of typology with the statement that the conditions for a large-scale growth of this branch of science had come about and this development took place with growing intensity in the 1970s. The history of typology can no longer be discussed within the framework of linguistic trends: it developed into an independent branch of science. The great advances reflected by the immense literature of the past 15 years cannot be compared to any earlier period. The basis for the survey below is provided by the main trends of general typology obtaining more and more definite contours: universal grammar and the study of types. The traditional trend of the study of types, that is typology based wholly or mostly on morphological criteria, was relegated to the background. Statements on morphology tend to appear as parts of research into syntax. Skalicka's classical paper on type as a "construct", apart from being a short summary of his theory on types, is of theoretical importance; it holds for all, including syntactic, studies of types (Skalicka
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1974), and it serves as a basis for debates on the investigation of the notion of type. The complex syntactic-structural typology of the Mescaninov School extended its scope over an increasingly wide range of linguistic phenomena and, in combination with the traditional criteria of morphology, it was applied to the historical morphology and the morphosyntax of Indo-European, mainly Germanic, languages. Besides the ergative and nominative types, the outlines of the active type also became clear (see Klimov 1977), and the basic principles of historical morphosyntax aiming to be of general validity were also laid down (Guxman 1981). In the Stanford project, led by Greenberg (see Greenberg et al. 1978), and in related research, the examinations of universals and of types were interwoven with each other, while the two trends of typology mentioned above analyzed only the types. Within general typology, thus developed, there were two more or less clearly delimited branches: the study of the complex types of word order (cf. Lehmann 1978) and universal grammar as a trend coordinating the study of types and research of typological character that cannot be included in the study of types (cf. Comrie 1985; Hopper — Thompson 1980). The examination of the types and universals of word order was accompanied by the analysis of the terms used in word order typology: the analysis of subject and object and, together with them, that of the sentence structure. A number of series of volumes were published investigating a certain syntactic phenomenon in different languages and from different viewpoints. The typology of word order in the sentence and that of syntactic structure related to it, also obtained significant results in historical linguistics (Lehmann 1974). Universals received a specific interpretation in the Cologne project, in which the role of the functional approach is much greater than in any other trend. According to Hansjakob Seller's conception, universals are those basic functions in language that are expressed by a special system of formal means (e. g., possession). The examination of the latter is the task of typology (see Seiler — Brettschneider 1985). It is the elaboration of a universal grammar that the Xolodovic School concentrates on. It also examines the linguistic realization of certain universal functional tasks (such as the diathesis, whose core is the passive and other syntactic alterations; cf. Xolodovic 1974). Various subsystems of individual languages have also been presented, in more or less detail, within the framework of general typological investigations. But the question rightfully arose of whether even a comparatively complete complex typological or universal grammatical con-
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ception is capable of grasping the important features of a given language and, moreover, whether the coordinated application of general typological parameters is enough for the characterization of a language. Linguists often, and justifiably, talk about the types of Slavic or Romance languages, by which they mean the basic characteristics of these languages. According to Eugenio Coseriu, it was Wilhelm von Humboldt and, especially, Georg von der Gabelentz who interpreted the notion of language type in this way, and it was Coseriu who initiated the analysis of the type of a language (Coseriu 1980). The reason why Coseriu's conception was important for me was that it concentrated on one of the fundamental problems of typological characterization, though I am of the opinion that the general typological characterization of individual languages and the examination of their peculiarities complement each other. The purpose of this survey of the past one-and-a-half decades may be summed up in a few words: it aimed at arousing the readers' interest and at encouraging them to become fully acquainted with these questions. The handbooks published so far serve this purpose and some of them can be used as textbooks (e.g., Comrie 1981). 2.2. Typology in contrastive grammar
I will set out to illustrate the practical application of typology in contrastive linguistics by again refering to a book by myself. It is the first volume of the projected Russian-Hungarian contrastive grammar (Deze 1984). I will examine the first part only: Typological foundation (Deze 1984: 9 — 128), which is an introduction to the contrastive linguistic sections and considers the typological problems of the entire projected work. The discussion of the relationship of typology and contrastive linguistics is not included in this first part as it was already elaborated on in my earlier papers (see Dezsö 1982: 268 — 295). As far as length and content are concerned, "Typological foundation" is more or less the same as my book published in 1971, thus being well suited for comparison, which can be easily made by highlighting the dissimilarities. The subjectmatter of the chapter is almost the same as that of the previous book, but there are differences in the details of the grouping of the phenomena: 1) the construction of the universal deep structure and the derivation of the active and passive sentences of the two languages; 2) the morphological form of the Russian and Hungarian sentences according to the
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principles of inflection and those of agglutination; the characterization of the two types of the nominal paradigm in Russian and in Hungarian; 3) the actualization of the sentence: aspect and determination in the two languages; 4) the communicative organization of the simple active sentence in Russian and in Hungarian: the realization of the (S)VO and the (S)OV types; 5) the complex sentence: the expression of actants, adverbials (circonstants} and attributes with the help of propositions, which is manifested in the two languages in the form of dependent clauses, participial structures and noun phrases with attributes. One of the basic differences between the two works (Deze 1971, Deze 1984) is that the former is based on case grammar, which, at that time, I considered to be expandable towards typology, while the latter draws on the conception of the Xolodovic School. By origin, Xolodovic's conception was a structural linguistic theory which developed into a typological theory in the form of a universal grammar. This determined the content of the first and fifth chapters in which the universal component has a fundamental role. In chapters two and four, it is made more concrete and is complemented with the application of the results of the studies of the types of sentence structure, morphology, and word order in the two languages. The problems of aspectuality and determination do not seem to be graspable within the framework of types but within general typology which is incorporated in universal grammar (see Maslov 1984). The lessons of the former book are modified so that it is general typology that serves as the framework for typological characterization. One of the forms of general typology is universal grammar, which, to me, seems to be more favorable because it is based on well-established principles and, what is more, on clear-cut methodological procedures. The study of types can be incorporated into universal grammar while the reverse is hardly conceivable. The exaggeration of differences between the two would be wrong, for in the course of application they complement each other quite well as two components of general typology. The description of the peculiarities of individual languages in the given study is mostly the task of the chapters on contrastive grammar, but it plays a significant role in the typological characterization, too, a more significant one than it has in my study. At the end of the second volume, as part of the survey of the results, I will set forth the basic peculiarities characterizing the "types" of the two languages. When writing the study under discussion (Deze 1984), I had not yet been able to use Bernard Comrie's book on typology (Comrie 1981),
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which considers partially similar problems: the typology of word order, fundamental syntactic relations, mainly the expression of subject and its casemarking, and relative clauses. It would be instructive to examine how the generalization of the same typological information emerges in different general typologies (in this case, Californian and East European typologies). The differences between the languages yielding the basic data, those between general linguistic backgrounds and those between typological conceptions, all influence the formation of the questions. At first reading, the differences are striking, but after a more profound consideration the basic similarities come to light, which make the transfer and recomposition of the typological information possible. From the point of view of application, this suggests that different wordings of general typology mean no difficulty for its application in contrastive linguistics. For instance, it is possible to compare two languages on the basis of Comrie's book, too, and the findings can quite well be contrasted with the conclusions of another comparative study employing a different conception. If one of the languages has a nominal paradigm, then the information supplied in Comrie's book is not sufficient. And the contrary also holds: the discussion of certain questions can be found only in his book. 2.3. Cross language contrastive research, the relationship between the analysis of individual languages, and typological investigation Up to this point, it has been typology that has been the "giver" and contrastive linguistics the "receiver". This has made our discussion unavoidably one-sided. We must also touch briefly upon the opposite relation, which has become topical with the world-wide contrastive research which has contributed to the description of individual languages, and thus also to typology. Most scholars rightfully think that the basic task of concrete contrastive research is application. In teacher training, contrastive grammar can directly be applied in descriptive grammar or in special courses, and the teachers provided with this information represent one of the basic factors of application at school. The other factor is the curriculum and school material compiled according to the principles of contrastive linguistics. The methodological questions of contrastive linguistics are varied and amount to a huge set, which includes different problems, from typology and theoretical linguistics to classroom techniques and to everyday teach-
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ing routine. Even contrastive linguists, not to speak of descriptive linguists and typologists, hardly give it a thought that the extremely large stock of knowledge accumulated in the course of contrastive research could be used in the description of individual languages as well as in typological research. It is in the description of individual languages that the findings of contrastive grammar can be used most directly. Descriptive grammars and monographs serve as the sources of typological research, and so the results of contrastive grammar indirectly reach typology as well. This is realized if, in the course of comparison, contrastive research can say something new about the system of a language: about a yet unexamined field or — and this is more probable — about a certain subsystem of the language, adding new aspects to the analysis of phenomena. With this latter feature, it contributes to the characterization of the "type" of a certain language (to use Coseriu's terminology). The initial information which is so important for typology will be more precise than if it were given by descriptive grammar only. Mathesius already realized this in the 1920s (Mathesius 1928 [1964]), and the analysis generalizing the presentday status of contrastive grammar confirms it (Fisiak 1983: 201; Sternemann 1985: 104—114). In order to obtain this, contrastive research is, of course, to meet the above requirement, which is more than what is expected by application. The answer to the question of who is capable of integrating contrastive research in descriptive linguistics follows from the actual situation of scientific research: it is the typologist, a descriptive or a contrastive linguist who knows the system of the languages compared. It is a new task for descriptive linguistics and it greatly contributes to the typological characterization of a language. In the case of a relatively small number of languages, the contrastive linguistic information can be applied to the full because of the limited range of languages. In the case of major languages (mainly English and Russian), it is the task of typological characterization to carry this out, and this is rather difficult because of the wide range of languages and the differences between the ways of presentation. The former, however, is an organic part of the work of the typologist and it is the latter that poses a greater problem. The fulfillment of this task, however, would, on the one hand, enhance the compilation of grammars and curricula claiming international usage, and, on the other, help to spread the results of typology. Naturally, the following dangerous outcome is to be reckoned with: in place of a genuine typological characterization, various systems or subsystems of different languages will be described according to the criteria of a great language
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and will become distorted in the process of the comparison. This is a specific typological problem which needs special examination: in this case the background for giving a typological characterization of individual languages is provided by the description of the whole system of general typology. General typology can make direct use of the results of contrastive linguistics in many ways. It is, perhaps, one of the most evident cases when a typologist turns to different languages for the sake of illustrating a certain typological phenomenon: he presents and contrasts them, and checks whether a contrastive linguist, who can give a more profound and more accurate comparison, being aware of the entire systems of both languages, has already made the same investigations or not. Here the typologist selects and picks up from the literature on contrastive linguistics only the material relevant from a general typological viewpoint. However the application of contrastive linguistics in typology may develop, it cannot be denied that an enormous amount of general crosslanguage information has been accumulated in the course of contrastive research and that typology must rely on it. It is not at all a simple task but at the present level of information processing it is not an unachievable goal. References Comrie, Bernard 1981 Language universals and linguistic typology (Oxford: Blackwell). 1985 "On language typology", in: Seiler — Brettschneider (eds.) 228-237. Coseriu, Eugenio 1980 "Der Sinn der Sprachtypologie", Typology and genetics of language — (TCLC 20), 157-170. Dezsö, Laszlo 1974 "Topics in syntactic typology", in: Linguisfica generalia 1: Studies in linguistic typology (Praha: Charles University), 191-210. 1982 Studies in syntactic typology and contrastive grammar (Budapest: Akademia Kiado; Berlin: Mouton). 1986 Tipoloska analiza hrvatskosrpske sintakse i njena usporedba sa sintaksom madarskog jezika [The typological analysis of Serbo-Croatian syntax and its comparison with the syntax of Hungarian] (Budapest: Tankönyvkiado). forthcoming Universal grammar, types and characterization of languages: Past and present (Budapest: Tankönyvkiado; Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter) Deze (= Dezsö), Laslo 1971 Tipoloska razmatranja (Kontrastivna grammatika srpskohrvatskog i madarskog jezika 1) [Typological studies (Contrastive grammar of Serbo-Croatian and Hungarian)] (Novi Sad: Institut za Hungarologiju).
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Deze (= Dezsö), Laslo 1984 Tipologiceskaja xarakteristika russkoj grammatiki v sopostavlenii s vengerskoj [A typological characterization of Russian and Hungarian grammar in contrast] (Budapest: Tankönyvkiado). 1987 "Universal'naja grammatika i skola Xolodovica" [Universal grammar and the school of Xolodovic], Voprosy jazykoznanija 1987/5: 115 — 126. Fisiak, Jacek 1983 "Present trends in contrastive linguistics", in: Kari Sajavaara (ed.), Crosslanguage analysis and second language acquisition l (Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä), 9-38. Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.) 1963 Universals of language (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Greenberg, Joseph H. et al. (eds.) 1978 Universals of human language 1 — 4 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press). Guxman, Mirra Moiseevna 1981 Istoriceskaja tipologija i tipologija diaxroniceskix konstant [Historical typology and the typology of diachronic constants] (Moskva: Nauka). Hjelmslev, Louis 1928 Principes de grammaire generale (K0benhavn: Munksgaard). 1935, 1937 La categoric des cas. Etude de grammaire generale (Acta Jutlandica Aarsskrift 7.1, 9.2). Hopper, Paul J. — Sandra A. Thompson 1980 "Transitivity in grammar and discourse", Language 56: 251 —299. Isacenko, Alexander V. 1954, 1960 Grammaticeskij stroj russkogo jazyka v sopostavlenii so slovackim 1—2 [The grammatical structure of Russian compared with that of Slovak] (Bratislava: Izd. Slovackoj Akademii Nauk). Jakobson, Roman 1936 "Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre (Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus)", TCLP 6: 240-288. Klimov, Georgij Andreevic 1977 Tipologija jazykov aktivnogo stroja [A typology of languages with an active structure] (Moskva: Nauka). Krusel'nickaja, K. — G. 1961 Ocerki po sopostavitel'noj grammatike nemeckogo i russkogo jazykov [Essays on the contrastive grammar of German and Russian] (Moskva: Izd. na inostrannyx jazykax). Lehmann, Winfred P. 1974 Proto-Indo-European syntax (Austin: University of Texas Press). Lehmann, Winfred P. (ed.) 1978 Syntactic typology: studies in the phenomenology of language (Austin: University of Texas Press). Maslov, Jurij Sergejevic 1984 Ocerki po aspektologii [Essays on aspectology] (Leningrad: Izd. Leningradskogo universiteta). Mathesius, Vilem 1928 "On linguistic characterology with illustrations from Modern English", in: Vachek (ed.) 1964: 59-67.
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"On some problems of systemic analysis of grammar", in: Vachek (ed.) 1964: 306-319. 1975 A functional analysis of present-day English on a general linguistics basis (Praha: Academia). Mescaninov, Ivan Ivanovic 1963 Struktur a predloienija [The structure of the sentence] (Moskva: Nauka). Pjall', Eduard Nikolajevic — Eliza Jaanovna Totsel' — Gvidon Romanovic Tukumcev 1962 Sopostavitel'naja grammatika estonskogo i russkogo jazykov [Estonian-Russian contrastive grammar] (Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus). Sapir, Edward 1921 Language (New York: Harcourt). Seiler, Hansjakob — Gunter Brettschneider (eds.) 1985 Language invariants and menial operations (Tübingen: Narr). Skalicka, Vladimir 1935 "Zur ungarischen Grammatik", in: Typologische Studien (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1979), 59-125. 1974 "Konstrukt-orientierte Typologie", in: Linguistica Generalia I: Studies in linguistic typology (Praha: Charles University), 17 — 23. Sternemann, Reinhard (ed.) 1985 Einführung in die konfrontative Linguistik (Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopädie). Uspensky (= Uspenskij), Boris Andreevic 1968 Principles of structural typology (The Hague: Mouton). Vachek, Josef (ed.) 1964 A Prague school reader in linguistics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Xolodovic, Aleksandr Alekseevic 1979 Problemy grammaticeskoj teorii [Problems of grammar theory] (Leningrad: Nauka) Xolodovic, Aleksandr Alekseevic (ed.) 1969 Problemy kauzativnyx konstrukcij. Morfologiceskij kauzativ [Problems of causative constructions. The morphological causative] (Leningrad: Nauka). 1974 Tipologija passivnyx konstrukcij. Diatezy i zalogi [The typology of passive constructions. Diatheses and verbal genders] (Leningrad: Nauka).
Interradical interfixes: contact and contrast Wolfgang Ulrich Dressler — Lavinia Merlini Bar barest
Introduction § 1 After having studied predominantly (Dressier 1984; 1986) or specifically (Dressier — Merlini, in press) antesuffixal interfixes of the type Russ. Glinka —·> adj. glink-ov-skij = Glink-'m-skij, we want to concentrate in this complementary study on interradical interfixes in three areas where Rudolf Filipovic has particularly excelled: English,' typological/contrastive, and contact linguistics. Mel'cuk (1982: 86) defines an interradical interfix (the only class of interfixes he accepts, cf. Beard 1981: 131 ff.) as "a confix [seil, an affix which neither divides the root nor is itself divided] which precedes a root and follows another root" and he continues: "Thus, an interfix is found only in compound words (composita) and has the function of indicating the combination of two roots to form a compound", e. g., the interfix -oin E., spectr-o-meter, SCr. bjel-obrad 'white-bearded' (cf. Beard 1978), Sp. club-o-mania. Since interfixes do not have any syntactic function, but rather a function of morphotactic concatenation within a complex word, they must be assigned to the class of derivational affixes. And if we study the relations to the roots which precede and which follow them, then — in all the languages studied here — interradical interfixes have closer ties with the preceding root, i.e., they behave more like suffixes than like prefixes, although there are examples where one might waver between an interfix analysis and an assignment to the second part of the compound as in E. work-o-holic vs. work-oholic. However interfixes (at least prototypical interfixes) differ from normal suffixes insofar as they are meaningless, i.e., semantically empty. These three criteria (assignment to derivational affixes, to suffixes, and semantic emptiness) hold for antesuffixal interfixes as well and justify — despite many other differences — putting interradical and antesuffixal interfixes in one big class of interfixes.
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Stem-based interilxation § 2 It is a typological property of agglutinating languages and of languages or morphologies with a strongly isolating character that they have only word-based inflection and word formation (derivational morphology and compounding), whereas morphologies of the inflecting type prefer stem-based inflection and word formation (at least derivational morphology).2 Thus Slavic languages prefer stem-derived interfixation as in SCr. bjel-o-brad, bjel-o-zub 'white-toothed' from bio, bijel-a, bijel-o 'white'. The same holds for Ancient Gk. psykh-o-pompos 'guide of souls' from psykh-έ 'soul', OCS vod-o-nosu 'water-carrier' from vod-a 'water'. In Latin we have two interfixes: -o- in Ahen-o-barbus and -/- in alt-'i— tonans 'high thundering' from altus 'high' or infani-i-cida 'infanticide' from infans (stem infant-) 'baby'. § 3 These two types have given productive interfixation in Spanish: 1) esceno-Q-arquitectura 'theater-architecture', hidr-o-aer-o-plano 'hydroaeroplane' 2) alt-i-plano 'table-land', from alt-o 'high' 3) clar-i-vidente 'clair-voyant' from clar-o 'clear', escal-i-metro from escal-a 'scale', centr-'i-fugo 'centrifugal' from centr-o 'center' 4) boqu-\-abierto Open-mouthed' from boc-a 'mouth', oj-i-negro 'blackeyed' from oj-o 'eye' (see Garcia Lozano 1978) barb-i-cano 'greybearded' from barb-α 'beard' 5) influenced by Disney-landia 'Disneyland': golp-i-landia 'country of coups' (ironic epithet for Bolivia, an occasionalism in El Pais 1984) from golp-e 'hiCJuguet-y-landia 'toy-land' (El Pais 1985) fromjuguet-e 'toy'. § 4 Italian (cf. Dardano 1978: 155 ff., 175 ff., 186 ff.) has the same types of interfixation except (4): Examples with nouns as first members are: ort-o- or-o-frutt-i-colo 'pertaining to the vegetable and flower market', bocci-o-dromo 'boccia play-court', sessu-o-fobo 'sexophobic', aer-o-scivolante 'hovercraft', cocain-o-mane 'cocain addict' vs. aer-i-forme 'aeriform', zanzar-'i-fugo 'anti-mosquito-spray', ventr-i-loquo 'ventriloquist' (all adjectives), parch-i/o-metro 'parking meter', calorjcolor-i-metro, agr-i-turismo 'agrotourism' Fiab-\-landia Tableland' (in Rimini). Examples with adjectives as first members are: alt-i-sonante 'high sounding', alt-i-metro 'altimeter', alt-i/o-piano 'table-land', brev-i-lineo 'short-lined', brev-i-loquente 'concise', veloc-i-metro 'speedometer'. Alto/
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basso-rilievo 'high/bas-relief have no interfix -o-, because 1) the thematic vowel -o is indistinguishible from a conceivable interfix, 2) because there is concord in alta-cassa 'an instrument in typography', 3) because adjectives in -e always take the interfix -z-, but never an -o-, e. g., breve 'short' —>· brev-i-X, grande 'great' —»· grand-i-X, grave 'heavy' —> grav-i-X, celere 'quick' —> celer-i-X. The coexistence cf. dolc-i-canoro One who sings sweetly' and dolce-stil-novista shows the possibility of having concord as well. § 5 In English, the interfix -o- occurs in Latinate compounds of nouns and adjectives of the type phil-o-logy, phil-o-sophy vs. franc-o-phile, german-o-phile, bor-o-ßuor-ic = fluo-boric (see below § 7), graph-o-logy vs. spectr-o-graphy vs. log-o-graph. The Latin ending -urn is replaced by -oas in spectrum (not specter} —> specir-o-meter/gram/scope, bacterium —> bacteri-o-logy etc. In general -o- is interfixed if the stem does not end in a vowel (Bauer 1983: 272) but there are exceptions such as fluor-spar', chlor-cosane, chlorcyclizine, note also the fluctuations chlor- (o)-bulal/butanal/benzene. Moreover, it is freely inserted after stems ending in -/ and -e, i.e., after /: bacteri-o-logy/scopy/lysis, ßuvi-o-marine/meter/terrestrial/volcanic, crani-o-logy/meter, heli-o-scope/therapy, chore-o-graphy/drama, Maria —> Mari-o-latry/logy. Neither is -o- inserted if the second member starts with a vowel or : phil-ately, phil-harmonic, chlor-acne/aluminite, etc., col-ectomy vs. col-o-slomy, hier-archy vs. hier-o-logy/glyph, mon-arch(y) vs. mon-o-chromatic, olig-arch(y) vs. olig-o-chron-o-meter, deuter-agonist vs. deuter-o-gamy, sulphur —»sulph-hydryl vs. sulph-o-salicylic, neur-algia/ectomy vs. neur-o-logy/pathy. However there are exceptions such as chem-o-autotroph(ic), chem-o-organ-o-trophic vs. chem-asthenia vs. chem-o-therapy, etc.; gastr-o-enterologist I anastomosis/intestinal, etc. (where the second member is always derivationally complex) vs. gastr-algia vs. gastr-o-scope, etc.; hydr-o-airplane I alcoholic I atmospheric vs. hydr-acid vs. hydr-o-carbon etc.; psych-o-analysis/acoustics (rare variant: psych-analysis) vs. psych-algia/asthenia/ agogic. -o is regular in all coordinate adjective compounds, e.g., IndoUralic, Finno-Ugric, Indo-European, etc. (cf. Adams 1973: 131 — 132). § 6 In Ancient Greek, Latin, and in the Romance languages where the English Latinate vocabulary came from, the -o- very often belonged to the stem (philo-, chloro-, fluvio-, bacterio-, helio-, colo-, hiero-, mono-, oligo-, deutero- etc.) and was deleted by rule before any immediately
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following suffix, or second part of a compound with an initial vowel. Later this rule was inverted to -o- interfixation in analogy to cases where either 1) another stem final vowel was replaced by the interfix -o-, or 2) where the interfix -o- was added to a word (for the best proof for interfixation, see below). Obviously during this reanalysis, certain stems retained their final -o- such asferro- 'iron' as in ferro-aluminium/electric/uranium; however, this -o- can be replaced by the interfix -/'- (see below § 7) such as in ferr-i-ferousjverousjcyanide and in ferr-i-tungstite vs. ferr-o-tungsten, and of course stem-final -o is lost before Latinate suffixes as in ferr-ite, ferr-ic, ferr-ous. However, the exceptions to the generalizations given here are few among the mass of artificial scientific/technical neologisms formed on purpose by specialists not aware of wordformation rules in (trivially non-native) technical language. And it is just because of this messy situation that the linguistic science of general terminology has been invented by Eugen Wüster (cf. Wüster 1979) although, as we have seen, messiness is relatively small in regard to interfixation rules. Neologisms with non-Latinate first compound members are extremely rare, e.g., ceiling —> ceil-o-meter; there are many more wordderived ones (see below § 10). § 7 Stem-derived -i- interfixations occur in similar sets (cf. Adams 1973: 128): alt-i-meter, alt-i-graph, flor-i-culture, equ-i-distant/angulax/lateral, lact-i-ferous (vs. lact-o-scope/proiein) libr-i-form, lun-i-form/solarj tidal, multi-i-form (vs. mult-angular), chore-i-form, magn-i-loquent, grand-i-loquent. Clearly -i- interfixation is much less productive than -o- interfixation: its spread is rather due to analogical extension of specific learned words such as agr-'i-culture, etc. Sometimes the first member is truncated at its end up to a new final - (or -o), i. e., up to a reduced base which resembles an interfixed form, e. g., verti-port (from vertical), flexi-time (from flexible), plasti-naut, alumi-naut, fluo-boric, fluo-phosphate — fluor-o-phosphate. § 8 Word-based interfixation seems to occur in Spanish only as -/-interfixation after consonant stems, e.g., luc-i-fugo 'light fleeing' (from luz 'light'), calor-'i-fugo (from calor 'warmth'), and as -o- interfixation in loanwords or compounds whose first part is a loanword, e.g., gas-ometro, film-o-mania, club-o-mania/fobia, Marx-o-maniajfobia, esnob-o— cracia. Likewise, Russian has word-based interfixation after indigenous consonant final stems, e. g., samolet-o-stroenie 'aviation industry'.
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§ 9 Italian, however, has word-based interfixation only after loanwords and to a lesser degree than Spanish, e. g., gas-o-metro (but gas-dot to 'gaspipe-line], gas-o-geno 'gasogene', film-o-logia/grafia 'movie studies' cross-(d)-dromo 'motocross circuit', roenigen-(o)-grafia/terapia, Saussur-o-logo, roulott-o-poli 'caravan parking'. Unlike stem-based interfixation, Italian word-based interfixation inserts only the interfix -o- (like Spanish word-based interfixation when applied to loanwords). § 10 English examples for word-based -o- interfixation are cycle —>· cycl-o-meter, dense —> dens-o/i-meter, spher-o-meter, ßuor-o-meier/form etc. (see above § 7) icon-o-graphy, martyr-o-logy, Nil-o-meter, nymph-o-maniac, ocean/address/roenlgen-o-graph, polar-o-graph (vs. polar-\-scope), phrase-o-logy (with [i]). For word-based -/- interfixation cf. color-i-meter, dos-i-meter, insect/herb-i-varous, divers-i-form, gas-i-form. Neologisms with non-Latinate first compunds are relatively rare, recent and sometimes jocular: mob-o-crat, banc-o-crat, slim-o-size, drug-o-holic, work-o-holic (cf. Kolin 1979), more in Adams (1973: 36, 130, 184) and Bauer (1983: 272 — 273). There is no such differentiation between Latinate and indigenous first members in Spanish and Italian (e. g., ign-i-fugo 'fire barring' vs. zanzar-i-fugo) because their lexes are not so clearly stratified as in English.
Word-form-based compounding vs. interfixation § 11 A frequent origin of interfixation is the juxtaposition of an inflected word form and a second word governing the first one. In German (cf. Zepic 1970; Fleischer 1971: 112ff.) compounds such as Friedhof-s-mauer 'cemetery wall' clearly go back to juxtapositions des Friedhof-s (genitive singular) Mauer, or Hahn-en-schrei 'cock-crow' to a now extinct gen.sg. Hahn-en (now des Hahn-s). This origin is still translucent in certain cases: thus a genitive singular is, or can be, felt in Land-s-mann 'compatriot' (man from the same country), Land-es-regierung 'regional government' (of one Land), and a genitive plural in Länd-er-spiel/match/kampf 'match between two nations', Land-er-kunde 'political geography' (of more than one country), cf. Land, gen.sg. Land(e)s, pi. Land-er. And thus a special type of anaphoric coreference is possible which may "look into the first part of the compound" (cf. Rohrer 1974; Brekle 1975; Dressier, 1987). E.g.,:
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Die Kinder sind auf Ei- -er- suche. Wenn sie sie/welche/ The children are on egg -s- hunt. If they them/some/ eines/ *es finden, kommen sie zurück. one/ *it find they return. The children are egg-hunting. If they find them/some/one of them ...' versus:
Die Kinder sind auf Ei-suche. Wenn sie Sg.egg-hunt. If they it/one/?them/ es/eines/?sie/welche finden... ?some find 'The children are egg-hunting. If they find it/one/?them/?some/...' But this translucence of the origin of the interfix in a genitive singular or plural form is absent in many more instances and contradicted in many others, cf. Fünfjahr-plan = Fünfjahr-e-plan = Fünfjahr-es-plan 'fiveyear plan', Liebe-s-abenteuer 'love adventure' (and dozens of other Liebe-s-X compounds), but gen.sg. Liebe, gen.pl. Liebe- , cf. Hilf-s-mittel 'remedy' from Hilfe 'help', etc., Schwan-en-hals 'swan's neck' from Schwan, gen.sg. Schwan-s, pi. Schwan-e. § 12 In these cases the inflectional case-form has clearly become a derivational interfix. Here as in all other cases of diachronic changes from inflectional to derivational morphology (cf. Dressier — Mayerthaler — Panagl — Wurzel, 1987) we must ask for the criteria which allow, or favor, an inflectional vs. a derivational analysis. Let us apply relevant criteria, as provided in Plank (1981:10 ff.), Wurzel (1984: 41 ff.), Scalise (1984: 103 ff), Bybee (1985: 81 ff.) in a contrastive analysis of German and English interfixed compounds of Germanic origin (both going back to juxtapositions with the first member in the genitive): 1) The aforementioned (very reduced) possibilities of anaphoric coreference point to a rather inflectional character of the genitive singular/ plural suffix in those, admittedly rare, and marginal German examples (cf. Dressier, 1987). There is no correspondence in English. 2) Productivity is much higher in inflection that in derivation: Interfixation in German compounds is far from being 100% productive as it
Interradical interfixes: contact and contrast
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would be with inflectional suffixation, but it is comparable to productivity in word formation, i.e., of productive word formation rules. English compounds with an intermediate -s- fall into the following groups: a) Plural forms of the first member, if these plural forms are morphosemantically opaque3 as in customs duty, public relations officer, news man/boy, etc., clothes moth/pin/press, guardsman, beadsman/woman, spoils system/man. Less opaque, but still plural-based are: sports car/man/ woman/wear, arms race, sales clerk/girl/room, etc. Obviously these inflectional endings have nothing to do with interfixation.4 b) There is a large, but completely opaque class of plant and animal names where the -s- goes back to a Saxon genitive singular, e.g., Lady's finger/slipper, cat's eye/foot/tail, bird's/lion's/shark's mouth, bird('s) foot, huntsman's cup. Here we may speak of fossilized (derivational) interfixes. c)There are analogically extendable, but not truly productive patterns such as men-s/ladie-s/womens/childrens wear or land(s)man, kins/towns/ yachts/spokes/clansman (cf. OE. land-es-mann), etc. where man can be replaced with woman, folk, or people; cf. bridesmaid, lady's maid, manswear. Here a genitive interpretation is possible unless s-stripping yields a non-existing noun such as in spokesman. Thus no good argument can be made for or against a derivational interfix. 3) Morphosemantic transparency as usual in inflectional morphology can be ascertained only in a small percentage of German interfixed compounds (cf. criterion 1 and § 11) as in Fried-hof-s-mauer 'wall of the cemetery (Friedhof)' vs. a conceivable Fried-ens-hof-mauer 'wall of the peace court', or Schiff-fahrt 'navigation' vs. Schiff-s-fahrt 'voyage of a ship'. The English (2b) class is lexically opaque, another argument for -s- being a derivational, albeit fossilized, interfix. The (2c) class is rather transparent, more than metaphorical compounds such as cat's cradle, cat's paw. 4) Inflectional forms cannot be easily replaced with forms without inflection (because inflection is obligatory), whereas complex words derived via word formation rules can easily be replaced with simplex words. Nearly all German compound interfixes can be replaced either by dropping the interfix as in Wald-(es)-rand/saum 'fringe of a wood', lVald-(es)-lichtung 'clearance of wood', Gesang-(s)-verein 'choral society' or by replacing them with semantically or derivationally related compounds as in Schiff-s-ladung 'ship cargo' vs. Wagen-ladung 'car cargo', Erd-en-kloß = Erd-scholle 'earth clod'. Hemd-(en)-knopf 'shirt button' vs. Hemd-s-armel 'shirt-sleeve' or by changing the interfix (sg.
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This rule is responsible for the devoicing of the final stop in, e.g., Bug 'the (river) Bug', from underlying /bug/ (cf. the genitive Buga). But since (5) entails a neutralization (cf. buk, genitive buka 'beech'), it is impossible to use that rule by itself to retrieve from phonetic [buk] the underlying representation /bug/ in a unique manner. The same holds true of shallow phonic forms, generated by one-way rules before being exposed to one or more bidirectional processes as in case (iv). To reiterate this point, a major facet of the general model in figures 1 and 2 may be rendered as in figure 3, which focuses on the extent to which underlying forms are recoverable by structural means. From the point of view of retrieving the higher-level forms solely on the basis of the phonetic representations plus the pertinent phonological rules, the first two cases, (i) and (ii), in figure 3 cause no obstacles. The difficulty appears with cases (iii) and (iv), where downwards unidirectional rules produce neutralizations and hence cause a structural blockage to complete unambiguous retrieval of the proper underlying forms.
4. The role of the cognitive schemata How is the dilemma of structural blockage to be resolved? It should be clear that there exists no solution to a structural blockage that is fully contained within the boundaries of the grammatical systems as such. By utilizing only the grammar, it will not be possible to disambiguate the neutralized phonological properties. Still, if the non-neutralized underlying representations are to be in any sense psychologically real, there must be some route by means of which speakers can arrive at them. This route, we suggest, is via general (i.e., not language-specific) cognitive schemata. At the stage, where the grammatical system itself does not suffice, these schemata make up for the missing structural link between two points in the grammar — between the upwards output of a neutralizing rule and the underlying form — in a process we may call "bridging".7 The cognitive machinery required encompasses the steps detailed in figure 4. The situation that triggers the reliance on cognitive operations is a structural blockage. All one-way rules constitute such blocks. The first step in the cognitively-aided retrieval is an analysis of the frame (or structural context) within which the underspecified or ambiguous form occurs. The analysis seizes upon certain morphological, syntactic and/or
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References Catford, Ian C. 1965 A linguistic theory of translation (London: Oxford University Press). Corder, Stephen Pit 1978 "Language distance and the magnitude of the language learning task", Studies in Second Language Acquisition 2: 27 — 36. Dulay, Heidi —Marina Burt —Stephen D. Krashen 1982 Language Two (London: Oxford University Press). Duskovä, Libuse 1969 "On sources of errors in foreign language learning", IRAL 7.1: 11—36. Ervin, Susan M.—Charles E. Osgood 1954 "Second language learning and bilingualism", Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 49: 139-146. Feigenbaum, Irwin 1969 "Using foreign language methodology to teach standard English", Florida Foreign Language Reporter 7: 116 — 122.
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Gregg, Kevin R. 1984 "Krashen's Monitor and Occam's Razor", Applied Linguistics 5.2: 79-100, Hatch, Evelyn M. (ed.) 1978 Second language acquisition (Rowley: Newbury House). Honey, John 1983 The language trap: race, class and the Standard English issue in British schools (Kenton: NCES). James, Carl 1977 "The ignorance hypothesis in interlanguage studies", IS B (Utrecht) 2: 152 — 165. 1980 Conlrastive analysis (London: Longman). Kellerman, Eric 1978 "Giving learners a break: native speakers' intuition as a source of predictions about transferability", W.P.B. 15: 59-92. Kleinmann, Howard 1977 "Avoidance behaviour in adult second language acquisition", Language Learning 27Λ: 93 -107. Krashen, Stephen D. 1983 "Newmark's ignorance hypothesis and current second language acquisition theory", in: Susan Gass—Larry Selinger (edss), Language transfer in language learning (Rowley: Newbury House), 135 — 153. 1985 The Input hypothesis: issues and implications (Longman). Krashen, Stephen D. —Tracy D. Terrell 1983 The natural approach (Oxford: Pergamon). Lee, William R. 1968 "Thoughts on contrastive analysis in the context of language teaching", in: James E. Alatis (ed.), Contrastive linguistics and its pedagogical implications (Gurt MSLL 21) (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press), 185194. Levelt, Willem J. M. 1978 "Skill theory and language teaching", Studies in Second Language Acquisition 1:53-70). Macnamara, John 1972 "The cognitive basis of language learning in infants", Psychological Review 79:1-13. Newmark, Leonard D. 1970 "How not to interfere with language learning", in: M. Lester (ed.), Reading in applied transformational grammar (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston), 219-227. Osgood, Charles E. 1949 "The similarity paradox in human learning: a resolution", Psychological Review 56:132-143. Schachter, Jacquelyn 1974 "An error in error analysis", Language Learning 24: 205 — 214. Shapira, Rina G. 1978 "The non-learning of English — case study of an adult", in: Hatch (ed.), 246-256.
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Snow, Catherine E. 1976 "Semantic primacy in first and second language acquisition", ISB (Utrecht) 1: 137-165. Wilss, Wolfram 1977 Übersetzungswissenschaft: Probleme und Methoden (Stuttgart: Klett). Wode, Henning 1978 "Developmental sequences in naturalistic L2 acquisition", in: Hatch (ed.) 101-117. Zobl, Helmut 1980 "The formal and developmental selectivity of LI influence on L2 acquisition", Language Learning 30: 43 — 57.
On the form and meaning of the Serbo-Croatian modal morati Damir Kalogjera
0. This article which owes a lot to contrast!ve research is dedicated to Rudolf Filipovic who, besides many other things, has devised, organized, monitored, encouraged and edited practically everything that has been done on the contrastive analysis of English and Serbo-Croatian in Zagreb and in other Yugoslav Universities. 1. It has been suggested in the literature that paradigmatic irregularities, mainly gaps in the paradigm, similar to the ones in the English modals, are found across languages in verbs of corresponding meanings (eg. German sollen, müssen, können, 'should, must, can') but also in verbs which have no semantic links with the modals (it rains but */ rain} (Pullum-Wilson 1977 McCawley 1975 Huddleston 1976, etc.). The debate on this topic has been lively among the linguists who have supported or rejected the hypothesis holding that modals in English are ordinary verbs and that no separate category need be established for them. Those upholding the hypothesis have insisted that the gaps in the paradigm and the consequent separation of the English modals from the rest of the verbs is idiosyncratic for the English verb grammar and that when some paradigm gaps in similar verbs occur in other languages these verbs are nevertheless classified as ordinary verbs. We shall not pursue this argument here any further and our aim remains purely descriptive but we want to point out that in spite of some peculiar morphological, syntactic, and semantic features translation equivalents of the English modals in Serbo-Croation grammatical tradition have been treated as ordinary verbs. As has been noted elsewhere (Kalogjera 1982, 1985) translation equivalents of the English modals: morati 'must; have to', trebati 'have to', valjati Ought to; should', imati 'have to: should' (denoting various shades of obligation and necessity) htjeti 'will' (denoting prediction and willingness), moci 'can; may' smjeti 'be allowed; dare' (denoting ability, possibility, permission) are rarely isolated and treated as a separate group. They are usually dispersed and grouped with numerous verbs of "incomplete meaning" which require the infinitive or the da clause complement.
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They, however, do crop up together, at least some of them, as it were automatically, when certain syntactic structures or operations are considered e.g., the impersonal construction (Baric et al. 1979: 376), the daclause (Katicic 1986: 322), the infinitive (Katicic 1986: 467 ff), etc., as in these contexts they show similar syntactic behaviour. The very term "modal verb" is applied rather loosely in some Serbo-Croatian grammars (e.g., Stevanovic 1974) being based on vague semantic criteria with no attempt at defining them more closely by linking their semantic and syntactic features. On the other hand, Kravar (1964) has shown convincingly that there are aspectual features (neutrality of aspect) common to these verbs. More recent contrastive research on English and SerboCroatian, and German and Serbo-Croatian (Kalogjera 1970, 1982, 1985; Ridjanovic 1976; Djordjevic 1983) has suggested that there are a number of syntactic-semantic features shared by these verbs. Polysemy of the verbs morati and moci is the main preoccupation of two recent contributions to this topic (Piper 1982, Batistic 1983), symptomatically by Serbo-Croatists familiar with English linguistic literature. There has obviously been a growing interest in the possibility of establishing a group of modal verbs in Serbo-Croatian. What follows will be a brief consideration of the interplay existing between the full and defective forms of some modals and their meanings with a more detailed look at the verb morati. 2. The verbs trebati, imati, valjati, morati may occur in their full or defective forms. The latter are unchanging 3rd person sg. forms: treba, ima, valja, mora. The defective forms occur in the standard language only when these verbs are used in their modal meanings. The full paradigm forms may be used both in the modal meaning and when these verbs occur (exept morati} as main verbs. a)
b) a) b)
Treba da mu pomognes Trebas mu pomoci/da mu pomognes 'You have to/need help him' Ti trebas pomoc 'You require help' Valja da mjeris rijeci 'You ought to weigh your words' 77 mi mnogo valjas 'You are worth a lot to me'
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In the case of valjati the full paradigm forms are not available in the modal meaning: * Valjas da mjeris rijeci. a)
b)
Ima da pazis na tezinu Imas da pazis/paziti na tezinu 'You have to watch your weight' Imas dosta da kupis kucu 'You have enough to buy yourself a house'
A somewhat special case is the verb htjeti were its clitic forms are used to signal the future tense and the modal meaning. A special unchanging clitic form (bit ce) is available, complemented by the do-clause, to express epistemic meaning only. a)
b)
Radii ces u ZagrebujTi ces da radis u Zagrebu 'You will work in Zagreb' Bit ce da radis u Zagrebu 'You will (probably) be working in Zagreb' Ti hoces nova kola 'You want/wish a new car'
Morati does not have in modern language a full verb homonym but its full and defective forms have obtained different functions discussed below. Although the unchanging impersonal forms are amply discussed in the grammars it seems to me that their "defectiveness" has never been linked with their modal meanings although the connection seems to be rather interesting, even more so when we know that similar relations occur in other languages. 3. Another feature that has only recently been noted in Serbo-Croatian linguistic literature is the systematic two-way reading of a number of modal verbs known in English linguistics as their root (deontic) and epistemic interpretations. We cannot now enter into the detailed consideration of these two types of modal meanings. They have been widely discussed in the context of English by a number of scholars, most recently (on the basis of corpus material) by Palmer (1979) and Coates (1983), and (theoretically) by Lyons (1977). Practically all the Serbo-Croatian verbs mentioned, including moci 'can; may', may signal both meanings. Each of the following examples has two readings like their translations into English:
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Treba da je vrlo bistar 'He must be very bright' Valja da dob r o radi 'He ought to work well' Ima biti da je pouzdan 'He should be reliable' Moze putovati autom 'He may travel by car' The examples with treba, valja, ima may be interpreted in their obligation, i.e., root (deontic) meaning and as assumptions i.e., in their epistemic meaning. Moze like may in the root meaning expresses permission and in the epistemic meaning possibility. We have seen that the full paradigm and defective forms partly distinguish the modals from their main-verb homonyms although modals themselves occur in either form. The same contrast in form, however, may be found to signal distinctions in the meanings within a single polysemic modal. A good example is the modal verb morati which nowadays has no full verb homonym. 4. The meaning (or, perhaps, meanings) of the verb morati are very diverse and isufficiently explored. The lexicographical sources (Rjecnik 1911 — 1916, Recnik 1969) make several distinctions of its meanings including what may be called the subjective and objective meaning of obligation with little ambition towards their systematic ordering. Recently some research on this verb has been accomplished (Piper 1982, Batistic 1983) introducing the terms deontic and epistemic (Batistic 1983: 99 footnote 2, referring to Lyons 1977). For our purpose it will be enough to recognize two reasonably distinct meanings of morati, that of obligation and that of "logical conclusion". Informal tests with native speakers show that they easily recognise the two meanings although in some cases only after their attention has been drawn to the polysemic potential of the verb morati. The meaning of obligation is labelled root or deontic and that of logical conclusion epistemic meaning. Both these meanings of the verb morati under certain conditions} may be expressed by the full paradigm forms of the verb complemented by either the infinitive or a clause introduced by the complementizer da:2 Moras mnogo raditijda radis (da bi prehranio obitelj) 'You must work hard (in order to feed your family)'
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Moras mnogo raditijda radis (kad si se tako brzo obogatio) 'You must work very hard (to have become rich so quickly)' Although the above possibilities are utilised in usage, with the disambiguation being accomplished by the context and by the stress and intonation in the spoken language, there is a tendency for the two meanings of morati to be systematically distributed over the defective and the full paradigm forms. Like the above-mentioned trebati, valjati, and imati, the verb morati has its "impersonal" or "defective" form mora which formally corresponds to the 3rd person singular of the full paradigm but, as we shall see presently, shows different complementation possibilities. When this defective mora is complemented by the da-clause it, unambiguously in the standard language, expresses epistemic meaning:3 Mora da mnogo radis 'You must be working hard' The distribution of the two meanings over the two different forms is not always compulsory, as we have seen above, and there is a choice of forms to express the epistemic meaning which, however, is not true for the root meaning. This is always expressed by the full paradigm forms. 4.1 In the 3rd person singular there is a coincidence of the regular and the defective forms of mora eg. (On) mora da radi However, the kind of complements the two identical forms may receive reveals that we are dealing with two different morpho-syntactic units. The defective mora expressing epistemic meaning may be complemented by the da-clause permitting any tense which can occur in the main clauses including also the conditional mood: Mora da radi 'He must be working' Mora da je radio 'He must have worked'
present tense
Mora da ce raditi 'It must be that he will work'
future tense
Mora da bi radio 'It must be that he would work'
conditional
perfect tense
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The regular 3rd person singular, mora, as well as the forms for the other persons, when complemented by the da-clause permit only the present tense of the verb: Mora da radi 'He must work' The substitution of the present by any other tense, e.g., Mora da je radio automatically renders the sentence epistemic reading: 'He must have worked' (Browne 1968, 1986; I vie 1970; Craig 1975). 4.2. Besides the difference in clausal complements the defective and regular forms differ in their relations with the subjects. Skipping a deeper explanation of this phenomenon we shall say that only after the defective epistemic mora the subject may be comfortably4 placed in front of the verb in the complement clause: Mora da on radi 'He must be working' With the subject in the front position before regular morati both readings are available. (Piper 1982) 4.3. Time reference marks another distinction between the defective and the regular forms of morati. The time reference of the clause containing the regular forms of the verb morati is signalled by the tense inflection of that verb: Morao si zavrsiti/da zavrsis jucer5
'You had to finish yesterday' 'You should have finished yesterday' The time reference of the clause containing the defective mora is signalled by the tense of the main verb in the complement clause: Mora da si zavrsio jucer
'You must have finished yesterday' The resulting difference in time reference consists in that the former clause places the obligation in the past and the latter suggests that the assumption is being made in the present about the proposition in the complement clause.
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4.4. The regular and the defective epistemic forms of morati show differences with regard to the negation. In clauses containing the regular forms the negative particle ne precedes and negates the verb morati: Ne moras radiii/da radis 'You needn't work' However, if the defective epistemic form is used the negative particle precedes and negates the main verb in the complement clause: Mora da ne radis 'It must be that you are not working' The possibility of placing the negative particle in front of the main complement verb or in front of the mora form cannot be ruled out: Moras ne radiii/da ne radis 'You must not work' Ne mora da radis 'You are not obliged to work' The result, however, is, in the first case, a stylistically marked clause, acceptable in a context like the following: Moras ne radili ako se zelis oporaviti 'You must not work if you want to recover' The structure is marked because "the obligation not to act" is expressed neutrally in Serbo-Croatian by the verb smjeti 'to be allowed' in the negative: Ne smijes raditi ako se zelis oporaviti As for the example with the negative particle in front of mora the only possible interpretation would be obligational and the structure itself would be judged substandard as it lacks the ending for the second person -s (moras). 4.5. Interrogative patterning is another area where the root meaning of morati expressed by the full paradigm behaves differently from the epistemic defective mora. In "yes-no" questions obligational morati is construed in the regular way by means of the interrogative particle // following the fronted operator or by the combination da li without inversion:
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Moras li raditi/da radis! Da li moras raditi/da radis? 'Do you have to work?' Such an interrogative pattern questions the modal part of the clause, the obligation. There is no possibility, however, of construing a question with the defective epistemic mora: ? Mora li da radii! ? Da li mora da radis! as the resulting structures besides being substandard can only be interpreted in the root, i.e., obligational meaning. There seem to be no logical or semantic restrictions on questioning an assumption like Mora da radis; however, the question should be construed by means of suppletion as mora cannot function in this context: Je li istina da radis? 'It is true that you are working?' Je li moguce da radis] 'Is it possible that you are working?' 5. Conclusion. This brief schematic analysis will have shown that there are links between form and meaning of the verb morati and some other verbs sometimes labelled modal which have not been widely noted although they seem to be very similar to such links holding in some other languages. Further work along these lines applying a greater degree of delicacy might lead to the establishment of a formally well-defined group of modal verbs in Serbo-Croatian. Notes 1. Both interpretations are available when the complement (main) verb is imperfective. Perfective verbs favour root interpretation with present time reference. However, they may obtain epistemic interpretation in the habitual sense: On mora da izradi zadalak od wemena na vrijeme 'He must be doing his assignments from time to time'. 2. The ίώ-clause complement is statistically more frequent in the Eastern variant of SerboCroatian where the infinitive is generally weaker for reasons ultimately connected with the disappearance of this form in the Balkan sprachbund. 3. The infinitive of the verb bill may be added to the defective epistemic mora'. Mora (biti) da radis without any change of meaning. This point is of considerable interest for a generative-transformational interpretation of epistemic mora to which, in this light, the complement clause may appear as subject.
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3a. The exclusive epistemic interpretation of the unchangeable form mora seems to be valid for the Standard language based on the Neo-Stokavian dialect, and for some other dialects. Certain urban substandards and regional, mainly eastern, dialects tend to use the unchanging form mora for both meanings thus: Oni mora (not moraju) da rade. 4. It would be perhaps more accurate to say that when the subject is placed in front of the main verb in the ώ-clause the favourite but not exclusive interpretation (as Piper 1982 suggests) will be epistemic, because in cases when the main verb is perfective, root interpretation is also available: Mora da se on primi posla 'He should start working'. 5. The past tense form morao si expresses both obligation without any suggestion as to whether it was fulfilled or not and also unfulfilled obligation as signalled in our example by its two possible translations into English.
References Baric, Eugenija —Mijo Lancaric — Dragica Malic —Slavko Pavesic —Mirko Peti —Vesna Zecevic —Marija Znika 1979 Prirucna gramatika hrvatskoga knjizevnog jezika [Reference grammar of Literary Croatian] (Zagreb: Skolska knjiga). Batistic, Tatjana 1983 "O nekim pitanjima u vezi sa analizom glagola morati i moci [On some problems connected with the analysis of the verbs morati and moci\", Juznoslovenski filolog 39: 99 -111. Browne, Wayles 1986 Relative clauses in Serbo-Croatian in comparison with English (Zagreb: Institute of Linguistics). Coates, Jennifer 1983 The semantics of the modal auxiliaries (London —Canberra: Croom Helm). Craig, Colette 1975 "On Serbo-Croatian complement sentences", in: R. Filipoviic (ed.) 1975: 148-164. Djordjevic, Miloje 1983 Verbalphrase und Verbvalenz (Heidelberg: Groos). Filipovic, Rudolf (ed.) 1970 Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian English Contrastive Project Reports 2 (Zagreb: Institute of Linguistics). 1975 ... Reports 10 1985 Chapters in Serbo-Croatian English contrastive grammar (Zagreb: Institute of Linguistics). Huddleston, Rodney 1976 An introduction to English transformational syntax (London: Longman). Ivic, Milka 1970 "O upotrebi glagolskih vremena u zavisnoj recenici: prezent u recenici s veznikom da [On the use of verb tenses in subordinate clauses: the present tense in clauses with the conjunction da]", Zbornik za filologiju i lingvistiku 13:115-138.
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Kalogjera, Damir 1970 "Lexico-grammatical features of must, should and ought to and their equivalents in Serbo-Croatian", in: R. Filipovic (ed.) 1970: 120-125. 1982 The English modals and their equivalents in Serbo-Croatian (Zagreb: Institute of Linguistics). 1985 "The English modals and their equivalents in Serbo-Croatian", in R. Filipovic (ed.) 1985: 167-246. Katicic, Radoslav 1986 Sintaksa hrvatskoga knjizevnog jezika. Nacrt za gramatiku [Syntax of Literary Croatian. An outline for a grammar] (Zagreb: Jugoslovenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti — Globus). Kravar, Miroslav 1964 Aspektne osobitosti modalnih glagola [Aspectual properties of modal verbs] (Radovi. Razdio lingvisticno-filoloski (3)) (Zadar: Sveuciliste u Zagrebu, Filozofski fakultet Zadar). Lyons, John 1977 Semantics 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). McCawley, James D. 1971 "The category status of English modals", Foundations of Language 12: 597 — 601. Palmer, Frank Richard 1979 Modality and the English modals (London: Longman). Piper, Predrag 1982 "Sinonimije i konverzije s glagolom morati [Synonymy and conversion with the verb morati\", Naucni sastanak slavista u Vukove done 12: 167—172. Pullum, Geoffrey — Deirdre Wilson 1977 "Autonomous syntax and the analysis of auxiliaries", Language 53: 741 —788. Ridjanovic, Midhat 1976 A synchronic study of verbal aspect in English and Serbo-Croatian (Cambridge, Mass.: Slavica). Recnik 1969 Recnik srpskohrvatskoga knjizevnog jezika [Dictionary of Literary SerboCroatian] (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, Zagreb: Matica hrvatska). Rjecnik 1911—1916 Rjecnik hrvatskoga Hi srpskoga jezika [Dictionary of the Croatian or Serbian language] 8 (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti). Samardzija, Marko 1986 "Modalni glagoli [Modal verbs]", Jezik 34.1: 17-23. Stevanovic, Mihajlo 1974 Savremeni srpskohrvatski jezik [Contemporary Serbo-Croatian] 2 (Beograd: Naucna knjiga).
Reasons and opportunities for communication in the foreign-language and second-language classroom William R. Lee
Classroom opportunities for communication in a foreign or second language can be numerous enough. Obvious reasons for classroom communication in a foreign language, except to get practice in using it, may be relatively few, unless somehow contrived and created. With a second language, such as the learners may need in coping with other school subjects or with everyday life outside the school, it is different, especially in the absence of fellow-learners speaking the same native tongue as oneself: then the reason is compelling. And even if fellow-learners of the same speech are present, all are likely to need the second language to some extent as a means of soon establishing themselves in the community where they now live, and thus there is relatively strong motivation to seek out communicative experience in the second language as one means of acquiring it. So-called "foreign-language learning situations", in which the learners hear nothing of the language outside the classroom where it is taught, and so-called "second-language learning situations", in which they meet with it outside the classroom in profusion, are at opposite poles. Between these two extremes there can also be learning situations where the language is not inescapable in the community but discoverable here and there or now and then, situations where without too much difficulty it can either be avoided or on the other hand sought out. Such "intermediate" circumstances are no doubt commoner than the extremes. For simplicity's sake, however, let us just look at the two broadly opposed types, bearing in mind that the matter is more subtle than would appear from the outline picture drawn. And let us concentrate chiefly on the foreign-language situation, not least because most children and even teenagers (who together constitute the majority of learners) find themselves in a learning situation of that type. Do foreign-language learners, as distinct from second-language learners, need to communicate in the language they are learning? Superficially the question is no doubt absurd, though less absurd if it is re-formulated
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as "Do they need to communicate in it at the time of learning?" The assumption has not entirely vanished, among those concerned in some way with the teaching of children and young teenagers, that a need for communication in a foreign (not a second) language will arise only in the learners' future, at some time after they have left school and entered upon adult life. They may then "need" the language they will have learned: there it is in their minds all ready to be used for some sort of communication which will he expected of them. Fortunately this assumption, which was very far from universal, is disappearing with decent haste, as most people come to accept fully that learning a modern language involves grasping how to communicate in it, and as the motivational value of success in doing so, from an early stage, becomes increasingly apparent.' It is essential for foreign-language learners to communicate in the language, because if they are not involved in experience of communication, regularly as the course proceeds, a valuable driving-force of interest will be lacking; and, moreover, they may not find out how to communicate, but may do little more than gain some familiarity with the syntactic and other forms of the language.2 Yet there is no compelling need for them to communicate, such as there may be in a second-language learning situation, or of course in a first-language learning situation, with which we are not concerned here. Any compelling need probably lies in the future, when during travel or employment, for instance, use of the language in question can hardly be avoided.3 If, in a foreign-language learning situation, there is a compelling need to communicate, the learners will do so in their first languages. If the roof were to show signs of immediately falling in, if fire were suddenly to break out in the classroom, or if a recognisable scorpion were to be noticed scuttling across the floor, no rule such as "Speak only English in the English class" (if that is the foreign language) would silence appropriate cries of alarm in the mother tongue, or cause anyone to search frantically for roof, fire, or scorpion in a dictionary. Danger can tear language out of us, but normally our own language. There is a positive need to communicate, and to do so effectively and without hesitation. Such communication is necessary and almost inevitable, and it would not occur to anybody in his or her senses to struggle for the proper foreign-language expression in which to raise the alarm. Taking the whole world as one's field of discussion, it is easy to think of other not unknown dangers, big or small, which might jerk LI out of the learners, however severely the use of the learners' native language is proscribed, or however dogged the learners' determination to use it in all circumstances. Are not
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earthquakes and tornadoes, as well as human violence, a hazard in many countries? Not that all surprising incidents are disagreeable. How about a cheerful and noisy procession passing the school, or a new kind of aircraft seen through the window, or an unexpected shower of rain after months of drought? Communication is then hard for the learners to resist, the focus of the lesson being momentarily forgotten. Some such communication may be urgently necessary without, however, being rare. It may, for instance, be occasioned by a minor accident or illness. No teacher would be heartless enough to demand the foreignlanguage equivalent of "I've cut my finger" or "I'm not feeling well — may I go home?" before acting in sympathetic response. A few such occasions are not rare at all, e.g., requests to leave the room for a necessary reason, and unless the urgency is great the foreign language can be used, as in "May I leave the room?" The less urgent the occasion, the more reasonable it seems to ask for this to be done. Admittedly school regulations do contribute a kind of necessity which differs from the absolute necessity to give warning of or to announce some disaster, big or small, and differs from the inner compulsion to respond linguistically to an exceptional event, pleasant or unpleasant. Routine actions, regarded by everybody (in particular contexts of situation) as a necessary "part of life", such as greeting the teacher, asking about cleaning the board or giving out books, or about changing the flowers or adjusting the weather chart, can be ignored if they are not in the target language: thus, "Good morning, Miss A", "Shall I clean the board?", etc. Some would argue that communication of this sort is as necessary as warnings of dire events. However that may be, there seems no reason why it should not take place, since it has little urgency about it, in the foreign language. Granted that, for motivational and other reasons, a foreign-language course should be based largely on communicative use of the language, it is clear also that it cannot to any considerable extent be based on necessary communication (as discussed above), since this offers too slight a basis. There is not enough of it, even if we stretch the category to include speech formulas required by school rules. Nevertheless none of this, from a language-learning viewpoint, need be wasted. In particular, what is exceptional and vivid, apart from stimulating a wish to talk about it, tends to stick in the mind. Unless there exist obvious reasons for not recalling an incident (it may, for example, have been embarrassing or unduly disagreeable), it can be recalled in the foreign language, and as far as agreeable and reassuring
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events are concerned, such as an amusing school play or an exciting sports day or a local or national event in which pupils have enjoyably taken part, this is even more true. The language-teacher who makes good pedagogical use of any exceptional happening, if not at the time then later, can be congratulated. A boy falls over and injures his knee: first aid is the first consideration, but then why not teach graze or cut and put on a bandage with the situational context fresh in observers' minds, and perhaps rub in, as well as ointment, some appropriate and meaningful syntax, e. g., "If he'd looked where he was going, he wouldn't have fallen over", all on the assumption that, since the incident will be remembered, so too may some of the (foreign) language that went with it. About exceptional happenings, whether enjoyable or not, the wish to communicate is often almost irresistible. There is every reason, so it seems to the participants, for communication; and reason of this sort offers also an exceptional opportunity to communicate. Although most of this communication naturally takes place in the learners' first language or languages, there can be "overflow" discussion, as it were, in the language being learned: the foreign-language lesson can seize the topic of the occasion and welcome it on board. A teacher's freedom to exploit incidents and occasions of outstanding concern or interest, as and when they occur, is an important freedom. In its absence the degree of constraint imposed by course-books or syllabuses may be excessive, even if these are well constructed and supply or recommend both interesting subject-matter and interesting teachinglearning procedures. A well-written teacher's guide, offering advice on the implementation of a syllabus or course-book, may well include ideas as to how exceptional happenings, large or small, may best be exploited. It is not suggested here that this exploitation should absorb a great deal of classroom time, only that, because of the strong inclination to communicate which such happenings awake, it should be found a place in the foreign-language course. Not all such events and incidents can be said to bring communication inevitably into play: only perhaps emergencies do so. But the echo, as it were, of such necessary communication can be made audible subsequently in the target language. Additionally, in so far as school customs and regulations require certain forms of speech on particular occasions, it seems natural enough to introduce their target-language equivalents into language lessons. Although it is very desirable to weave language of this kind, taken as an aspect of the situations in which it occurs, into a foreign-language course of which one principal aim is to give the learners experience of
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communication in the language, nevertheless the broad basis of such a course must clearly be found elsewhere. Strictly, as we have noticed, there is no need for the learners (at least in a unilingual class) to communicate in the foreign language at all, since they can do so in their own. If they try to communicate with one another in the foreign language, the initial reason, whether they like the lessons or not, will be that the teacher encourages and requires such attempts.4 This is true of children and younger teenagers, and may also be true of older learners, unless they have fully accepted the need to use the language communicatively as a condition of learning it. Experience of communicating in the foreign language thus has to be provided, in a typical foreign-language learning situation, within the limits of these constraints, and in such a way as to interest the learners (otherwise, especially if they are children or teenagers, they will put forth little effort) and to enable them to make increasingly effective use of the most important phonological, lexical, and syntactic (including relational) features of the language as means of communication.5 The task is on the whole easier with a multilingual than with a unilingual class, since there is already within the former (particularly if a number of mutually unintelligible first languages are represented) reason and opportunity to communicate in the language being taught. On the other hand, the range of learners' difficulties is likely to be wider and it is unlikely that the teacher will be familiar with and understand all of them. Such classes are of course very common in certain countries and areas, but they are not the most typical kind of school foreign-language class. Much commoner is the class in which all, or virtually all, the learners (along with the teacher) speak the same first language. But the "communicative" advantage lies with the multilingual class. Reliance on the communication that may arise from sporadic and exceptional events, or from intermittent though obligatory social requirements, being insufficient as a basis, where are adequate reasons and opportunities for communicative experience to be found? They cannot be found in the community outside the school, as with second-language learning, and they will also not be discoverable to any great extent in the school itself.6 They therefore need on the whole to be created, as convincingly as possible, within the language class itself. In these circumstance, communication in the foreign language is a matter of contrivance and of suspension of learners' disbelief. Learners must believe themselves capable of communicating in the 'new' language and, as far as possible,
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must forget for a time that they can communicate much better in their own. In what learning-teaching contexts can this be brought about? As far as children and most teenagers are concerned, and no doubt a large number of adults (especially those sometimes termed "unsophisticated"), certainly not in a context of linguistic explanation. This is not to decry any aspect of the study of language or linguistics, to which, especially in the field of contrastive studies, Professor Rudolf Filipovic has already contributed so much. The study of language, however, has to be distinguished from language learning, although there can be links between the two types of activity. The study of language enables linguists to advise as to the nature and observable development of the communicative means (namely, a language or languages), whereas language learning or acquisition, seen as effort and activity and from the learners' viewpoint, is of a different character and does not of course necessarily involve specialists: all sorts of people learn languages. One aspect of language learning, seen from the teachers' rather than the learners' viewpoint, is the creation and provision of contexts in which the learners are motivated to communicate with one another in the language being learned, on the assumption that such communication is hard to come by outside the school. All this has a bearing on what some who write about language teaching call the "artificiality of the classroom", as contrasted with "real life", "artificiality" here being a term with pejorative overtones. Yet it is surely "natural" to learn: learning is a common aspect of "real life", itself perhaps a questionable term. "The limitations of the classroom" is a less questionable phrase, and admittedly we cannot swim there, or drive a car, or chase somebody up hill and down dale, unless vicariously. There are many ways in which reasons and opportunities for communication within the language classroom can be created, and it is possible to indicate only a few. Much depends upon the ages, interests, and experience of the learners. Many language-games cannot be successfully played unless, while playing them, there is successful communication in the language: they are a major learning resource in this respect. Few people dislike games as such and few adult learners regard languagegames as "childish" once they see their language-using value. Puzzles and problem solving of many kinds are also motivating, and may call for mutual consultation and discussion (teacher-aided) in small groups or pairs of learners or with the whole class. A need for communication is also contributed by "incomplete information", which may take a great variety of forms (for instance, one learner may have half the information
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about a map or journey and her partner the other half, so they need to question one another). Of course, there are simpler and more straightforward opportunities for communication if learners in a class do not know much about one another. At almost any level of achievement in the language, questions can be asked and answered — "Where do you live?", "How many brothers and sisters have you?", "What does your father do?", "What do you do at the weekend?". If new information is obtained, communication has taken place. But will it necessarily have been of much interest to the participants? Do they really want to know what their partners' houses are like, what they do in their spare time, whether their fathers and mothers have jobs, and so on? Sometimes yes, no doubt, and sometimes no. If the members of the class have never met before, such communication may have some curiosity and sparkle about it, especially if their command of the language enables them to respond to a more general instruction, such as "Find out what you can about your neighbour". Yet there is always the danger of embarrassment, especially where the learners are from different socio-economic backgrounds or where there are unhappy circumstances at home: "What does your father do?" ("I haven't got a father"); "How many rooms have you in your flat?" ("One"). Adults, though better able than children and teenagers to fend off questions they feel to be inquisitive (and some course-books include questions of this kind) also resent such intrusion and can be embarrassed by it. The same applies, in some settings, to communicative question-andanswer activity about learners' opinions on certain matters which arouse heated or disagreeable feelings, inimical to the friendly co-operation which needs to prevail (since oral command is learned socially) in a language class. One more basis, out of many possible bases, for the promotion of oral communication within the class, can be found in oral "reviews" of books, films, or TV programmes which some members of the class have read or seen and which they wish to describe and perhaps recommend to others. Questions can be asked by those who have not seen or read them, and objections to what the speaker says may be made by those who have. At an intermediate or advanced stage a discussion can develop. The second-language classroom, set in the midst of a community where the language being learned is constantly to be seen and heard, can in addition draw upon the communicative necessities both of daily life outside the school and of lessons in other subjects when given in the
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second language. Communication in writing I have to omit here, owing to lack of space and not its lack of importance. Reasons for communication appear to be even more important than opportunities, since the latter are not necessarily accompanied by any strong wish to communicate or interest in doing so successfully. On the other hand, certain language-games usually are, and the same applies to a variety of problem-solving activities. Unless there is communication (with a partner or with a group of co-learners), the game cannot be properly played or the problem solved. For this reason, and without necessarily excluding other kinds of communicative activity, some types of language game and of problem-solving activity need to be placed centrally in any foreign-language course that aims to give learners experience of the communicative possibilities of the language while they are learning it. 7 This article is written from a language-teacher's viewpoint and concerns itself with a single important aspect of language teaching: namely, to give foreign-language learners (as they proceed with their learning) experience of communicating regularly in the language about something on which they feel it necessary and interesting to communicate. I have not said everything that needs to be said on this aspect, and limitations of space make it impossible to support the argument with examples as fully as it might be supported. Language teaching goes on day by day against a changing background of linguistic thought, research, and speculation which has contributed much towards the solution of some of its problems without solving them all. As Professor Filipovic remarked some fourteen years ago: "We have the impression that linguistic theory is progressing in its field very satisfactorily. Nowadays we seem to know quite a lot about language, its nature, its structure, and its operation. What we know less about is how this knowledge of ours can and should be applied in the practical teaching of language, especially a foreign language".8 The teaching of languages (those being acquired intertwined always with those known) needs to be seen from both scholar's and teacher's viewpoints (though scholar and teacher may be one person), and above all from the learners' viewpoint, for they are the budding communicators.
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Notes 1. Communication can be bilateral, as in oral exchanges, or unilateral, as in silent reading. But even those whose primary purpose is to learn how to read the language find it easier to do so if they also acquire some oral skill. That at least is a widespread belief, one reasonable to hold in the modern world, where languages are so much more accessible to learners in their spoken form than they used to be, where the bonds between print and speech are drawn closer, and where there is increasing pressure on more and more people speaking different languages to communicate with one another both in speech and print. 2. There is no implication here that teachers and other specialists concerned with language teaching did not realise until the present day that a foreign language is a supplementary means of communication, only that this central fact has sometimes and in some places been obscured by the assumption that a language can be effectively acquired without communicative use during the acquisition and learning period. 3. This is to disregard any compelling need to communicate in the foreign language which may arise, for instance, if on a school journey abroad learners get lost and have to ask the way themselves; or if a learner cannot avoid, for urgent personal reasons, having to make a phone call abroad in the foreign language without aid from a more advanced speaker. Probably few foreign-language learners never find themselves under such compulsion (offering opportunity also), but this fact does not materially change the general picture. 4. There is similarity here to what, from a teacher's viewpoint, has been called "teaching English for no obvious reason" (Abbott in Abbott et al. 1981: 12). Reasons, however, may be apparent to the teacher which are not apparent to the learners. 5. For relational features, see Crombie (1985). 6. There are possibilities, often little explored, of real and interesting communication among classes and of course among schools; and to these may be added the opportunities for communication that arise in an optional foreign-language "club", attended by learners at different levels of achievement in the language but having interests (possibly hobbies) in common with less or more advanced learners. 7. Two examples of such games and activities, all long familiar to school language-teachers, may be cited. First, a very simple guessing-game — "What am I going to do?". One learner thinks of a simple action (e.g., walking to the back of the classroom) and the others make guesses. Communication is involved here and the game can be adapted to various age-levels of attainment. Secondly, at a much more advanced stage, the welltested game known as "Alibi". Two members of the class are "suspects": they are suspected of having committed a burglary the night before. Outside the classroom they together invent a story to account for their activities at the time the crime was committed. Separately, they are questioned by the class, the aim being to uncover the weak points of the alibi they have given. Both these games give meaningful although incidental practice in the use of certain patterns of syntax, bringing home to the learners something of their communicative value. These are merely examples, chosen more or less at random from the now extensive literature on language games and task-based activities. 8. See Filipovic (1972).
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References Abbott, Gerry — John Greenwood — Douglas McKeating—Peter Wingard 1981 Approaches to English teaching. The teaching of English as an international language: a practical guide (Glasgow — London: Collins). Crombie, Winifred 1985 Discourse and language learning: a relational approach to syllabus design (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Filipovic, Rudolf 1972 "Linguistic theory and modern language teaching", in: Reinhold Freudenstein (ed.), Focus '80 (Berlin: Cornelsen — Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Between language contact and language development Dora Macek
One of the basic principles of language contact is the relationship between direct and indirect contact (Filipovic 1986: 54). The contact situation and the way it affects language is different in either case. Direct contact occurs when bilingual speakers use their languages in active communication (Filipovic 1986: 51). The effects of direct contact are felt in "words, phrases, sentences, sentence groups and discourse" (Filipovic 1986: 51), actually in the entire system of the language. Indirect contact, on the contrary, is based on transmission through written and spoken intermediaries, particularly the mass media. Only parts of the language system (especially words) are affected. One of the levels that typically does not suffer interference is syntax (Filipovic 1986: 185). If any interference is recorded "it is only in sigle cases or as an enhancement of latent tendencies" (Carstensen 1979, quoted in Filipovic 1986: 185). It would be interesting to speculate upon the above subject matter in the light of the rapidly changing sociolinguistic situation worldwide. Since the study of language contact in its social context is regarded as essential (Filipovic 1986: 26), speculate we shall on the basis of a few recently observed examples of innovative usage in Serbo-Croatian. The usage is, we believe, due both to language contact and to "latent tendencies" in the recipient language. 1. The distinction between direct and indirect contact, between bilingualism and monolingualism seems to be fuzzy rather than clear cut. Before the radio and television age, indirect contact was transmitted by bilinguals through written media, or through limited spoken communication. The reach of both types of communication has been very much extended, particularly spoken discourse on the air. Clearly, all written discourse is planned and subject to repeated revision by the writer himself and often by an authorized language expert, for which reason it can be kept well within accepted usage and appropriate styles. Whereas spoken language can also adhere to these ideals, it is used in
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many more impromptu situations than not, and this is where bilinguals and diglossals not only cannot keep their several language systems in harness, but can get away with the various deviations more easily. Much more interference in the syntax of Lr can be noted in such discourse than is otherwise detectable in written texts. There is no reason why this kind of situation should be a channel for the transmission of interference in the syntax of monolingual speakers as well as at other levels. 2. Taking the present sociolinguistic situation in most quarters of Europe (and indeed of the world), and among most social groups, it would be difficult to find a monolingual speaker in Martinet's (1960) strict sense. It is rather a range of partial bilingualisms (Havranek 1964, quoted in Filipovic 1986: 31) that characterizes the present linguistic scene. Very many people are able to recognize words, or parts of discourse in (an)other language(s) and dialect(s), which often have an international circulation. Literate speakers can identify familiar words in written texts as well, and these often occur as complete discourse of varying length on objects in everyday use. The text in foreign languages is often interlaced with the native language (and closely related ones) of the user so that it may not always be clear where one language ends and another one begins. Here are some examples to be found on food containers: Carton of milk:
Mlijeko
Milk
Latte
Μολοκο
Fruit juice:
Fructal v sodelovanjo z naravo P ron-Nektar Past riserad nektar fr n p ron. Vatten och socker tillsatt. Inga konserveringsmedel Importerad av: AGROUNION AB, Box 21045 2001 Malm 21, Tel. 040-1178 10 Birnennektar mit Fruchtmark Fruchtgehalt mindestens 40% 700ml Hall naturen ren
Between language contact and language development
Tin of
Soup:
fish:
Product of Yugoslavia Skuse Fileti u rafiniranom sjemenom ulju Makrelen Filets in raffiniertem Speiseöl Neto Tezina 115 g Ribe 70 - 85% i/#fll5-30% Juha öd Rajcica Koncentrat Paradiznikova Juha Tomatensuppe Tomato Soup
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Adria Zadar
Netto Inhalt 115g Fisch 70 -85% 0/15-30% Maggi Netto 78 g Za 4 tanjura 5 minuta kuhanja
In spoken transmission parts of discourse from undubbed films and TV serials, even from advertisments, texts on gramophone records and casettes, find their way into the speech of many, particularly young, Lr speakers. The greetings "Hi-de-hi!" and "Hi-de-ho!" could be heard among youngsters in Zagreb who heard it in an English serial broadcast by the national television. (On the borrowing of interjections see Macek 1976). If we consider the number of modern nomads in a great variety from the more sedentary type of migrant worker to the young Interrail traveller, the area of direct contact seems to expand almost beyond measure. Last, but not least, the present system of general education includes several years of foreign language learning in all countries. So the recognizability of texts, or parts of texts, and acceptance of some of them into everyday usage, is likely. 3. Innovations in the development of a language are introduced into the spoken language first, and usually by anonymous groups of younger speakers, though individual creation by single writers and poets is not to be underestimated. Their greatest contribution derives perhaps less from their own linguistic creations as from their introduction of forms and structures, even borrowed in foreign languages, hitherto rarely used or considered unacceptable. Innovations tend to steal into wider usage before they are accepted by linguistic authorities as standard usage. They enter language at points ambiguous with respect to form, structure or meaning.
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3.1. An area of innovation under language contact in Serbo-Croatian has been the final consonantal clusters. The original four biconsonantal clusters in word final position have now extended to 40 possible consonantal combinations in this position. This process seems to be continuing, and the latest example that I have encountered is the cluster -gv. It was found in a most carefully composed linguistic text where it occurs in the term bilingv 'bilingual'. This cluster is difficult to pronounce at word end, but in medial position it is normal (e.g., bilingvizam, even plural ofbilingvbilingvi). The only missing member in the inflectional paradigm of the word, as well as in the various derivations, seems to be the word with the awkward cluster in final position. Since movable a seems to have stopped being productive, a form bilingav is not likely to emerge, but on the contrary, -gv may become as acceptable as -nt in student or -(j)ndz in ce(j)ndz (change) has. The increasing number of new (loan) words without the movable a as a relief to final consonant clusters has perhaps facilitated a general tendency to avoid forms with a movable a. Such are feminine nouns where genitive plurals in -/ seem to be favored in order to avoid a) genitive plurals with a movable a, and b) ambiguous genitive plurals in -a, without the movable a, e.g., krosnja 'tree top krosnji (gen. pi.) for krosanja and krosnjä karta 'ticket' karti karata kartä 3.2 A type of innovation has also been noticed in prefixation. Prefixes are a fuzzy category resembling affixes and free morphemes (Babic 1986: 33). The process of prefixation can thus be placed between derivation and composition. In Serbo-Croatian it is relatively rare as a wordformational process (ibid.). The last statement applies also to the use of the prefix pre- (Babic 1986: 331). Its meaning is "intensification of the basic concept" (ibid.). In loan words with a Latin basis it occurs in a number of professional jargons, e.g., pre-bilingual, pre-Hellenic, pre-programmed. It is difficult to assign the origin of such loan words to any of the languages that use Latin as a source of technical terminology, and certainly not directly to Latin. In any case, the meaning of the prefix is 'before' and not the one of the homologous Serbo-Croatian prefix. The loan translation of this prefix in Serbo-Croatian is pred- or prije(ijekavic) pre-(ecavic). These forms are adverbial in origin and resemble
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in form both the international and the SCr. pre-. This superficial resemblance, however, sometimes overrides the obvious ambiguity in meaning if the international prefix is used. Thus in both ijekavic and ecavic texts pre- is found in the meaning 'before': odio za prenatalnu skrb 'department of pre-natal care' prehistorijski mitovi 'prehistoric myths' instead of the unequivocal: prije poroda/ prednatalni, prethistorisjski. But whereas examples such as the above may not be particularly susceptible to ambiguity because of their limited range of meanings, preprogramiran will more readily be understood as Overprogrammed' than as the intended 'preprogrammed'. 3.3. Another category which is indistinct are fusions and semicompounds (Babic 1986: 31—32), consisting of words joined directly in juxtaposition. They are structures that lie between word formation and syntax, i.e., a type of loose compound word and NP with noun and modifier. Fusions and semicompounds are less frequent types of word formation (Babic ibid.), but are often found with not very language conscious bilinguals. They are particularly frequent in translations of various names and titles, e.g., Darbar trg 'Durbar Square', ley land-autobus 'Leyland bus', "IT'-magazin 'IT magazine' instead of a NP with nominal modifier following, or adjectival modifier preceding the head, i.e., trg Darbar or Darbarski (Kraljevski) trg, a phrase autobus marke leyland 'a bus of the Leyland make', casopis IT, etc. Such structures are also found in commun nouns, e.g., overland-svijet Overland world' undergroundmagazin 'underground magazine', Hindu hram 'Hindu temple', etc. In this manner a rare type becomes more used. 3.4. Premodification by sentence or phrase does not occur in SerboCroatian. Used, it gives the impression of a clumsily interpolated text. It can occasionally be found as a reflex of the English structure or literal translation. An extreme example is the following: Kada je vozac poceo s tipicno azijskim "Nemam siinog novca" spilom, Tom ga pristojno zamoli da priceka ... 'When the driver began with the typically Asian "/ have no change" game, Tom politely asked him to wait ...' The natural structure in Serbo-Croatian would treat the indirect speech sentence as a member of the complex clause structure, not as part of the
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predicate of the temporal clause. The indirect speech sentence would be interpolated between the temporal and the main clause together with the verb whose object it is: Kada je vozac poceo s tipicno azijskim spilom i rekao/rekavsi "Nemam sitnog novca", Tom ga pristojno zamoli da priceka ... 'When the driver began with the typically Asian game and said/saying "Ihave no change", Tom politely asked him to wait...') 3.5. Literal translation tends to turn up in colloquial idioms, thus: Zvao je Kim Bradley. — Kim tko? 'Kim Bradley called. — Kim who?' instead of the usual: Koji Kim? 'Which Kim?', Kako se preziva taj Kim? 'What's the family name of this Kim?', Tko? 'Who?' with emphatic stress, etc. Such very elliptic sentences seem to be acceptable in any direct communication. 3.6. During the past two decades I have observed changes in the treatment of some verbs with regard to their transitivity. For example the loan verb diskutirati 'to discuss' can be identified with the Serbo-Croatian indefinite verb raspravljati 'to discuss', with its prefixed perfective pair prodiskutirati 'to discuss fully' and the perfective counterpart raspraviti 'to discuss'. Loan verbs are aspectually neutral and are thus mostly treated as biaspectual (Filipovic 1986: 140). The imperfective raspravljati is both transitive and intransitive, so diskutirati is used both with an accusative object and with a prepositional phrase complement: diskutirati sto 'to discuss something' and diskutirati o cemu 'to discuss about something'. Under the pressure of both the language of origin (e.g., English) and the Serbo-Croatian transitive variants, the simple form (without prefix) diskutirati as a perfective/imperfective and transitive verb has been increasingly more frequently used than the intransitive diskutirati o cemu. In a similar way the Serbo-Croatian intransitive verb with two forms setati/setati se 'take a walk' seems to have developed a distinction between the two forms. While the one with the reflexive pronoun se has remained intransitive, the simple verb has acquired a transitive usage, e.g., setati psa 'walk a dog' instead of the former setati s psom 'walk with a dog. Finally, bilinguals with a good knowledge of both languages tend to use "short-cut" phrases in colloquial communication, which they would avoid in more careful discourse. Nevertheless, such usage is a possible
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model for more extensive innovation of the same order. The following example was noticed: Tih ljudi diplomiramo cetrdesetak. 'We graduate some forty of these people.' where diplomirati 'to graduate' is a biaspectual but only intransitive verb. Loan verbs are obviously neutral with regard to transitivity as well as aspect, unless they are very strongly identified with a Serbo-Croatian verb which is in that respect definite. Even so, it is relatively easy to understand loan verbs as ambiguous, which in turn can influence a number of Serbo-Croatian verbs to develop in the same direction. 4. It would seem that actual usage shows some aspects of the language which would go unnoticed if we observed only rules for standard usage. To mention only some very obstinate errors, or inelegancies of style, like unemphatic pronominal subjects or even dummy subjects (Neki to vole vruce 'Some like it hot'), coordination of prepositions (sa i bez mlijeka "with and without milk'), or present participles as attributes (meka relaksirajuca glazba 'soft relaxing music) which persist inspite of repeated censure by language authorities. Ambiguities in the Serbo-Croatian system, similar structures and forms, latent tendencies, but also pressure from other languages and dialects, all pave the way for innovation enhanced by the present favorable sociolinguistic trends. References Babic, Stjepan 1986 Tvorba rijeci u hrvatskom knjizevnom jeziku (Word-formation in the Croatian literary language) (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti). Carstensen, Broder 1979 "The influence of English on German — syntactic problems", Studio Anglia Posnaniensia 11: 65 — 77. Filipovic, Rudolf 1986 Teorija jezika u kontaktu (A theory of language in contact) (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti). Havranek, Bohuslav 1964 "Problematika mijesanija jezika (Problems of language mixture)", Zadarska revija 3: 177-185. Macek, Dora 1976 "Some marginalia of language contact", Studia Romanica et Anglica ZagraWenjio41-42:79-86. Martinet, Andre 1963 Elements de linguistique generale (Paris: Colin).
The lexicon of the Split dialect Thomas F. Magner
Introduction Split is the most populous city on the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia; in the 1981 census the city's population was 235,922 while that of Split opcina (which includes neighboring islands and cities from Zadar to Dubrovnik) was 882,050 (Popis 1982: 26). The city's distinctive speech has been represented in documents and literary works since Marko Marulic's Judita was published in 1521. Basically its dialect is a variety of cakavian ikavian Croatian with a substantial portion of its lexicon reflecting Italian borrowings.1 One can raise the question: is the speech of Split really a distinct dialect or has it become in modern times just a regional form of Standard Croatian? A satisfactory answer would require an analysis of the usage of various socio-economic strata in this large city; and there might be more than one answer. My impression, after listening to workers and market vendors in Split, is that they employ a Split dialect which has its own linguistic integrity; on the other hand the speech of some Split professional people seems to be a localized form of Croatian. Even the designation cakavian is no longer exact since in the speech of many Splicani ca has been replaced by stojsta. What would be highly desirable is a team approach to the study of city dialects such as those of Split, Zagreb and Nis. Key members of such a team would be a linguist, trained in modern dialectology, and a sociologist with a knowledge of class and income structure, reading and viewing habits of the inhabitants, power relationships and related matters. Additional members could be an elementary school teacher and a high school teacher; such teachers would have a good deal of practical experience in observing, "correcting", or adjusting to their students' speech usage. Further, it would be ideal if all members of the team were locally born. The day of the lone dialectologist going from village to village interviewing available peasants (or sitting in a city coffee-house with an amiable informant) and then "constructing" the local dialect has been long over (at least in European countries) though this fact has not penetrated all quarters.
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Another question can be raised: if indeed Split speech is a distinct form of the Croatian matrix, if in fact it is a dialect, can it really be separated from similar dialects in nearby towns and islands? Is there perhaps a Dalmatian koine with minor differences in Trogir, Supetar (on Brae), Starigrad (on Hvar), Korcula and the like?2 Is the cakavian speech of Milna (on Brae) really that different from the cakavian and stokavian speech of Split? It would be useful to set up a number of criteria for judging Dalmatian dialect similarity or identity on a broad scale. Unlike the criteria set forth by Mogus (1985: 320), the interrogative ca (and cd) would not be deemed important but the amount of mutually shared and distinctively Dalmatian lexicon would be a major criterion.
The Split dialect In this paper I am proceeding on the assumption that the speech of Split is a dialect, clearly distinct from Standard Croatian with which it shares a diglossic relationship. As Ferguson (1959: 334) pointed out, lexical differences between a standard language (H or High) and a related dialect (L or Low) testify to the phenomenon of diglossia, the use of two forms of speech (standard and dialect) by the same speakers for different occasions. ... a striking feature of diglossia is the existence of many paired items, one H, one L, referring to fairly common concepts, frequently used in both H and L, where the range of meaning of the two items is roughly the same, and use of one or the other immediately stamps the utterance or written sequence as H or L.
The dialect of Split shares in the general lexical resources of the SerboCroatian language: a multitude of words, such as brat 'brother' and sestra 'sister', are typical not only of the standard language but also of the Split and other dialects. Setting forth the complete Split lexicon would also mean crossing over into the common lexicon of the language. I have separated out a corpus of some 2400 lexical forms which seem to be typical of Split usage but which are not standard Croatian. Because of the imperfect state of Serbo-Croatian lexicography one cannot always say with confidence that such and such a form is standard while another is dialectal or regional. To exclude standard words, I have used Benson's SerboCroatian-English Dictionary as a control instrument. The dictionary is a serious work published in recent years (1971,1980,1982) and is widely available in Yugoslavia and
The lexicon of (he Split dialect
Table 1. Split glossary The accent mark Split dialect abadai (see obadat) P abadävat (see obadavaf) I abäjin m obit m abordat P abordavat I äcal m, G acäla ädio excl. ädio baraka excl. adoracjun m äfan m ü/ärca/ P afanavat I o/// m a/ifflf P afitavat I aßtuval/aßtual m ajmekanje n akomödat se P akomodävat se I
291
designates a stressed long vowel, ' a short one.
Standard Croatian
English
obazreti se
'to take into account, care for'
obazirati se, manu prozor u krovu redovnicka mantija pristati uz kraj (brodom) pristajati uz kraj (brodom) celik zbogom gotovo!, nestalo!, propalo! obozavanje, klanjanje nesvijest onesvijestiti se onesvjescivati se najam iznajmiti sobe iznajmljivati sobe stanar tuzakanje smjestiti se (udobno) smjestati se (udobno)
'to take into account, care for' 'window in roof 'priestly robes' 'to dock' 'to dock' 'steel' 'goodbye' 'done for!, lost!' 'adoration' 'swoon, loss of consciousness' 'to swoon, lose consciousness' 'to swoon, lose consciousness' 'rent' 'to rent rooms' 'to rent rooms' 'tenant' 'complaint, whining' 'to make oneself comfortable, agree1 'to make oneself comfortable, agree
the United States. I have compared the words in my listing with the entries in Benson's dictionary and have eliminated from my list those words which appear in Benson without regional or similar designations; for example, I would eliminate gracija 'grace' which Benson records without comment but I would retain riva 'boardwalk promenade' which he notes is used "in Dalmatia". It should be added here that what I call the Split lexicon after this separation process will be instantly recognized as familiar by speakers of other Dalmatian dialects; future studies can assess the commonality of this lexical material. As a small example of my Split glossary table 1 lists the first twenty entries. Split names An important part of the lexical inventory of any language or dialect are the names (surnames, first or "given" names, middle names, nicknames).3
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Table 2. Common first names for Split males Andrija, Andro Ante Bozidar, Bozo Bränko Bruno Duje Frane, Frano Grgo Hrvoje Ivan, Ive, , Ivica Jakov Jere, Jerko Josip, Jozip, Jozo Josko Lowe, Lovro Luka
Marin, Marinko Mario Marijan Mate Nenad Niko Pare, Pero, Petar Roko Stanko Stipe Toma Tonci, Tonko Vice, Vicko, Vlsko Vinko Zvonko Zeljko
Table 3. Common first names for Split females Ane, Änka, Ankica Äntica Branka Dinka Dome, Domina Ivanka Jove, Jovana, Jovica Kate, Kalica Karmela Lenka Lukre, Lukrica Ljube, Ljubica Maja Mande, Mandica, Mandina
Mare, Märica, Marija Mira Mirjana Nevenka Paskva Pave Rädojka Tanja Tere, Tereza Toncica, Tonka Vinka Zlata Zorka
Here we shall examine typical Split first names and surnames. The lists of first names given in tables 2 and 3 were compiled from impressions of native Splicani and seem reasonably accurate when compared with school lists and occurrences of names in the public media. The first names in roman print are particularly popular. In compiling surnames it became obvious to me that Split natives think in historical terms though their selections could be accurate for the period before World War II. 4 Since that time, however, there has been a large
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Table 4. Common surnames in Split 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 8. 9. 10, 13, 15. 16, 18. 19.
Krstulovic (137 entries) Radic(\36) Tow/c (124) yiiric (121) 6, 7. Bilic, Kovacevic, Peric (101) Kuzmanic(94) Cw//c (89) 11, 12. Atac, Jukic, Segvic (85) 14. Kovacic, Vukovic (83) Duplancic (%\) 17. Grubisic, Vrdoljak (80) azr/c(77) Märusic (76)
20. Delic (75) 21. Nlkolic (74) 22. 5o6an (73) 23. Perkovic (72) 24. Marasovic (70) 25. Babic (68) 26. Po/wwc (67) 27, 28. Dvornik, Ivanisevic (66) 29. Dragicevic (65) 30. Bozic (64) 31, 32, 33. 5u/ic, Aivtf, />e/r/c (63) 34. Malic (62) 35, 36, 37. Dumanic, Jovänovic, Jelaska (61)
migration into the city and newer surnames have become wide-spread. Using a recent Split telephone book, I counted every surname with 60 or more entries. Obviously, not every resident of Split has a telephone but I reasoned that with large numbers the lack of a particular listing would not significantly alter the results. Table 4 lists the 37 most common surnames in Split; the order from 1 to 37 is valid for large differences in the number of entries: for example, a Krstulovic with 137 entries as against a Duplancic with 81. However, the fact that Saric is number 18 with 77 entries and Marusic number 19 with 76 entries is not a significant difference. Split texts So that the reader may gain some appreciation of the Split dialect in actual use, I present below two texts. The first text is part of a newspaper column (Slobodna Dalmacija, Sept. 5, 1985: 59) by the well-known writer Miljenko Smoje. His writing represents the stereotype of the Split dialect as it may well have been spoken in earlier decades. In this particular column Smoje is contrasting the efficiency of hotel personnel in Rimini (Italy) with their lack of it in Split. A translation into Standard Croatian appears on the right. 5
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Text l Split dialect Istu vecer silazin u Split sä "Ticiana." S o be s träne broda dvi duge guste file zen koje nudidu sobu. Prolazis kroz spalir koji vice: — Kamera, kamer a. Nima londineri, nima nikoga öd oteli. Isto ka da mi nimamo o tele. I ta masa zen koje nudidu sobu su zivo i zivotno zainteresirane da dobiju gosta, da afitadu svoje sobe. A otele sejebe. Dosa gost oli ne dosa, njima se sve isto. Placa i onako kuri. Ca ce se otelsko osoblje poc gnjavit po stacijan i pristanistima a nije boje sidit u otel, u salonu gledat televiziju oli zaigrat na karte nego poc cekat vapore if er ate. A u staro vrime svaki brod, svakuferatu docekivali bi londineri. Jemali su na kape ispisano ime otela i dovodili su goste. Kad to ne cinidu oteli, korisno je da goste docekuje kucna radinost. Zene koje cekadu brode i fer ate, koje fermaju auf a, koje goste sä prtljagon kupidu u svoja au t a i
Standard Croatian Iste vecer i silazim u Split s "Ticijana." S obje strane broda dvije guste kolone zena koje nude sobu. Prolazis kroz spalir koji vice: — Kamera, kamera. [Soba, soba.J Nema hotelskih nosaca, nema zaposlenih u hotelu. Kao da nemamo hotele. I ta masa zena koje nude sobu su zivo i zivotno zainteresirane do dobiju gosta, da izdaju svoje sobe. A hotele has briga. Dosao gost ili ne dosao, njima je svejedno. Placa i onako ide. Zasto da se hotelsko osoblje ide gnjaviti po punktovima i pristanistima? Nije H bolje sjediti u hotelu, u salonu gledati televiziju, ili se kartati, nego cekati brodove i vlakove. A u staro vrijeme svaki brod i svaku zeljeznicu docekivali bi hotelski nosaci. Imali su na kapama ispisano ime hotela. Dovodili su goste. Kad to ne r ade hoteli, korisno je da goste docekuje kucna radinost. Zene koje cekaju brodove i vlakove, koje zaustavljaju automobile, koje goste s prtljagom ukrcavaju u svoje
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Text 1 Split dialect vodeji doma, triba pofalit i ne napadat. Ponasaju se kako bi se tribali ponasat oteli.
Standard Croatian automobile i vode ih kuci, treba pohvaliti a ne napadati. Ponasaju se kako bi se trebali ponasati hoteli.
The second text is a conversation between two young women, Ana (24 years old) and Visnja (22 years old). Both Ana and Visnja are natives of Split and at the time (Sept. 1985) university students. The text was written down by Visnja the morning after she and Ana had had their "night on the town". An English translation is given in the footnotes.6 Text 2 Ana: Ej, nismo se odavno vldile, stä je növo? Visnja: Nista, sve je dobro ali ne znan di cemo veceras. A: Ka i uvik. Dir do rive, onda posli do Tenisa, £>äje i Sekspira. V: Äjmo, vec je devet uri da nan ne bi sta promäklo. A: E, e, ne daj boze da nan utece koji kortedänt. V: Ne brini, üvik ce ij östat dovoljno. [Na rivij A: Vidi onu sta se namaskarala. Ali je to modernol V: Pari splitski redikul. Ajme muci vise, uvik ogovaramo. A: Je li ono oni sta ga znamo? Znäs oni lipi sta ide sa onon isempjanon sa medicine. V: Je, je, ima bit ali se ostriga pa ga nije za pripöznat. A: Ajde nan kupit slädoled, has bi mi bilo po gustu. V: E, tarnan, fali nan jos koji dek. A: Dobro je, ne triba, bolje nejist. V: Evo, postaje dosadno, ajmo dalje. [Tenis] A: Gospe, puste sminke, svi paridu. Ka da su progutäli metlel V: A nas dvi skupa s njima. Nos mi zadije za nebo. A: / ovde je vruce a Ivo se obuka ka da usrid zime. V: Je, si däva. Bas dobro izgleda. A: Ja bi isla ca, ali je utäkmica na televiziji pa u Sekspira nece bit nlkoga prlje pdnoci. V: Nema veze, idemo ulovit mlsto za sest. Da bolje vidimo za cakulat.
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[Sekspir] A: Evo, smo se smlstile, ima H köga pöznatoga! V: Nema, ali san se sitila da smo zaboravile kupit karte za öni film
staje dosa. A: V: A: V: A: V:
E, gövori svit da je dobar. Pdgotovo Richard Gere. Triba ga gledat. Je U moguce da cemo se morat vrätit doma nä noge. Pari mi se da öcemo. Umrit cu, daj nädi koga da nas odbäci. Eno Ivo, drz ga\
The accent marks are as explained above: ' indicating a long vowel, a short vowel; occasionally there is a doubling of the short accent mark to represent the curious double accent characteristic of Split. Ana and Visnja have ikavian usage but use sta instead of ca; the ca in Ja bi isla ca has an origin different from that of the interrogative.7 It should be remembered that c and d are just graphic devices in these texts since Split speech does not distinguish between c and c, d and dz. In an earlier article (Magner 1984: 141) I noted that "Unlike a standard language, a dialect has no academy to defend it, no professional bureaucracy to promulgate rules of usage and, by and large, no public champions. It is not surprising, then, that in a large city like Nis dialect-speakers exhibit considerable variety in their choice of forms ..." Here, for example, are some differences in usage of two Split women who both speak the Split dialect. Both are university educated; Dunja is in her early forties, Mirjana her mid-fifties. The main difference between them, other than age, is that Mirjana comes from a family which is "old Split" (i. e. more than two centuries in the city) while Dunja is first-generation Split but with a family background of island cakavian. Mirjana would not consider Dunja to be representative of Split speech but actually, with the rapid growth of Split's population (from 18,500 inhabitants in the year 1900 to 235,922 in 1981), Dunja and other "immigrants" of recent generations are probably more representative today than Mirjana. Mirjana's usage approaches the "classic" Split cakavian of the columnist Miljenko Smoje (see above) whereas Dunja's usage reflects the significant influence of Standard Croatian. The lexicon of Split profanity As one might expect in a maritime city, cursing and profanity in general play an important role in the language behavior of Split natives. In describing the words and phrases used in this colorful and unofficial area
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Table 5. The Split dialect: Differences in usage Dunja
Mirjana
adoracjün kose Hi sta nego ovdi neki taj tog(a), maleg(a) pet dinara pun papriki imat, iman iden, ides cine/cinu dizu
adoracjun kose oli ca vengo ovde niki li teg (a), maleg(a) pet dinari pun paprik jemat, jeman gren, gres cinidu dii.edu
'adoration' Of hair' Or' 'what' 'than, but' 'here' 'a certain' 'that' Ofthat, of a small ..." '5 dinars' 'full of peppers' 'to have, I have' go, you go' 'they make' 'they lift'
it is, however, not possible to say that the lexemes are specific only to Split; this has been a taboo area for scholarship and so it may be that a "strong" expression noted in Split could have an active but unrecorded life across the country. In Split the word for 'curse' is bestimja with the verb bestimat, perfective zabestlmat. The expressions govorit grübe rlci 'to use coarse words' and govorit sporke rici 'to use dirty words' are also employed. Relatively mild expressions are börami (standard bogami) 'In God's name!,' ostija (standard hostija) 'Hell! (literally 'communion wafer'), and monade (from Ital. mono 'female sexual organ'), 'That's a lot of crap!'. Somewhere between exclamations of surprise and mild curses are the expressions, not really vulgar, which use the form pasti or asti, e. g., Ästi sto, ja to ne bi ucinija da jeman jos duplo toliko pinez. 'Holy Toledo, I wouldn't do such a thing if I had double the money.' Ästi misa, vidi onu käko se obukla. 'Wow, just look at the way that woman is dressed.' Pasti and its variant asti are most likely elided forms of Pazi ti 'keep in mind, observe'; women use them in conjuction with mis 'mouse', sto 'hundred', and sveti 'sacred, saint' (e. g., asti svetoga) with meanings more or less like 'wow!' Somewhat stronger are the usages by men involving Bog 'God', Gospe 'Blessed Mother', and Isus 'Jesus', e.g., (P)asti Boga/ Gospu/Isusa\
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The Serbo-Croatian verb jebati 'to have intercourse' finds active use in Split profanity, appearing in the frame jeben (standard jebem) ti or, more commonly, in shortened versions: benti , enti , nti . When used with mis and sto (benti misa, benti sto}, the resultant expressions are more exclamations than curses. When used with other words (e. g., 'God', 'mother', 'sister', etc.) the result can be a real obscenity. Use of the shorter form (enti, nti} seems to reduce the force of a curse and indeed the expression is more of an exclamation than an obscenity, e. g., Enti muku Isusovu, pogledaj ca je ova zenska ucmila öd kose. 'For Christ's sake, just look at what that woman did to her hair.' Nti müke, cä je to tesko ucinit. I malo dite bi to znälo näpravit. 'Hell's bells, what's so hard about that. Even a small kid could do it.' Other strong obscenities involving picka 'vulva', kurac 'penis', and forms of the verb jebat (e. g., ajde u picku materinu; ajde u kurac; jeba ti pas mater [or more simply pas mater] are not necessarily peculiar to Split usage but they are often used as a sort of pause filler in the vivid colloquial speech of Split men. Usually they are not articulated completely but are shortened or slurred or even abbreviated. For example; / onda ti se on, u pic materinu, popeja na vrj tega brda i oces ti vidit, u kurac, skocija lipo doli. Ma zamisli u p. m. \peme\ ucinit täko nesto, ka da je, u kürac, poludija. 'And then he, ..., climbed on top ofthat hill and would you believe it, ..., jumped down. Can you imagine, ..., doing something like that just as if he had, ..., gone crazy.' Notes 1. For a description of the Split dialect see References, especially Magner (1978a) and Vidovic (1973). 2. A short discussion of the Dalmatian koine may be found in Kalogjera (1985: 99). 3. The importance of surnames for linguists and physical anthropologists is explained in Gottlieb (1983). 4. Most Splicani would suggest the surname Cambi which is important in Split's history but rare today in the city. According to Vidovic (1973: 58 — 59), the most popular names in Split in 1924 were, in descending order, Krstulovic, Dvornik, Segvic, Roje, Reic, Duplancic, Matosic, Ruzic and Trumbic. 5. I am grateful to Sandra Kalogjera for the translation into Croatian. Generally, written dialect texts concern themselves with humor or sentimental poetry. Smoje does try to be humorous but he often makes quite acerbic comments on the passing scene.
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6. Translation: 'Ana: Say, we haven't seen each other in a long time. What's new? Visnja: Nothing, everything's fine, but I don't know where we'll go this evening. A: Same as always. A stroll to the Riva, then to Tenis [coffee-bar], Daja [coffee-bar] and Shakespeare [disco-club]. V: Let's go, it's already nine o'clock and we might miss something. A: Yeah, yeah, let's hope that we won't miss any nice boys. V: Don't worry, there's always plenty of them left. [On the boardwalk]. A: Look at that girl who is so made-up. Is that fashionable? V: She looks like a Split joke. Let's not talk about it, we're always gossiping. A: Is that a fellow we know? You know that good-looking fellow who goes with that crazy girl from the medical school. V: Yeah, yeah, it has to be but he's had his hair cut and it's hard to recognize him. A: Let's go buy some ice-cream. I really have a craving for it. V: Boy, do we really need the extra weight. A: O.k., it's not necessary, better not to eat. V: Say, it's getting boring, let's move on. [Tenis] A: God, regular fashion-plates. They all look as if they swallowed brooms [i. e., stiff appearance]. V: And we two along with them. My nose is stuck up in the air. A: It's hot here and Ivo is dressed up as if it were the middle of winter. V: You are a devil. He really looks good. A: I'd like to go but there's a game on TV and there'll be no one in the Shakespeare before midnight. V: It doesn't matter. Let's go and get a place to sit. And we can see and have a good chat. [Shakespeare] A: Well, we're settled here, is there anyone we know? V: No, but I remembered that we forgot to buy tickets for that film which just came. A: Everyone says that it's good. Especially Richard Gere. V: We have to see him. A: Is it possible that we have to go home on foot? V: Looks like we have to. A: I'll die. Let's find someone to give us a ride. V: There's Ivo. Grab him.' 7. Compare Slov. Gremo tja 'We're going there'; for an explanation of this form (ca/tja) see Vaillant (1958: 710).
References Benson, Morton — Biljana Sljivic — Simsic 1971 SerboCroatian-English dictionary (Belgrade: Prosveta) [21980, reprint 1982]. Ferguson, Charles A. 1959 "Diglossia", Word 15:325-340. Filipovic, Rudolf 1971 Kontakli jezika u teoriji i praksi [Language contacts in theory and practice] (Zagreb: Skolska knjiga). Gottlieb, Karen (ed.) 1983 Surnames as markers of inbreeding and migration (Human Biology 55.2) (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press). Imenik 1984 Telefonski imenik podrucja tranzitne centrale Split 1984j 1985 [Telephone directory of the transit center Split for 1984- 1985] (Split: Logos). Kalogjera, Damir 1985 "Attitudes toward Serbo-Croatian language varieties", International Journal of the Sociology of Language 52: 93 — 109. Magner, Thomas F. 1975 "The dialect of Split. A preliminary sketch", in: Rado L. Lencek — Boris O. Unbegaun, Xenia Slavica. Papers presented to Gojko Ruzicic on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday (The Hague: Mouton), 125 — 132.
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"Zapazanja ο danasnjem splitskom govoru [Observations about the presentday Split dialect]", Cakavska ric 6.2: 83-92. 1978a "Diglossia in Split", Folia Slavica 1: 400-436 (+ 4 maps). 1978b "City dialects in Yugoslavia", in: Henrik Birnbaum (ed.), American contributions to the Eighth International Congress of Slavists (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers), 465—482. (Translated by Dunja Jutronic-Tihomirovic and republished in 1983 in Argumenti (Rijeka) 1—2:187 —195 as "Gradski dijalekti u Jugoslaviji".) 1983 "Yugoslav city dialects: In search of a methodology", in: Sonja Dekanic — Janoski — Mladen Jovanovic (eds.), Zbornik radova katedre za anglistiku (Nis: Filosofski fakultet) 3: 39-44. 1984 "A century of the Nis dialect", in: Benjamin A. Stolz, I. R. Titunik, Lubomir Dolezel (eds.), Language and literary theory (Papers in Slavic Philology 5) (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan), 133 — 145. Mogus, Milan 1985 "Nacrt za rjecnik cakavskoga narjecja [Outline of a dictionary of the Cakavian dialects]. Hrvatski dijalektoloski zbornik 7.1: 319 — 336. Popis 1982 Popis stanovnistva, domacinstava i stanova 1981. godine. Nacionalni sastav stanovnistva po opstinama (Beograd: Savezni zavod za statistiku). Vaillant, Andre 1958 Grammaire comparee des langues slaves 2.2 (Lyon — Paris: Les langues du monde). Vidovic, Radovan 1973 "O frekvenciji romanskoga leksika talijanskog (mletackog) porijekla u splitskom cakavskom govoru (On the frequency of Romance words of Italian origin in the Cakavian dialect of Split)", Cakavska ric 2: 5 — 122.
Zu Phrasemvarianten in der kroatischen Sprache Josip Matesic
Phraseme sind von ihrer Struktur her komplexe sprachliche Einheiten, die sich u. a. durch die feste Verbindung ihrer Komponenten auszeichnen.' Die Praxis zeigt aber auch, daß ein Phrasem verschiedenen Änderungen unterliegen kann. Die Festigkeit seiner Struktur kann durchbrochen werden. 2 Im Kroatischen, wie auch in anderen slawischen Sprachen, verfügt lediglich eine kleinere Anzahl von Phrasemen über eine feste Zusammensetzung, bei welcher eine Substitution von Komponenten ausgeschlossen ist, z. B.: na vrbi svirala; biti na konju; ni zive duse. Wegen der Veränderungen, die auf der semantischen und strukturellformalen Ebene erfolgen, stellt sich die Frage, ob es sich im gegebenen Falle um dasselbe Phrasem handelt, oder um ein neues mit anderer Struktur und Bedeutung. Diese in der phraseologischen Theorie sehr wichtige Frage gewinnt besonders dann an Gewicht, wenn die Rede von Varianten ist. Für das Phrasem als bilaterale sprachliche Einheit ist charakteristisch, daß seine Struktur aus einer einmaligen Organisation von Elementen grammatikalischer und lexikalischer Herkunft resultiert, mit dem Ziel der Bildung eines bestimmten struktursemantischen Modells. Bei diesem stoßen wir, wie beim Lexem, auf verschiedene Beziehungen der semantischen Entsprechung oder Unterschiedlichkeit, wie Homonymie, Polysemie, Antonymie und Synonymic. Von den erwähntes Beziehungen steht die Synonymie der Variante am nächsten. Daher muß zuerst auf die Unterschiede zwischen diesen beiden Erscheinungen hingewiesen werden. Ihre Verwandtschaft ist offensichtlich, und eine Abgrenzung wird schwer, wenn wir eine Definition der sogenannten Varianz im weiteren Sinne anwenden. Eine solche Auffassung der phraseologischen Varianz geht davon aus, daß die Identität eines Phrasems im Falle der Variierung aufgrund der relativen Stabilität der ganzheitlichen Bedeutung erhalten bleibt. Im Unterschied zur Varianz im engeren Sinne kann hier der gesamte Komponentenbestand durch neue Glieder einer Variantenreihe ersetzt werden.3 Es steht zwar außer Zweifel, daß eine solche Definition der Varianz ihre Vorzüge hat — z. B. bei Forschungen im Bereich der
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dialektalen, komparativen und historischen Phraseologie —, aber es muß doch betont werden, daß sie keine exakte Abgrenzung der Erscheinung der Varianz gegenüber der phraseologischen Synonymie ermöglicht. Zu einer Abgrenzung führt die Definition der Varianz im engeren Sinne, nach welcher der Substitutionsakt eine oder mehrere Komponenten erfassen darf, aber nicht alle, die die phraseologische Verbindung ausmachen, unter der Voraussetzung, daß dabei die ursprüngliche Bedeutung unverändert bleibt. Die Phraseme: Martin u Zagreb, Martin iz Zagreba und
trla baba lan da joj prode dan haben als Grundbedeutung 'sinnlose, nutzlose Arbeit'. Trotzdem können wir nicht behaupten, daß es sich hier um einen Fall von Varianz handelt, denn: 1. neben der semantischen Komponente 'nutzlose Arbeit' hat das erste Beispiel noch die Bedeutungen 'unverrichteter Dinge zurückkehren' und 'Zeit verlieren', das zweite Beispiel 'dummes Zeug reden', 'faseln'; 2. die Struktur dieser Phraseme ist unterschiedlich, da keine Komponente die geiche lexikalisch-grammatikalische Form hat. Ein phraseologisches Synonym entsteht aus dem Wunsch, dem Bedürfnis nach einem markanteren, expressiveren Modell unter Beibehaltung der logischen Einheit des Begriffes, welcher die Grundform des Ausgangsphrasems beinhaltet. Außerdem dürfen wir nicht vergessen, daß synonymische Phraseme auch Bereichen angehören können, in welchen die einen das Merkmal des aktiven Grundfonds, die anderen des peripheren oder passiven Fonds tragen, wobei der Grad der Anwendung oder Benutzung des betreffenden Fonds im System als Ganzem uneinheitlich ist. Es ist bekannt, daß das Inventar der phraseologischen Synonymie — im Unterschied zur lexikologischen, welche die gesamten Erscheinungen der Realität umfaßt — bedeutend geringer ist und in erster Linie die Bereiche der menschlichen Verfassung, Gefühle, Erlebnisse, sowie unangenehme Ereignisse und Erscheinungen umfaßt. Es genügt, an die Motive des Glücks, des Todes, des Leidens u. ä. zu erinnern. Die Beschränktheit phraseologischer Synonymie im Vergleich mit den Lexemen ist auch auf der lexikalisch-grammatikalischen Ebene ersichtlich. So gibt es z. B. keine synonymischen Äquivalente bei den Kollektivzahlen, ebenfalls bei einigen grammatikalischen Formen, wie den Adverbialpartizipien (Gerundien).
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Bei den Modellen aber, wo Synonymic besteht, ist die Häufigkeit ihres Auftretens sehr uneinheitlich. Im Kroatischen sind Synonyme verbalen Typs häufiger als nominalen, adverbialen Typs häufiger als adjektivischen usw. Wie jede phraseologische Einheit hat auch ein synonymisches Phrasem seine Form, welche zusammen mit der Bedeutung seine semantische Grundlage bildet — die Valenz. Die Valenz erweist sich im Kontext, nachdem die Wahl auf eben dieses im Text oder in der Rede realisierte Synonym und auf kein anderes gefallen ist. Synonymie wird nur im konkreten Kontext realisiert, im Kommunikationsprozeß, wenn die Möglichkeit der Auswahl zweier oder mehrerer verschiedenartiger Vorlagen besteht. Auf welche von ihnen die Wahl fällt, hängt meistens von der expressiv-stilistischen Potenz oder Färbung der Vorlage ab. Übrigens schließen eine Veränderung auf der formalen Ebene und eine dadurch hervorgerufene expressiv-stilistische Färbung beim Ersatz eines Phrasems durch ein anderes in derselben kontextuell-stilistischen Sphäre die Möglichkeit einer Schädigung des Inhaltsprinzips nicht aus. Die Integrität der kommunikativen Sphäre, ihre semantischen Dimensionen werden bestehen bleiben, wenn wir ein Prinzip anwenden, mittels dessen wir der phraseologischen Einheit trotz Veränderungen in formaler Hinsicht ihre Identität in der semantischen und strukturell-stilistischen Grundlage bewahren können, so wie das mit der phraseologischen Variante der Fall ist. Die Varianz des Phrasems impliziert — im Unterschied zu der des Lexems4 — einen wesentlich größeren Kreis von Faktoren: das morphologische System der Komponenten der bestehenden Kette, die Verbindung dieser Komponenten, ihre phonetischen und orthoepischen Eigenschaften, sowie die lexikalische Zusammensetzung. Grundlegend dabei ist, daß nicht die originäre Struktur des Phrasems zerstört wird, in erster Linie die zwischen den Komponenten bestehende Verbindung, wie auch nicht seine stilistisch-semantische Grundlage. Varianz bedeutet eine Veränderung formalen Charakters, d. h. die Veränderung vollzieht sich auf der orthoepischen, phonetischen, morphologischen und syntaktischen Ebene, jedoch nicht auf der Inhaltsebene, auch nicht im typologischen Muster des Phrasems. Aus alledem folgt, daß im Kontext eine Komponente der Verbindung eine Veränderung erfahren kann, ohne daß sich die Bedeutung ändert. Wenn sich also in der Verbindung die Elemente l, 2, 3 ... zeigen, bleiben Kontext und Bedeutung unverändert. Für die Variante eines Phrasems in der kroatischen Standardsprache sind charakteristisch: 1) die Häufigkeit ihres Auftretens überhaupt, 2) die Verschiedenartigkeit der
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Positionen, in denen die Variante realisiert wird, 3) die Herleitung der Variante. Im ersten Fall sprechen wir von einer Variante des quantitativen Typs, im zweiten vom paradigmatischen Modell der Variante, im dritten vom qualitativen Typ der Variante.
Variante des quantitativen Typs Nach der Anzahl der variierenden Komponenten, die innerhalb eines Phrasems auftreten, unterscheiden wir Phraseme mit zwei- oder mehrgliedrigem Muster. a) Phrasem mit zweigliedrigem Muster, z. B. davo (wag) bi ga znao; grobna (mrtva) tisina; zivjeti na visokoj (na velikoj) nozi; zavezati (zacepiti) gubicu körne; peceni golubovi lete (padaju) u usta komu; kao gromom osinut (udaren);
b) Phrasem mit mehrgliedrigem Muster, z. B.: grcati (plivati, gusiti se) u dugovima; udariti (tjerati, okrenuti) brigu na veselje; ici (nasjesti, pasti) na lijepak komu; hraniti guju u njedrima (na srcu, na prsima).
Paradigmatisches Modell der Variante Wenn im selben Phrasem eine Komponente oder ihrer mehrere von einem oder mehreren Lexemen ersetzt werden, sprechen wir vom paradigmatischen Modell der Variante. In der Standardsprache treten folgende Typen auf: a) eine Komponente — zweigliedrige Variante, z. B.: ici (vuci se) kao puz; gola (ziva) istina; uciniti medvjedu (magarecu) uslugu komu; ne odstupiti ni koraka (ni za korak); vikati koliko (sto) glava donosi koga;
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b) eine Komponente — mehrgliedrige Variante, z. B. naci se (ostati, biti) na cjedilu; kao ljuta (crna, zla) godina; ici (naici, nasjesti, pasti) na lijepak komu; traziti hljeba preko pogace (nad pogacom, do pogace); c) zwei Komponenten — zweigliedrige Variante, z. B.: iznijeti (spasiti) cijelu (citavu) kozu; udariti (nabijati) sve na isti (na jedan) kalup; graditi (zidati) u oblacima (u zraku); d) zwei Komponenten — mehrgliedrige Variante, z. B.: Bog (Alah, vrag, davo) bi ga znao (umio, pojmio). Für das paradigmatische Modell charakteristisch ist noch das Auftreten sogenannter fakultativer Komponenten in verschiedenen Positionen. Von den zahlreichen Kombinationen, in welchen die Fakultativität in Erscheinung treten kann, führen wir hier nur einige charakteristische Illustrationsbeispiele an, ohne daß wir damit beabsichtigen, alle in der Sprache bestehenden Fälle aufzuzeigen: a) b) c) d) e)
zaviriti (pogledati) [dublje] u casu; otkriti (otvoriti, pokazati) [svoje] karte; to (o tome) vec i vrapci cvrkucu (znaju) [na krovovimaj; dok (sto) bi dlanom (dlan) u dlan udario [pljesnuo]; iznijeti (izvuci) [zivu, citavu] glavu;
Das Beispiel a) kann lauten: zaviriti dublje u casu, bzw. zaviriti u casu; pogledati dublje u casu, bzw. pogledati u casu. Es bestehen also vier Realisierungsmöglichkeiten. Im Beispiel b) stehen sechs Modelle zur Verfügung, im Beispiel c) acht, usw. Die Art der Realisation steht in einem proportionalen Verhältnis zum Auftreten der Variantenglieder und ihrer Kombination mit den fakultativen Komponenten. Je größer die Zahl solcher Glieder in einem Phrasem ist, desto größer ist auch der Realisationsfaktor.
Variante des qualitativen Typs Zu diesem Typ zählen wir die formale, syntagmatische und lexikalische Variante.
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1. Formale Variante
Zur formalen Variante zählen die Beispiele, bei denen sich die formale (äußere) Seite einer Komponente verändert. Darunter fallen: a) phonetische Variante (sehr selten): zazmuriti (zazmiriti) na jedno oko; — propustiti sto u ciju korist,
praviti se nevjest; (o) drzati prodiku (prediku) komu — (pre)koriti/(iz)grditi koga; b) morphologische Variante (sehr häufig). Sie ist eine Folge des Formenaustauschs der autosemantischen Wörter, die zum Bestand des Phrasems gehören: slusati otvorenih usta (otvorenim ustima) — slusati veoma pazljivo; dogorjevatijdogorjeti do prsta (do prstiju) komu — postati nesnosno/ opasno kome sto; hvatiti se za kosu (za kose) — kajati se, uvidati pogresku; ocajavati; pada (padne) koprena s ociju komu — postaje sto jasno komu ni po (ni pola) muke — lako, jednostavno; praviti se glup (glupim) — praviti se neupucenim, pretvarati se, hiniti; cupati sebi (si) kosu — ocajavati, zdvajati; korak nazad (unazad) — nazadovanje; c) durch Wortbildung verursachte Variante: pametna glava (glavica) — pametna/mudra osoba; upali se lampa (lampica) komu — netko shvaca sto/sjeca se cega; nevina dusa (dusica) — bezazlena/dobrocudna osoba; pjevati (pjevuckati) svoju pjesmu — inzistirati, ustrajati, tjerati svoje; d) Variante des verbalen Aspektpartners; ausgehend von der Tatsache, daß der Verbalaspekt eine morphologische Kategorie ist, führen wir hier auch die Aspektpartner der Verben an (treten bei den meisten verbalen Phrasemen auf): platiti (placati) danak cemu — ispastati, trpjeti posljedice zbog necega nepromisljeno uradenoga; dobiti (dobivati) po glavi — trpjeti, dobiti batina; staviti (stavljati), strpati (trpati) pod jednu kapu — mijesati; (iz)jednaciti, pretjerano generalizirati; baciti (bacati), trpati (strpati) sve u jedan lonac — (po)mijesati, ne razlikovati stvari; zabosti (zabadati), turiti (turati), zavuci (zavlaciti) fsvojj nos u sto — (u)mijesati se u sto, biti znatizeljan/radoznao;
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vagati (vagnuti, odvagnuti) svaku rijec — promisljeno/stalozeno govoriti/reci sto; e) Betonungsvariante. Sie gründet sich auf Akzentveränderungen, häufiger bei präpositionalen Verbindungen als innerhalb eines einzelnen Wortes, z. B.: bez dlake (bez dlake) na jeziku — otvoreno, odrijesito, bez ustrucavanja; nä sve (na sve) cetiri fnögej, cetveronoske, puzuci; imati na pameti (na pameti, na pameti) koga, sto — misliti na koga/ sto, sjecati se koga/cega; doci (doci) na zelenü gränu — uspjeti (materijalno), napredovati; istäci (istaci) u pfvi (u pfvi) plan sto — postati aktualno sto, doci do izrazaja. 2. Syntagmatische Variante Der Unterschied zwischen formaler und syntagmatischer Variante ist quantitativer Natur. Zu den syntagmatischen Varianten zählen wir den Wechsel von Wortformen der Autosemantika mit Konstruktionen, d. h., Syntagmen. Sie können variieren in bezug auf nicht-zusammengesetzte Form und umgekehrt, oder in bezug auf ein bestehendes Syntagma, z. B.: a) biti rodu glas (na glas) — stvoriti ugled, biti ponos; zazmuriti jednim okom (najedno oko) — propustiti sto ne bi trebalo b) proci (prolaziti kroz glavu (glavom) — pasti/padati na pamet; c) bok uz (o bok) — jedan uz drugoga, zajedno; prsa o prsa (u prsa) — iz neposredne blizine; vragu iza leda (za ledima) — veoma daleko (o zabacenom mjestu); otici (ici) do vraga (k vragu, po vragu) — propasti; ici (poci, prelaziti) iz ruke u ruku (öd ruke do ruke) — mijenjati vlasnika; reci (govoriti) iza zuba (izmedu zuba, kroz zube) — reci/govoriti veoma tiho/nerazgovijetno. 3. Lexikalische Variante Die lexikalische Variante (am häufigsten vertreten in der kroatischen Phraseologie) wird realisiert, wenn ein Glied der lexikalischen Komponente oder ihrer mehrere durch andere ersetzt werden, unter Beibehaltung
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der vollen Identität des Phrasems. Folgende Substitutionstypen sind möglich: a) in bezug auf Synonymie: casna (postena) rijec — cvrsto obecanje; bojati se (plasiti se) svoje sjene — biti bojazljiv/oprezan; iskopati ratnu (vojnu) sjekiru — zavaditi se, zaratiti se; ici (krociti) utrtim (ugazenim, utapkanim) stazama drzati se oprobanih mjerila/postupaka; b) in bezug auf Begriffe, die dem gleichen Themenkreis angehören: casa zuci (gorcine) — nesreca, nevolja; vezati (spajati) kraj s krajem — tesko zivjeti, zivotariti; gledati prijekim (krivim) okom — pomatrati s nepovjerenjem, biti srdit; drhtati (tresti se) kao prut (siba, trska) na vodi sav se tresti/drhtati, biti uznemiren; usijana (ugrijana, upaljena) glava — zanesenjak, fantast, smutljivac; c) in bezug auf Antonymie: bog (vrag, davo) zna — neizyjesno je, ne zna se; skresati (kazati) istinu u lice — govoriti/reci sto otvoreno/bez straha komu; luda (slijepa) sreca — neocekivan/sretan ishod cega; d) in bezug auf Hyperonymie/Hyponymie: öd glave do pete (do slope) — sasvim, potpuno, u svemu; dopasti cijih ruku (saka) komu — pasti/doci pod ciju vlast, postati cija svojina/vlasnistvo; za male (sitne) pare — povoljno, jeftino;
ni pas s maslom ne bi pojeo (pokusao) — ruzno/glupo receno/ucinjeno; e) in bezug auf eine metaphorische Beziehung zwischen den Variantenkomponenten: imati pticji (svracji, kokosji, pileci) mozak — biti umno ogranicen; pasti na niske (jadne) grane — osiromasiti, bijedno zivjeti, moralno se srozati; izbiti (doci, isplivati) na povrsinu — postati suvremen/aktualan, istaci se; iz dubine duse (srca) — veoma, u najvecoj mjeri. Zum Typ der lexikalischen Variante müssen wir unserer Meinung nach auch die sogenannte Variante fakultativen Charakters rechnen.5 Fakultativität bedeutet, daß dem Phrasembestand eine oder mehrere Kompo-
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nenten angehören können oder nicht. Eine fakultative Komponente dient gewöhnlich dem Zweck, die Phrasembedeutung zu ergänzen, zu präzisieren. Obgleich es widersprüchlich erscheint, besitzen Komponenten dieses Typs eine schwächere Verbindung zu dem Phrasem als Ganzheit, denn sie haben nicht den selben Desemantisationsgrad wie die Komponenten, die den 'Kern' des Phrasems ausmachen. Eine fakultative Variante entsteht durch Auslassen oder Hinzufügen einer Komponente. Eine Grenze zwischen diesen beiden Arten ist vom synchronen Standpunkt her schwer zu ziehen. Die Auslassung ist, so scheint es, die häufigere Erscheinung, und sie wird mit der Ökonomie der Sprache und dem Bestreben, Redundanzen zu vermeiden, in Verbindung gebracht.6 Einige Illustrationsbeispiele: glas vapijucega [u pustinji] — uzaludna molba; zivjeti öd [rada, svojihj ruku — uzdrzavati se vlastitim radom/snagama; umrijeti [ziv] öd straha — jako/veoma se prepasti; imati [i] pticjeg mlijeka — imati svega, zivjeti u izobilju; gori [tlo, zemlja] pod nogama komu — nalaziti se u opasnosti, biti ugrozen; ne biti pri [svojoj, cistoj, zdravoj] pameti — ne biti pri sebi, biti lud. Anmerkungen 1. Da es unter den Phraseologen keine einheitliche Meinung darüber gibt, was ein Phrasem ist, erfordert jeder Beitrag zur Phraseologie zunächst eine präzise Bestimmung dieses Begriffes. Wir gehen von folgender Definition aus: Phraseme sind bedeutungstragende Einheiten der Sprache, die im Verlauf der Rede als Ganzes reproduziert werden, über mindestens zwei autosemantische Komponenten verfügen, von denen wenigstens eine eine semantische Umdeutung erfahren hat, die weiter durch ihre Einfügbarkeit in den Kontext wie die Lexeme eine syntaktische Funktion im Satz ausüben können, ohne einen eigenen Text zu bilden. Aus der Definition ergeben sich für die sprachliche Einheit, die wir 'Phrasem' nennen, als relevante Merkmale: Reproduzierbarkeit, formale Zusammensetzung, Idiomatizität und syntaktische Funktion. 2. Auf diese Erscheinung im Kroatischen hat als erste A. Menac in ihrem Aufsatz "O strukturi frazema [On the structure of the phraseme]", Jezik 1 (1970/1971): 2-4, hingewiesen. 3. In einem solchen Fall muß man eigentlich von phraseologischer Synonymie sprechen, denn es handelt sich dann um völlig verschiedene Phraseme, die in einem oder mehreren semantischen Merkmalen Übereinstimmung zeigen. 4. Die Variabilität des Phrasems zeigt sich vor allem in seiner Bildungsstruktur, in phonetischen Besonderheiten, in der Formierung von Unterschieden gegenüber der Grundform. 5. Die Phraseologen behandeln diese Variante fast ausnahmslos nicht als lexikalische Variante, sondern gesondert, wobei sie ihr den Status einer selbständigen fakultativen Variante geben. 6. Vgl. V. M. Mokienko, Slavjanskaja frazeologija [Slavic phraseology] (Moskva, 1980).
Dictionary making: the ideal versus reality* Samuel C. Monson
The obvious purpose of a dictionary is to answer whatever questions about vocabulary that a user seeks to find there. Determining who the users might be and what their needs are is the first task of the lexicographer, one taking much less time than providing the answers to the possible questions. The earliest surviving attempts in English to answer questions about vocabulary occur in a manuscript of Aelfric's Colloquy, written about the year A.D. 1000. In this work a teacher asks questions about different occupations and students reply, telling what a hunter or a fisherman does. The original is in Latin, and some of the less frequently used words have been glossed above with their English meaning. The earliest English dictionaries were somewhat similar attempts to explain limited numbers of words (that is, new English words still closer to Latin or Greek than to English — the 'inkhorn' terms by which the Renaissance scholar displayed his erudition). Dictionaries, separate from the texts they explained, introduced alphabetical order as a means of finding words. Everyday words were not treated in English dictionaries until after the year 1700. After all, who could need to know the meaning of dog, cat, or the verb to bei (All of you who are bilingual — or even more accomplished linguistically — know that that question is not really a rhetorical one. Although a native speaker has no need of such information, it is essential for others.) Dictionaries of the eighteenth century, such as those of Nathaniel Bailey and Samuel Johnson, surprise us today by their spotty coverage of the common vocabulary, because it is often difficult for the lexicographer to concentrate on the obvious. The dictionary now known as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was planned in the 1830s to record English vocabulary from the year 1000 up to the time of publication. The first of twelve large volumes * References in this article are to dictionaries listed in the bibliography, which were current when the article was written. The Second College Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary (1985) has smaller type than the first and a narrower picture column so that ease of reading has been sacrificed somewhat for more information per page.
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appeared about fifty years later, in 1885; the last in 1928. That dictionary's coverage of early written English was amazingly thorough. Hundreds of volunteers scanned the hand-written manuscripts that had survived, and they recorded on citation slips all the words they found as well as all the contexts where each appeared. Luckily, the body of medieval English texts was limited. More manuscripts in England were in Latin or French than in the English language; literacy had been confined to a small proportion of the population; and the expense of producing a book made books very rare. When each text had to be written by hand on parchment obtained from the skin of sheep, one had seriously to consider how many man-hours and how many flocks of sheep a book — or even a document — was worth. Caxton's introduction of printing to England, the accompanying widespread use of paper, and the rapid increase in literay made such thorough coverage of later centuries impossible for workers on the OED, since writing suddenly became much more common. Monumental as the OED is, various deficiencies soon became apparent. Its coverage of written materials was far superior to its treatment of spoken language, even allowing for the fact that no treatment of oral language was possible prior to the time when editorial work started. It is not confined to 'standard' English (whatever that may be), but various dialect dictionaries have subsequently been prepared, including scholarly dictionaries of Scottish, American, and Canadian English, as well as dictionaries of slang, of phrases, and of many technical fields — all inadequately covered by the OED. Should the ideal dictionary have comprehensive coverage of the full range of English vocabulary? Most people cannot afford such coverage. Until 1972 the OED cost about U.S. $400 a set. Now the twelve original volumes and the 1933 supplement are available in two volumes for U.S. $75, with the original type photographically reduced so that four pages now appear on one in type so small most people must use the accompanying magnifying glass to read it. Most people cannot afford the time to use a truly comprehensive dictionary. If you consult the OED for the word with, you will find an entry of eleven pages, difficult to comprehend and containing much more information than you are likely to want at a given moment. (And you will not understand it all in a moment!) Most of us settle on smaller, one-volume dictionaries for everyday use. (Most of my subsequent references are to American dictionaries, with which I am most familiar.) Webster's Third New International Dictionary is often referred to as Webster's Unabridged, but its preface points out
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that it has been abridged. It excludes terms not appearing in writing since 1755, the date of Samuel Johnson's dictionary, except for words appearing in such standard literary works as the King James version of the Bible or in the works of William Shakespeare (see Webster's Third 1961: Preface), as well as many technical terms. Its editor, Philip Gove, complained that twentieth-century additions to the vocabulary of chemistry alone could have filled the book — which had 450,000 entries! That dictionary is the best currently available American dictionary, despite its limitations, not all called to the reader's attention by the editor. It is exceptional in that it was completely new when it appeared in 1961: each entry was considered afresh and each rewritten, although its publisher, G. and C. Merriam, had an existing dictionary of similar size on which the new edition might have been based, rather than on the collection of millions of citation slips in its files, as it was (Websters Third 1961: Preface). Most dictionaries are not original works. Samuel Johnson borrowed freely from Nathaniel Bailey in the eighteenth century, and plagiarism is the most evident characteristic of the great majority of dictionaries since then. The OED, Webster's Third, and the Century Dictionary are the only exceptions that come to mind. (The Century Dictionary, an American dictionary in ten volumes, long out of print, was like the OED in being based on citations which were freely quoted in the entries as exemples of various meanings. After 1914 the Century was not reprinted, although various abridgements of it appeared under the Century name until about 1950.) Until just a few years ago fifty-six years was the maximum period for an American copyright. After fifty-six years previously copyrighted material entered the public domain, and anyone could use the material as he wished, without acknowledgement and without payment of royalties. (The current law guarantees copyright for the lifetime of the author plus twenty-five years. I do not think American dictionary copyrights are very clear now, since most dictionaries do not have authors in the usual sense. They are compiled by committees instead.) Reputable dictionary makers purchase the rights to use materials in existing copyrighted works, by means of a fee authorizing no more than a specified percentage of the new work to be drawn from the source. Arrangements with several existing publications can make a fairly high percentage of borrowing legitimate. A knowledgeable person can trace dictionary family trees. For instance, The American College Dictionary, the Random House dictionaries, and the Thorndike-Barnhart dictionaries
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are all based on the Century Dictionary and, to a much lesser extent, on the OED. In addition, all lexicographers 'check the competition.' Every goodselling dictionary of similar size is examined against one's own manuscript in preparation, examined particularly for entries and meanings one may have omitted. Thus, without the expense of gathering one's own citations, one can catch up with what the competitor has as a possible advantage. Check a current American dictionary, and you will probably find almost yearly copyright dates listed. The last date applies only to material new to that edition or printing. No one seems sure how little new material is necessary for a copyright edition, but a single change on each of one hundred pages of a desk dictionary would surely qualify. If an average of fifty main entries appears per page and the work has one thousand pages, 0.2% of those entries would then include changes. But rarely does a change involve a whole entry, unless the entry is completely new. The most likely change is the addition of a new meaning, but corrections in spelling or punctuation also qualify. Every entry has a number of items of information and it is doubtful that Xooo of 1 % of those items in most dictionaries are affected by any particular copyright — unless the dictionary claims to be a new edition. (Present-day technology makes the lack of new information less apparent than formerly. Dictionaries are now often set by computer and the resulting information can be reproduced photographically in different type styles and sizes, in different lengths of lines, and on different sizes of pages with no change whatever in content.) The ideal desk dictionary is the one with the most information likely to be sought by a reader, in a readily portable size, in an attractive format, and at a price within the reach of the most readers. Knowing whether one will attain some of those goals is difficult for an editor to determine, and some of the goals are contradictory. Take, for instance, The American Heritage Dictionary. This dictionary is often praised for its page design, which features the largest type of any American collegiate dictionary and includes two columns primarily for type (although illustrations do appear in them) and a half-width column for illustration only. The result is most attractive and easily read. Although the large type excludes much information which smaller type would have made room for, it prevents eye strain for the middle-aged user. The picture column can seldom be utilized to capacity, and some sections of the alphabet cannot be illustrated at all, because words in, say, com- and con- tend to be abstract rather than
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concrete. This space is wasted in another way: the availability of space for pictures often leads to triviality. It is easy to frame a readily understandable definition of decolletage without having to picture Marilyn Monroe in a low-cut dress. The more copies of a book sold, the less the price per copy, because typesetting is a fixed cost per page which, spread out over millions of copies rather than thousands, cost much less per unit. Assessing the market accurately can determine whether a book will bring its publisher millions of dollars or cause it to go bankrupt. The G. and C. Merriam Company was the highly successful successor to Noah Webster for over one hundred years. The best dictionary it ever published, according to most linguists, was Webster's Third in 1961. The company misjudged its market, not yet ready for that objective a treatment of language, and initial reviews were largely unfavorable. Unable to recoup quickly the millions of dollars invested in that book, the company had to be sold. The editor of the later American Heritage, William Morris, tried to buy it so that Webster's Third could be jettisoned and the company's products made to revert to the standards of the 1934 edition. He was unable to finance that attempt, but Merriam was sold later to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Today's attitudes toward Webster's Third are more favorable, and Britannica is now making money from it. Funk and Wagnalls College Dictionary, based on an early-twentieth-century American unabridged dictionary, was a very good work unable to survive in a highly competitive market, even with the unsolicited help of the 1960s television show LaughIn, which introduced "Look it up your Funk and Wagnalls" as a funnysounding variant of "Look it up in Webster's", thereby causing a temporary rise in sales, but not enough to salvage the book. I started by pointing out that a publisher must gauge the needs of prospective users accurately if a dictionary is to be successful. (In the United States no author could take the chance of preparing a dictionary, even a scholarly one, without a publisher; and the publisher usually determines many of its policies.) The receiver of information, spoken or written, needs occasionally to check the meaning of a word which has been used with an unfamiliar meaning or which he has met for the first time or has forgotten. A speaker or writer conveying information may need to find an exact word for his idea. Any person may fill any of these roles — speaker, writer, listener, or reader; and his needs vary according to how he is functioning. A speaker is interested in pronunciation, for instance, or a writer in spelling.
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Selected bibliography Note: With the exception of the three college dictionaries (starred), this list consists of original works of distinction rather than derivative works. *The American College Dictionary 1947 edited by Clarence L. Barnhart (New York, New York: Random House). * The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 1969 edited by William Morris (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company). The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia 1891-1909 12 vols. (10 vols. dictionary), edited by William Dwight Whitney (New York, New York: The Century Company). [The most extensive American dictionary, long out of print. In scope, the only possible competitor to the Oxford English Dictionary among English language dictionaries. A Dictionary of American Regional English Forthcoming edited by Frederic G. Cassidy, A painstaking survey, in preparation for more than twenty years. A Dictionary of Canadianisms 1967 edited by Walter S. Avis (Toronto, Ontario: W. J. Gage Limited). [A historical dictionary of words introduced into English in Canada.] A Dictionary of American English 1938 4 vols., edited by Sir William A. Craigie—James R. Hulbert (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press). [A work supplemental to the OED, giving meanings peculiar to the United States.] A Dictionary of Americanisms 1951 2 vols., edited by Mitford M. Mathews (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press). [English words originating in the United States.] The English Dialect Dictionary 1898-1905 6 vols., edited by Joseph Wright (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press). [The most extensive dictionary of the dialects of England.] *Funk and Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary 1963 (New York, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, Inc.). [An abridgement of the Standard English Dictionary, I. K. Funk, ed. (1890).] Oxford English Dictionary 1933 12 vols., 1885-1928, and supplement (A-Z), edited by James A. H. Murray—Henry Bradley —W. A. Craigie —C. T. Onions; further supplements, R. W. Burchfield, ed.: A-G, 1972: H-N, 1976; O-Scz, 1982, final supplemental volume projected for publication in 1985 (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press). [The supreme achievement of lexicography in any language.] The Scottish National Dictionary 10 vols., 1929-1976 edited by William Grant-David D. Murison (Edinburgh, Scotland: The Scottish National Dictionary Association). [Extensive evidence that standard English omits many local terms.] Webster's Third New International Dictionary 1961 edited by Philip Gove (Springfield, Massachusetts: G. and C. Merriam Company). [The best current American dictionary.]
Vokalsysteme in Kontakt. Was verdankt der vegliotische Vokalismus der slawo-romanischen Symbiose? Zarko Muljacic
Wenn man die Veröffentlichungen überblickt, die das Dalmatische direkt oder — viel häufiger — indirekt betrachten (cf. Muljacic 1969; 1981, ein weiteres Supplement für die Periode 1976 — 1986 ist in Vorbereitung), läßt sich deutlich erkennen, daß sich die meisten Arbeiten weiterhin mit dem ganzen 'traditionellen' Spektrum der linguistischen Fragestellungen befassen: die Autoren versuchen isolierte Einzelformen oder Lautungen dieser ausgestorbenen Sprache aufgrund von Dalmatismen in Nachbarsprachen zu erschließen, was meines Erachtens mehr als Slawistik, Albanologie, usw. zu bewerten ist. Relativ selten waren und sind die Arbeiten, die das Dalmatische an sich und nicht etwa im Hinblick auf das altromanische Erbe im Slawischen und im Albanischen, auf den Wortschatz des Kolonialvenezianischen, usw. unter die Lupe nehmen. Eines der kompliziertesten Probleme des Vegliotischen, d. h., des norddalmatischen Dialekts, der 1898 mit dem Tode seines letzten Sprechers in der Stadt Krk auf der gleichnamigen Insel (It. Vegliä) ausstarb, stellt die historische Phonologic seines Vokalismus dar. Mit Ausnahme eines vor einigen Jahren zufällig entdeckten kleinen Satzes, der um 1770 notiert wurde (cf. Muljacic 1976), stammen alle vegliotischen Texte aus der Periode 1840—1898. Von dem lokalen Latein trennt sie ein fast zwölf Jahrhunderte langes Vakuum, welches nur empirisch, mit den Methoden der komparativen Linguistik, überbrückt werden kann. Da die belegten Formen einem Stadium entnommen sind, das durch eine extreme Zersetzung charakterisiert ist, stehen viele, auch rezente Forscher sehr skeptisch den Denkschemata des klassischen Strukturalismus und des Generativismus gegenüber, die sich für die "Lösung" mancher "Rätsel" und "unlogischer" Entwicklungen im Vegliotischen als untauglich gezeigt haben. In den 60er und in den 70er Jahren haben zwar einige Romanisten versucht, in diesem undurchsichtbaren "Dschungel" ein wenig Ordnung zu schaffen. Die verdienstvolle Dissertation von R. L. Hadlich, die übrigens diese heikle Problematik nur teilweise ins rechte Licht gerückt hat, basierte zwar auf der berechtigten Prämisse, daß viele Veränderungen,
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die das "Latin of Veglia" durchlaufen hat, ohne den slawischen Einfluß undenkbar sind. Sie litt aber an verschiedenen fehlerhaften Einschätzungen, die in ihrem größten Teil auf Mißverständnissen und teilweise auch auf Unzulänglichkeiten der benutzten slawistischen Forschung basieren. Die Studie "Vegliote revisited" (cf. Butler 1976: 227) ist leider nie zustandegekommen, da dieser vielversprechende nordamerikanische Romanist kurz nach seinem zitierten Vortrag (den er 1971, während des 13. Internationalen Romanistenkongresses in Quebec, vorlas) in einem Unfall verstarb. Übrigens hat er nicht alle Fehler seines älteren Landsmannes beseitigen können. Es überrascht nicht, daß weder Tekavcic (1976) noch Zamboni (1976) den weiterführenden Kern seines Vertrages nicht erwähnen konnten (da dieser Text, der posthum erschien, noch nicht publiziert war); es überrascht aber, daß kein Linguist sich bisher mit den Errungenschaften der kroatischen Historikerin N. Klaic (1971) vertraut gemacht hat, die für die Insel Krk, die im Jahre 1075 auch de iure kroatisch wurde, eine sehr frühe Kroatisierung und eine freiwillige Zweisprachigkeit der in Krk und um Krk lebenden Kroaten mit neuen Argumenten untermauerte. Nach ihrer Meinung haben die Kroaten sehr früh diese Insel friedlich besiedelt, zumindest was die Gemeinden Omisalj, Dobrinj, Baska und Vrbnik betrifft, während die Romanen nur in einer Gemeinde, in Krk, vorerst mehrheitlich blieben. Seit dem Ende des 9. Jahrhunderts wuchs die Anziehungskraft dieser Insel stark an, da die byzantinische Verwaltung nicht nur fortschrittliche gesellschaftliche und ökonomische Modelle, von denen die Festlandslawen nur träumen konnten, anzubieten vermochte, sondern sich auch gegenüber dem Gebrauch des Altslawischen in der Kirche viel toleranter zeigte.' — Vgl. auch die letzte Fassung der These von P. Guberina, der sich seit vielen Jahrzehnten in derselben Richtung bemühte (Guberina 1985): ihm ist alles, was nicht dokumentiert ist, verdächtig und deswegen datiert er den frühesten slawischen Einfluß erst in dem sogenannten Neuvegliotischen (also ab 1840), ohne sich über die Meinungen derjenigen, die den slawischen Einfluß viel früher akzeptieren, zu äußern und ohne die Meinung von N. Klaic zu berücksichtigen. Meines Erachtens begannen die ältesten slavisch-krklateinischen Kontakte schon vor dem Ausgang des "Urslavischen" (der nach F. V. Mares (1986: 6 ff.) ungefähr mit dem Ende des 8. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. zu datieren ist), wurden sehr intensiv während der ganzen "gemeinslavischen" Periode, die mit den Anfängen der mehr oder weniger selbständigen Entwicklung der slawischen Einzelsprachen (Ende des 10. Jahrhunderts oder noch später) endet, und erreichten ihren Höhepunkt in den folgenden Jahrhunderten, vor 1480, als diese Insel "definitiv" (d.h., bis 1797) poli-
Vokalsysteme in Kontakt
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tisch venezianisch wurde. Aus diesen Gründen erübrigt sich in diesem Artikel jede Auseinandersetzung mit den Thesen von P. Guberina. Da die Meinung von Butler leider ein Torso geblieben ist, werde ich mich hauptsächlich auf die Thesen von Hadlich begrenzen. Ich bin mit Tekavcic (1976: 67) prinzipiell einverstanden, daß Hadlich die innersystematischen vegliotischen Antriebskräfte nicht genügend respektiert hat. 2 Der Hauptvorwurf betrifft meines Erachtens, neben einem technischen Fehler (Hadlich war sich nicht immer der Tatsache bewußt, daß das Symbol y sowohl in der Transliteration kyrillischer Texte in die Antiqua als auch in der slavistischen phonologischen Praxis dem Laut bzw. dem Phonem /i/ entspricht), die anachronistische Anwendung des kreuzförmigen Vierecks mit acht Vokalphonemen des ältesten Urslavischen (also des Zustandes im S.Jahrhundert v.Chr. oder früher) auf die Kontakte auf Krk (die am frühesten im 7. Jahrhundert n. Chr. begonnen hatten). Mares (1986:9) postuliert "am Ende des Ursl. und am Anfang des Gemeinsl ... das folgende Dreieck (von Nasalvok. flankiert)":
b f
i ,
e
ujy o
Q
a
N. B. Für seine Symbole /y/ und /ü/ habe ich die außerhalb der Slawistik geltenden Symbole /i/ und /y/ notiert. Das Phonem /u/ hatte damals zwei Allophone (von denen [y] hinter palatalen Konsonanten vorkam). Mares lehnt kategorisch die Existenz eines /u/ im Urslavischen ab, was einen Verstoß gegen die bekannten Implikationsprinzipien darstellt (kein System kann /i/ ohne /u/ und /i/ haben!). Bräuer (1961: 92 ff.) läßt aber die Existenz eines primären Urslavischen /u:/ zu, als er aufgrund von sehr alten Slawismen im Griechischen zum Schluß kommt, daß das indogermanische (!) /u:/ verhältnismäßig spät im Slavischen zu /i/ geworden ist. Meines Erachtens kann man für das Ende des Urslavischen ein System in Bewegung postulieren, in dem das alte /u:/ in Richtung /i:/ auswich und das "neue" /u:/ aus ehemaligen Diphthongen zu entstehen begann. In diesem Vokalismus war die Quantität die dominierende Opposition, von der das Timbre abhing. Für unsere Zwecke können wir die in der Slawistik üblichen Symbole e, e, ä und a auf eine andere Weise notieren (/ä/, /ä:/, /ä/ und /ä:/). Dem ältesten Krkromanischen stand also ein slavisches System gegenüber, das, abgesehen von den Nasalphonemen, die folgenden Phoneme hatte (ich notiere /i/ für b und /i/ für >):
320
Zarko Muljacic
fill
/i:/ N
N
/u:/
/ä/
/ä/
/ä:/
/a:/
Leider sind uns die verschiedenen Zwischenphasen, die dieses System durchlaufen mußte, um das erstgenannte zu erreichen, sehr mangelhaft und unpräzis bekannt. Das gilt teilweise auch für die relative Chronologie, die den Übergang des gemeinslavischen zum 'klassischen' serbokroatischen System herbeiführte, die am Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts vollendet war und auf ikavischen Territorien (und Krk war ein solches) fünf Phoneme zählte. Aus der folgenden Analyse der slavisch-romanischen Kontakte auf Krk, der eine Beschreibung der vorslavischen Entwicklung vorangestellt ist, ist es ersichtlich, daß die Argumente ex silentio (die Guberina (1985) annimmt und die Tekavcic (1976: passim; bes. 73 — 74) relativiert) oft die Wirklichkeit verschleiern können. Die Schreiber bevorzugten immer die "offiziellen" lateinischen oder latinisierenden Formen der Toponyme und den ersten Belegen mit Diphthongen gingen fast immer viel früher gesprochene Formen voraus! Die vorslavischen lautlichen Wandel: a) Im Gegensatz zur älteren Meinung, der Bonfante (1983: 212) noch zustimmt, sind im Urvegliotischen /O:/ und /U/ (und nicht etwa — wie im Rumänischen — /U:/ und /U/) zusammengefallen; b) In den Lautgruppen qyi und gyi, die im Osten des Reiches in griechischer Weise als [ky] und [gy] in freien und in gedeckten Silben ausgesprochen wurden, war ein neues Phonem /y/ entstanden, welches die vorangehenden Velarkonsonanten palatalisierte: vgl. QUI:NDECIM > conko; ANGUILLA > angola (über nichtdokumentierte Zwischenphasen wie: *kyndeke > *cynkd > *cönkd > *conkd u. ä.); c) Ein analoger Wandel, der die Reflexe des lat. /U:/ in beiden Stellungen traf (CU: LU > col, U:NU > jojn, *EXSU:CTU > sot 'trocken'), muß ein hohes Alter haben: wegen seines Vorhandenseins in beiden Silbentypen (nicht aber unbedingt wegen seiner Palatalisierungskraft die in der Romania nur im Bündnerromanischen vorkommt; Lausberg (1967: 13, 1969: 163 — 164)) und wegen des frühen Datums der deszendenten Diphthongierung, die Ende des 8. Jahrhunderts ansetzt (nur aus /y/ kann man den später dokumentierten Diphthong oj, welcher in bestimmten Kontexten in o monophthongiert wurde, erklären; ein /u/ hätte nämlich *ow gegeben (Tekavcic 1976: 69). Lausberg (1969: 163) meint: "Ein Anstoß zur Aus-
Vokalsysteme in Kontakt
321
weichung u > y scheint vom Griechischen ausgegangen zu sein" und nicht, wie im Altfranzösischen, "durch eine Überladung der velaren Qualitätenskala". Tekavcic (1976: 69) schreibt dagegen dem slavischen Adstrat die Mitwirkung zu: "L'adstrato croato, con il suo passaggio /u/ > /i/ > /i/, ha potuto avere qui una notevole parte, rafforzando la tensione interna nel ramo velare del sistema". Sein Kommentar ist sehr vorsichtig und vage formuliert. Auf diese Frage komme ich später zurück; d) Die "internen" Plurale wie kin < *CANI < CANES, fomp < CAMPI, usw. unterstützen die Meinung von P. Tekavcic (1976: 68 — 70), daß einige Vorkommnisse des Phonems /a/, über undokumentierte Zwischenphasen (etwa *[ä] > *[ ]) nach dem Wegfall des umlautenden -/ mit dem Phonem / / zusammengefallen sind, um in der weiteren Entwicklung sein Schicksal zu teilen; e) Die Metaphonie, die nach F. Schurr (Tekavcic 1976: 60 ff.) hauptsächlich die offenen Vokale / / und /o/ in beiden Stellungen traf und sie in aszendente Diphthonge je und wy umwandelte, ist der umlautenden Wirkung der Endvokale -/' und -u zu verdanken; sie wurde aber später generalisiert (z.B. in DECEM > *djekd > dik 'zehn'). Sie war allgemeinromanisch, also vorslawisch. Die "zweite" deszendente Diphthongierung, die für F. Schurr die einzige "echte" und "spontane" Diphthongierung ist, traf die geschlossenen betonten Vokale /e/, /o/, in einigen Sprachen auch /i/, /u/, /y/, /ö/, nur in der freien Silbe; sie begann Ende des 8. Jahrhunderts in Nordfrankreich und dehnte sich allmählich bis zur Adria aus, ohne aber alle flankierenden Gebiete zu erreichen (in Toskana ist sie nicht belegt worden). Sie interessiert die ostadriatische Romanität und ist nach der slavischen Ankunft zu datieren. Das Vegliotische hatte im 19. Jahrhundert nur fünf vokalische Phoneme (und viele Diphthonge). Um die weitere Schilderung verständlich zu machen, gebe ich eine Auswahl von vegliotischen Reflexen, die nach ihren Etyma im Rahmen des "italischen" Qualitätssystems mit sieben Vokalphonemen verteilt sind. Die alten kirchenlateinischen Formen werden mit Großbuchstaben, in der üblichen lateinischen Orthographie, also nicht in phonetischer Umschrift, notiert. SPINA > spajna MILLE > mel PIRA > pajra MISSA > masa SERA > sajra
LUNA > lojna *EXSUCTU > sot CRUCE > krawk *NOVANUPTA > ninapta CORONA > korawna
322
Zarko Muljacic
BENE > bin FERRU > fjar
FOCU > fuk COLLU > kwal
CAPU kup (auch kubp, mit Akzent auf u) CARRU kwar (seltener auch kuor mit Akzent auf w) Der Diphthong AU hatte aw gegeben (PAUPER > pawper). Ich gehe nicht auf einige "Ausnahmen" (Tekavcic 1976: 76), die der lokalen Vermengung von übrigens getrennt gehaltenen Phonemen oder der desolaten Zersetzung des Neuvegliotischen und seiner Adaptierung der späten Venezianismen zu verdanken sind. Nach einem sorgfältigen Vergleich dieser Anfangs- und Endformen und unter Heranziehung einiger alten slavischen Dalmatismen (z. B. Rim 'Rom', Jakin 'Ancona'), sind einige (sanft gesagt) "merkwürdige" Entwicklungen hervorzuheben, die ohne slavische Mitwirkung kaum denkbar sind. Es folgt eine Auswahl dieser "Fälle": 1. Der schon erwähnte romanische Wandel u > y kann nicht isoliert betrachtet werden: ihm ist der Wandel o > u gefolgt. Das neuvegliotische korawna basiert auf *koruna, usw. Die rumänische Entwicklung wurde aber nicht nachträglich erreicht: die Reflexe der lateinischen Phoneme /U:/ und (/U/ und /O:/) blieben getrennt. Auf welche konkrete Weise dieser "Sog" vom analogen aber nicht identischen slawischen "Schub": aw, ew, dw > /u:/ 2 und /u:/1 > /i:/ abhängt, muß leider dahingestellt bleiben; 2. Da /i/ und /e/, aber nur in freier Silbe, identische Ergebnisse geben, muß diese Umverteilung der entsprechenden Allophone eine Ursache haben, die einem partiellen Zusammenfall der zwei Phoneme gleichkommt; 3. Die identischen Reflexe der Phoneme /a/ und /o/ in gedeckter Stellung und die fast identische Reflexe derselben Phoneme in der freien Stellung suchen eine unkonventionelle Erklärung. Meine Hypothese lautet: in Krk haben sich sehr früh zwei "Dialekte" formiert: der Dialekt A, der von "echten" einsprachigen Romanen, der Dialekt B, der von "zweisprachigen" Kroaten gesprochen wurde, die die romanische nur phonetische Quantität "auf slavische Weise", d. h., mit ihren Phonemen realisierten. Einige von diesen "falschen" Realisierungen haben später auch für den Dialekt A Schule gemacht, wurden dort nämlich nachgeahmt. Nicht jede Einzelheit kann leider "gelöst", darf aber vermutet werden.
Vokalsysteme in Kontakt
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Die folgenden altromanischen Lautungen sind vorauszusetzen. Sie endeten auf -a, -i oder -d. l\l *spina *milld
/y/ *lyna *syktz
/u/ *krukd *ninupta *koruna
/e/ *pera *messa *sera / / *bjend
/o/ *fwykz
(event. *ksni) /a/ *kwap9 *kwarrd Im slawischen Mund der Dialekt B-Sprecher wären die folgenden Formen ohne Semikonsonanten j, w und ohne Doppelkonsonanten zu erwarten — das Zeichen d steht für einen unpräzisierten ultrakurzen Vokal (also für das slavische /i/ oder /u/, die vor ihrem Verschwinden in einen ultrakurzen Laut zusammenfielen): /i:/ *spi:na *pi:ra *si:ra
/i:/ *li:na
ßl *mih *misa
j\l *siktd
/ä/ *färd /a:/ *bä:nd *kä:ni
/u:/ *kru:kd *koru:na /u/ oder /o/ *ninuptal3 *ninopta ? /ä/ *kab *kara 'Wagen'
/ä:/ *fa:k> *kä:rd 'lieb'
Nicht alle "Suggestionen", die aus diesem Kreis kamen, konnten sich durchsetzen: das Phonem /y/ blieb im Romanischen fest, die nur phonetische Quantität auch. Hadlich schlug vor, eine slavisch bedingte Fusion der Phoneme /a/ und /o/ als unabdingbar für die weitere Entwicklung zu akzeptieren. Butler (1976: 222) lehnte es ab, da kein Beispiel mit üb von /o/ bekannt ist (FOCU gab endlich nur/M/c). Der spätere Wandel von üb in wa ist nur in den Materialien zu finden, die Bartoli dem friaulisch sprechenden Arzt Cubich entnahm, welcher sie in Krk, wo er diente,
324
Zarko Muljacic
notiert hatte. Tekavcic (1976: 71) datiert das velarisierte a (d.h., ä oder sogar a > D) sehr spät: der älteste Beleg dafür stammt von 1672 (aber wir wissen, wie wenig glaubwürdig die Schreibgewohnheiten der Notare waren). Die anderen Wandel, etwa die Monophthongierung von je — über f — in z (und ihr Gegenstück: wz > u° > u), haben viele Parallelen in der Romania. Man muß die Meinung von Hadlich (1965: 52) ablehnen, der einen Zusammenhang mit dem ikavischen Reflex aus /ä:/ erwägt, mag sie auch sehr verführerisch klingen. Wenn wir wissen, daß das älteste Beispiel mit / > ei (FLAVI VlCU > Flaveyco) zwar nicht im Vegliotischen sondern in einem dalmatischen Nachbardialekt (bei Zadar) im Jahre 1067 belegtist (Tekavcic 1982b), dann kommt der slavische Wandel von /ä:/ über verschiedene Zwischenstufen in /i/ als auslösender Faktor der Diphthongierung des primären /i/ nicht in Frage: die ikawische Entwicklung gilt erst seit Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts als vollendet. Wir wissen nicht, was Butler in dem angekündigten Artikel vorhatte. Vielleicht könnte man auch eine dritte Möglichkeit erwägen, nämlich daß das romanische /o/ auch die Realisierungen von /a/ in gedeckter Stellung assimilierte. Das Kernelement des Diphthongs in *fwoks könnte den slavischen Ohren als relativ kurz erschienen sein (wegen des Isochronismus, d. h., der ungefähr gleichen Dauer der Silbentypen: CCV und CV:, der noch nicht abgeschafft war). Die späteren Phasen des vegliotischen Vokalismus sind für unser Thema eine "unbedeutende Größe" (quantite negligeable). Unter dem Einfluß der beiden Adstrate ist im Vegliotischen fast alles aus dem lautlichen Bereich verschwunden, was nicht in diesen Sprachen existierte (oder nicht mehr existierte), so z. B. das Phonem /y/, welches endlich oj oder o gab, die Geminaten und ä. Das Neuvegliotische "starb" bekanntlich mit einem pentaphonematischen System. Viele Einzelwandel erscheinen uns a posteriori als sehr ökonomisch und zweckmäßig, z. B. die Serien *messa > masa, *ninopta > ninapta und die relativ späte Öffnung der Diphthonge je, wo, ej, ow (z. B. in fjar, kwal, spajna, korawna), die das Phonem /a/, welches unter Akzent provisorisch verschwunden war, verstärkten. Wegen vieler Einzelheiten, die nur unter Mitwirkung des Kroatischen denkbar oder seinem Einfluß (wenn nicht Impact) direkt zu verdanken sind (und die in keinem anderen dalmatischen Dialekt so zahlreich sind), scheint uns nicht unkorrekt, diesen Dialekt als Romanisch im slawischen Mund zu bezeichnen, womit sich die Rolle der Insel Krk in der ältesten kroatischen Kulturgeschichte (sie war, zusammen mit Ostistrien und Norddalmatien die Wiege der Glagolitismus) sehr gut vereinbaren läßt.
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Anmerkungen 1. Siehe auch: N. Klaic, "Ti lazni mitovi... Kako i kada 'Metodova nauka' postaje kulturno dobro Hrvata", Oko, Nr. 259 vom 19. 12. 1985.-2. 1. 1986, Zagreb 1985, S. 10. 2. P. Tekavcic betont mit Recht die letztgenannte Komponente, ohne dabei den fremden Einfluß zu negieren: "L'isola di Veglia (Krk), 'carrefour d'influences inter-adriatiques', punto d'incrocio con le tendenze occidental!, e venuta sotto il dominio veneziano appena nel secolo XV, il ehe significa ehe il linguaggio romanzo autoctono ha avuto piu tempo per svilupparsi libero dall'influsso di altri idiomi congeneri ma di maggior prestigio. Questo fatto, assieme alia presenza di Croati sull'isola a partire dall'Alto Medioevo in poi, e da tener presente in qualsiasi ricostruzione diacronica del veglioto. Tuttavia, ... ci sembra ehe R. L. Hadlich non abbia rispettato abbastanza il principio di spiegazione interna. A nostro awiso l'adstrato croato ha potuto piuttosto rafforzare le tendenze interne del sistema vocalico veglioto ehe non provocare dei cambiamenti in esso. Infatti, per i maggiori fenomeni fonematici del veglioto si possono trovare spiegazioni interne, come si vedra in seguito". 3. Ein ephemeres Phonem "geschlossenes o" (d.h. /o/) bekam das Slawische aus der Velarisierung und der Vokalisierung des sogenannten harten Lateralen /!/, vgl. Bräuer (1961: 212 — 213). Das normale Resultat daraus ist im Wortkörper u (vgl. *sulza > suza); in Dialekten kann man dafür o oder den Diphthong ow finden.
Bibliographie Bartoli, Matteo Giulio 1906 Das Dalmatische I-II (Wien: Holder). Bonfante, Giuliano 1983 "II posto ehe spetta al dalmatico fra le lingue romanze [Die Stellung des Dalmatischen unter den romanischen Sprachen]", AATSL 48: 207 — 238. Bräuer, Herbert 1961 Slavische Sprachwissenschaft I: Einleitung, Lautlehre (Berlin: de Gruyter). Butler, Jonathan L. 1976 "Uno sguardo al vocalismo tonico del vegliotto [Ein Blick auf den betonten Vokalismus des Vegliotischen]", in: Marcel Boudreault — Frankwalt Mohren (Eds.), Actes du XUIe Congres International de Linguistique et Philologie Romanes (Quebec: Presses de l'Universite Laval) I, 221-228. Guberina, Petar 1985 "La diphtongaison vegliote est-elle une diphtongaison romane?", in: Mirko Deanovic et al. (Eds.), Melanges Petar Skok (Zagreb: ASASM), 181-191. Hadlich, Roger Lee 1965 The phonological history of Vegliote (SRLL 52) (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press). Klaic, Nada 1971 Povijest Hrvata u ranom srednjem vijeku [Die Geschichte der Kroaten im frühen Mittelalter] (Zagreb: Skolska knjiga).
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Lausberg, Heinrich 1967 Romanische Sprachwissenschaft II: Konsonantismus (Berlin: de Gruyter). 1969 Romanische Sprachwissenschaft I: Einleitung und Vokalismus (Berlin: de Gruyter). Mares, Frantisek Vaclav 1986 "Vom Urslavischen zum Kirchenslavischen", in: Peter Render (Ed.), Einführung in die slavischen Sprachen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), 1-19. Muljacic, Zarko 1962 "Dalmatski elementi u mletacki pisanim dubrovackim dokumentima 14. st. [Dalmatische Elemente in auf Venezianisch geschriebenen Dokumenten des 14. Jahrhunderts aus Dubrovnik]", Rad 327: 237-380. 1967 "Die slavisch-romanische Symbiose in Dalmatien in struktureller Sicht", Z Balk 5: 51-70. 1969 "Bibliographie de linguistique romane: Domaine dalmate et istriote avec les zones limitrophes (1906-1966)", RLiR 33: 144-167, 356-391. 1971 "Dalmate", in: Pierre Bec (Ed.), Manuel pratique de philologie romane II (Paris: Picard), 393-416. 1976 "Über zwei krkrumänische Texte aus dem 18. Jh.", ZBalk 12: 51-55. 1981 "Bibliographie de linguistique romane: Domaine dalmate et istriote avec les zones limitrophes (1966-1976)", RLiR 45: 158-214. 1983 "Aspetti recenti dello studio del dalmatico [Neuere Aspekte der Erforschung des Dalmatischen]", in: Paola Benincä et al., (Eds.), Scritti linguistici in onore di Giovan Battista Pellegrini I (Pisa: .Pacini), 101 — 108. 1987 "Dalmatico [Das Dalmatische]", in: Günter Holtus-Michael MetzeltinChristian Schmidt (Eds.), Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik II (Tübingen: Niemeyer), im Druck. Petrovici, Emil 1957 Kann das Phonemsystem einer Sprache durch fremden Einfluß umgestaltet werden? Zum slavischen Einfluß auf das rumänische Lautsystem ('s Gravenhage: Mouton). Skok, Petar 1927 — 1938 "Studi toponomastici sull'isola di Veglia [Ortsnamenstudien auf der Insel Veglia]", AGI21 (1927): 95-106, 24(1930): 19-55, 25 (1933): 117-141, 28 (1936): 54-63, 29 (1938): 113-119. Tekavcic, Pavao
1976
1979 1982a
1982b
"Sul vocalismo neolatino autoctono neue coste orientali dell'Adriatico [Über den autochthonen neulateinischen Vokalismus an der Ostküste der Adria]", BALM 13-15: 57-92. "II posto deiristroromanzo nella Romania Circumadriatica [Die Stellung des Istroromanischen in der zirkumadriatischen Romania], SRAZ 24: 21 —46. "Le due sponde delPAdriatico nei due millenni di storia linguistica romanza [Die beiden Küsten der Adria in zwei Jahrtausenden romanischer Sprachgeschichte]", Abruzzo 20: 41-60. "Motovun i Flaveyco [Motovun und Flaveyco]", OJ 9: 129-135.
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"L'istroromanzo di fronte alia Romania Perduta tra il friulano ed il romeno [Das Istroromanische gegen den Hintergrund der Romania Perdita zwischen Friaulisch und Rumänisch]", in: Dieter Messner (Ed.), Das Romanische in den Ostalpen (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften), 95-110. Zambroni, Alberto 1976 "Note linguistiche dalmate [Anmerkungen zum Dalmatischen]", in: Societä Dalmata di Storia Patria, sezione veneta, Atti della tornala di studio nel cinquantesimo anniversario della fondazione in Zara (Venezia: SDSP), 9 — 66. Zanmarchi de Savorgnani, Livia 1980 "Das Dalmatische. Passionslied und Serenade", in: Francisco J. Oroz Arizcuren, Romania cantat. Festschrift Gerhard Rohlfs II (Tübingen: Narr), 591 — 617.
The designation of spherical objects in five European languages: an essay in contrastive semantics* Dietrich Nehls
The starting point of my investigation is the divergence between English and German with regard to the designation of spherical objects. As is wellknown, E. ball has two German translation equivalents: Ball and Kugel. If the spherical object ball· is elastic and bounces it has to be rendered into German by the etymologically related lexeme Ball. If the round object ball is not elastic and does not bounce it has to be rendered by Kugel. Thus E. ball ana G. Ball are false friends.2 English native speakers who learn German have to make a distinction between elastic and non-elastic3 spherical objects before they can use G. Ball and Kugel correctly.4 This difference between German and English applies also to compounds like ball-bearing and ball (point)-pen. As these "balls" are not elastic and do not bounce we have to render them into German by Kugel: Kugellager, Kugelschreiber (cf. table 2). G. Kugel is also the designation of projectiles for rifles and revolvers. In English we use bullet for this purpose. Although bullets are not spherical as a rule, it is interesting to note that for Germans the concept of Kugel is always "round", even if the object is used for firing from a rifle or revolver. (This is at least true for Germans who do not handle rifles or revolvers.) Native speakers of English, however, do not have the conception of "roundness" in connection with bullet. Having pointed out the well-known distinction between elastic and nonelastic round objects in German, designated by Ball and Kugel respectively, we come across the compound Schneeball (snow-ball), which does not fit the criteria established so far. It should be * Schneekugel because it is neither elastic nor does it bounce. In order to explain the compound Schneeball we have to take the historical dimension into consideration. Up to the twelfth century there had been only one lexeme in German for the designation of spherical objects, namely Ball. Kugel did not come up before the Middle This is a revised version of a paper presented at the AILA 1984 conference in Brussels.
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High German period between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. (G. Kugel is etymologically related to E. cudgel). The compound Schneeball came into being at a time when Kugel had not yet established its specific uses in the lexical system of German. Thus the compound Schneeball is a relic of the early Middle High German period. Two reasons caused me to choose the Romance languages French, Italian and Spanish for comparative purposes. First of all, I know French fairly well and I have a working knowledge of Italian and Spanish. Secondly, these languages have Latin as a common source so that we have a solid basis to start from for historical investigations. I think it would be worthwhile to take other Germanic and Romance languages into consideration as well as some Slavonic languages. But it might be even more interesting to take into account some non-Indo-European languages like Finnish, Hungarian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, or Swahili. Those who are familiar with these languages might find the framework set out in the following table of some use for their contrastive analyses. But it may be the case that some more features will have to be established for the purpose of semantic differentiation. Table L Semantic feature analysis Semantic features
English
German
French
Italian
Spanish
not elastic
ball
Kugel
palla
bola
[elastic ) (bounces] [for shooting) [projectile j (model of) the earth geometrical figure
ball
Ball
bullet
Kugel
boule (bitte) balle ballon balle
palla pailone pallotola
globe
Globus
globe
globo
pelota balon bala balm globo
sphere
Kugel
sphere
sfera
esfera
In Classical Latin there were basically two designations for spherical objects in everyday usage, namely ρϊΐα and globus. Ρϊΐα designated a round object that was not necessarily elastic, but as a rule it was used for the purpose of playing games, cf. ρϊΐα ludere 'to play ball'. Globus was used for a usually non-elastic round object, but had other uses as well: it could mean 'lump' as well as 'crowd'. Lat. gl bus has been retained in the Romance languages and was taken over into English and German in a restricted sense — it refers mainly to a model of the earth or to the earth itself. (In Latin sphaera
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was used for this purpose.) Latin plla has been retained in Spanish pelota, which designates a usually elastic ball. (Cf. also le pelote basque.)5 Sp. bola and Fr. boule are also to be traced back to Latin, namely to bulla, which originally meant 'bubble'. The change of meaning from Lat. bulla 'bubble' to Sp. bola 'ball' and to Fr. boule is due to a metaphorical process. Later on Fr. boule was taken over into English: bowl designates a heavy wooden ball for rolling in the game of bowls. If we look into an etymological French dictionary, we will be surprised to find that Fr. balle, designating both an elastic ball and a projectile for rifles and revolvers, goes back to It. palla and not to G. Ball. As we can see from table 1, French and Spanish make basically the same distinction between non-elastic and elastic round objects as German does, whereas Italian does not. Palla refers both to elastic and non-elastic round objects, exactly as E. ball. It. palla goes back to Germanic ball; palla was taken over from the Germanic-Lombardic dialect before the tenth century, at a time when Kugel was not yet known in Germanic. That is why we have this striking parallel between Italian and English. It. pallotola for projectiles to be fired from rifles and revolvers is a diminutive derivation from palla whereas pallone is an augmentative derivation which is the source of Fr. ballon and Sp. balon. Cf. also G. Ballon and E. balloon. As we can see from table 1, 'ball' as a geometrical figure is designated by sphere in English and by exactly corresponding terms in French, Italian and Spanish. These words go back to Classical Greek, σφαίρα (transmitted via Lat. sphaera). Cl. Gr. σφαίρα was used both for elastic and non-elastic balls, and in addition it meant 'globe'. German uses Kugel for the geometrical figure as well; thus G. Kugel has to be rendered by three lexemes in English: ball, bullet, and sphere. The divergences and convergences between Spanish, English, and German in the realm of spherical objects are to be seen from Figure 1. (pelota\
(boon)
»· ball ,-^
»-Ball
bola (bala } [baling
Figure 1.
bullet
esfera
sphere -""
globo
globe
Globus
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As we can see from Table 2 (Compounds with ball), ball-bearing and ball (point)-pen are rendered by a formation with bitte in French: roulement billes; stylo a billes. Table 2. Compounds with ball English German French Italian Spanish
ball-bearing Kugellager roulement a billes cuscinetlo a sfere cojinete de bolas
ball (point) -pen Kugelschreiber stylo a bille penna a sfera boligrafo
snow-ball Schneeball boule de neige palla di neve pelota de nieve
Bille goes back to Germanic origin and designates a very small non-elastic ball. Italian uses the term for the geometrical figure sfera in these formations whereas Spanish makes use ofbola, which roughly corresponds to G. Kugel. The literal translation of It./Sp. cuscinetto a sfere/cojinette de bolas is 'small cushion for balls'. From a language-universal point of view it seems to be both necessary and sufficient to have one term for the designation of spherical objects, as was the case with Cl. Gr. σφαίρα. That is why the general adjectival term spherical is derived from this word. Further distinctions with regard to the features of size (small or big) and elasticity seem to be language-specific. As we have seen, differences in the designation of spherical objects in the five languages investigated are due in part to different historical influences on these languages. But the relation between lexicalization and concept-formation must also be considered.6 Notes \. In the game of rugby, however, ball designates an oval and not a spherical object. It seems that the function of ball in the game of football has played a decisive role in naming the oval-shaped object used in the game of rugby. Wierzbicka (1985) points out the limitations of traditional componential analysis and in criticizing prototype semantics (cf. Lakoff 1972; Labov 1973) stresses the role played by the function of certain objects for lexicalization and concept-formation. Thus the shuttlecock used in the game of badminton is called Federball in German (Fr. volant; It. volano; Sp. volante). Metaphorical uses of ball must also be taken into account; cf. E. fireball (G. Feuerball) as a metaphor for a meteor or a lightning shaped like a ball. For an interesting discussion of the definition of Germ. Ball and Engl. ball cf. also Burgschmidt -G tz (1974: 217-221). 2. In the sense of 'formal assembly for social dancing' E. ball and G. Ball are not related to the spherical object ball etymologically. The terms ball/Ball for the social dancing activity
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3.
4. 5.
6.
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go back to It. hallo, which is a deverbal noun derived from ballare 'to dance', which, for its part, is derived from OG. βαλλίξω via Late Lat. ballare; cf. also Sp. baile. The lexical distinction between elastic and non-elastic objects is also to be found in English; cf. hose (or hose-pipe) versus pipe. Cf. also the corresponding lexical opposition between Schlauch and Rohr in German. Graham — Belnap (1986) have shown that the mother tongue exerts a strong influence on the acquisition of lexical boundaries in a second language. Strictly speaking, Spanish pelota and French pelote (cf. also French peloton) must go back to vulgar Latin *pilola (unattested), which is derived from classical Latin pila. Cf., furthermore, English pellet. With regard to lexicalization and concept-formation cf. Gipper (1959), Labov (1973), Rosch (1978),Seiler-Wannenmacher(1983,1985), Wierzbicka (1985). - What is called'prototype semantics' (cf. Rosch 1978) does not contradict the findings — based on semantic components — of this paper, but it does not seem to be able to provide a better description or explanation of the different designations of spherical objects either. For a critical assessment of componential analysis and prototype theory, cf. Lipka (1986).
References Burgschmidt, Ernst — Dieter G tz 1974 Kontrastive Linguistik deutschjenglisch. Theorie und Anwendung (M nchen: Hueber). 1981 "Prototype semantics", Language 57: 26 — 44. Gipper, Helmut 1959 "SESSEL oder STUHL? Ein Beitrag zur Bestimmung von Wortinhalten im Bereich der Sachkultur", in: H. Gipper (ed.), Sprache, Schl ssel zur Welt. Festschrift f r Leo Weisgerber (D sseldorf: Schwann), 271-292. Graham, C. Ray-R. Kirk Belnap 1986 "The acquisition of lexical boundaries in English by native speakers of Spanish", //ML 24: 275-286. Labov, William 1973 "The boundaries of words and their meaning", in: Charles J. Bailey —Roger Shuy (eds.), New ways of analyzing variation in English (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press), 340 — 373. Lakoff, George 1972 "Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts", Chicago Linguistic Society Papers 8: 183 — 228. Lipka, Leonhard 1986 "Semantic features and prototype theory in English lexicology", in: Dieter Katovsky —Alexander Szwedek (eds.), Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries. In honour of Jacek Fisiak. Vol. 1. (Berlin —New York —Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter), 85 — 94. Rosch, Eleanor 1978 "Principles of categorization", in: E. Rosch — B. B. Lloyd (eds.), Cognition and categorization (Hillsdale: L. Erlbaum), 28 — 49.
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Seiler, Thomas B.— Wolfgang Wannenmacher (eds.) 1983 Concept development and the development of word meaning (Berlin — Heidelberg: Springer). 1985 Begriffs- und Wortbedeutungsentwicklung. Theoretische, empirische und methodische Untersuchungen (Berlin — Heidelberg: Springer). Smith, Edward E. — Douglas L. Medin 1981 Categories and concepts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Wierzbicka, Anna 1985 Lexicography and conceptual analysis (Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma).
A case of multilingualism in Eastern Belgium Peter H. Neide
0. Introduction This is certainly not the place to discuss the entire history of bilingualism in all of Europe. The case of Belgium alone presents a very heterogeneous picture. I would therefore like to begin with a short description of the Belgian concept of bilingualism, and an explanation of terms such as multilingualism or bilingualism as used in Belgium. Second, I would like to discuss a way of determining and identifying minorities which are not legally recognized, and third, indicate some methods of investigating these non-recognized minorities (cf. Neide 1984).1
1. The Belgian concept of bilingualism At the Research Center of Multilingualism in Brussels where I work, we occasionally receive inquiries from abroad concerning the status and nature of bilingual education and bilingual schools in Belgium. As a matter of fact there are no bilingual schools at all in Belgium and, therefore, such inquiries are difficult if not impossible to answer. In order to explain this surprising fact — bilingualism without bilingual education — it is necessary to define the two concepts which are most relevant to the present situation. 1.1. To understand the linguistic situation in present-day Belgium it is important to review the two different concepts of monolingualism and bilingualism which have come into existence since World War II. According to the so-called "Germanic principle" a speaker is monolingual by territoriality. In the part of the country where this principle applies, one language is official and compulsory in all applications of official communication. According to the so-called "Romance principle", however, monolingualism is a matter of personal choice and individual identity. Each decides for himself which language to use for official purposes in that part of the country where this principle applies.
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The legal consequences resulting from the coexistence of these principles in the same country is the existence of different kinds of linguistic legislation in the two different parts of the country. That is to say that two different ministries and two entirely different cultural administrations exist. The application of the Romance principle (e.g., in Brussels) allows the speaker to use his native language, which is in this case French or Dutch. The Germanic principle (e.g., in Flanders) forces the speaker to use the official language legislated by what is called a Royal Decree. 1.2. At present Belgium is composed of four different kinds of linguistic territories. First there are the monolingual areas such as Flanders and Walloonia, where either Dutch or French is the official language. Since 1962 Flanders and Walloonia have been separated by a linguistic boundary. This boundary is of tremendous importance, especially in its influence upon the linguistic and cultural development in Belgium during the past few years. The second kind of linguistic territory is the officially monolingual area with legal rights for another minority (the so-called municipalities with facilities). These are the Dutch or French areas on either side of the linguistic boundary which give legal rights to French or Dutch minorities respectively. Another area with official linguistic minority rights is the otherwise monolingual German-speaking area in Eastern Belgium. The areas on either side of the major linguistic boundary, between Dutch and French, and the basically German-speaking area of Belgium are presently the three major linguistic conflict areas. The third type of linguistic territory in Belgium is the bilingual area of which Brussels, the nation's capital, is the sole example. The fourth type is official monolingual, yet a legally non-recognized linguistic minority exists. Examples of this fourth type are the German-speaking minority areas in so-called "Old Belgium". The literature on contact linguistics unfortunately does not give equal space to the four different kinds of linguistic territories in Belgium. Most of the literature deals with the first type concerning the linguistic situation in Flanders and Walloonia. While the second type is often described in the literature, it is mostly treated from an ideological or political, rather than a linguistic point of view. The third type with bilingual Brussels as the only representative, has received much attention (cf. Neide 1983b). There is even a special Research Center solely devoted to problems of bilingualism in Brussels (Centrum voor Interdisciplinair Onderzoek naar de Brusselse Taaltoestanden; series: Taal en Sociale Integratie). However concerning the fourth type, the legally non-recognizing minority area, it
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is the nature of this "hidden dimension" that hardly anything as of yet has been published. My recently published report entitled Volkssprache und Kultursprache tries to give a first account of the three special areas in Eastern and South Eastern Belgium. One defining feature is shared by practically all areas in Belgium: There are monolingual communities in all parts of the country. Even in officially bilingual Brussels there are two monolingual communicative networks (education, administration, civil service and mass media) with identical and equal rights and privileges, without regard for the size of the bilingual population. This pretence of acknowledging monolingual structure throughout the entire country provides a good or bad solution, depending upon one's own preference, for the first three types of Belgian territory. But it certainly does not provide a solution for the non-recognized, non-legal minorities. Taking into account these minorities we have to consider diglossic speakers of German in the so-called "Eastern Cantons" in Eastern and South Eastern Belgium. These German-speaking areas are culturally and politically divided into two completely different administrations, designated New Belgium and Old Belgium. New Belgium consists of three administrative areas which form part of the second type of our linguistic territories; the officially monolingual areas with legal rights given to one minority. In two of the three districts of New Belgium this minority is French speaking, while in the third the minority language is German. Eupen, one of the officially German districts, has a small French minority of less than 10% of the population. The largest district, Sankt-Vith, has a French minority of only 2 — 3% whereas Malmedy, a Walloon- and French-speaking area, has been Prussian since the nineteenth century and houses a large German minority of between 20 and 25% (cf. Persoons-Versele 1978). These New Belgian areas have been part of Belgium since World War I and still preserve their German character in language and culture. The official language here is Standard German (DaMiB 1979). The three areas in Old Belgium, however, present a much more interesting case study, as here the German minorities are not officially recognized by the Belgian government. Old Belgium divides geographically into the Northern, Central and Southern parts. The German dialects spoken in these areas differ considerably. In the North a South Franconian dialect is spoken, whereas in Central and Southern Old Belgium the dialect is Mosel Franconian. Philologically all three are parts of the continental Westgermanic linguistic stock. Attempts to pinpoint who
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»AACHEN
EÜTSCH-
Map: German-speaking Belgium
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speaks which minority language in these areas is a difficult task (a first attempt is found in Verdoodt 1968). There is no doubt that the minority language in Old Belgium, which has been part of the Belgian Kingdom since 1839, is German. In the North there has been a long debate over whether the German dialect spoken there is Dutch rather than German. 2 The contention between the two language groups was somewhat solomonically resolved in 1962 by a Royal Decree stating that French (sic) was to be the official language in all three areas.
2. Determining and investigating legally non-recognized minorities In the absence of any reliable literature or documents in this area we have to take into account two factors as being of major importance in determining linguistic behavior: the first factor results from the uniqueness of ethnic group characteristics, and the second from the risk implied in making census-type surveys (cf. Neide 1980: 202). The danger of these pitfalls is plainly demonstrated by the result of the pilot investigation in this area undertaken by members of our Research Center of Multilingualism. Under close scrutiny the results of the surveys made between 1947 and today differ to such an extent that the minority (17 — 48%) would appear to be the majority, according to the researcher, his research methods, types of investigation, perspectives, sample methods and interpretation (cf. Neide 1983b: 114). An evaluation of the estimates and statistics of the Flemish minority in Brussels, for example, could lead to the conclusion that extra-linguistic issues influence the results: a) Political and economic factors imply an exaggeration and bias in favor of the majority. b) The question, which appears time and again, about the most spoken variety in daily life or at home is badly formulated. c) A tense and frequently politically-inflated situation often directed against a minority distorts the results. Therefore, if census and other estimate statistics distort the linguistic reality of an officially recognized language community, how reliable is an investigation of minority language use in a heterogeneous and unprotected area such as Old Belgium?
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3. How to describe unprotected minorities? 3.1. To depict the linguistic situation of an unprotected and non-recognized minority, sociolinguistic factors must be taken into account. It is possible that census-like investigations may be interpreted as loyalty and identity parameters (cf. Neide 1983b: 103). An example taken from a bilingual village (German Dialect and French) in South Old Belgium not far from the town of Arel/Arlon illustrates the difficulties arising from the interpretation of such distorted statistics: Two types of researchers asked questions concerning the language use in one street of the village. The first researcher, investigating the right side of the street, represented a special type of interviewer dressed as a salesman with a tie, white collar, business suit and a brief case (the German "Demoskop"). Walking from door to door he addressed each inhabitant in perfect French (the prestige variety) — "Bonjour Madame, Monsieur. Vous parlez certainement frangais, n'est-ce pas?" — and always received an answer in French. The interviewer on the left side of the same street resembled more a student-type "hippie"; bilingual (Dutch/French) with a fairly good knowledge of German. She addressed all inhabitants in two languages — French, and German, "Bonjour, Guten Tag" — and continued the dialogue in broken German while asking questions about old German songs ("Kinder- und Weihnachtslieder"), fairy tales and legends, and ending with the question "Aber Sie verstehen doch Deutsch?". Everyone agreed. Premature conclusion: right side of the street speaks French and left side speaks German. This example stresses not only the importance of the language of inquiry, but also other factors such as the appearance of the interviewer and the way in which the questions are formulated. While these "fake" interviews show the low degree of answer reliability and the hazards of interpretation, the distinctive features of such a minority must also be stressed (cf. Neide 1983a: 6). There are extralinguistic features which limit the universal applicability of such an investigative method. For example, Old Belgium can be seen in the linguistic boundary zone (French/German) where an electoral peculiarity exists. While the French (or "frenchified") villages of the Walloon side tend to vote for a socialist majority, the German-speaking communities prefer the Christian Democrats. In addition there is a group of occasional voters on the German side who represent bilingual speakers. 3.2. In a former contribution to language ecology we tried to make a case for a non-linear approach to linguistic developments (for the example
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to follow see Neide, "Reflexions ecolinguistiques ä propos de la Vieille Belgique" [in print]). It is not easy to find an exact description of language use and language shift in multilingual linguistic areas in the "prelinguistic" literature of the nineteenth century. Yet when one examines the written sources dealing with Old Belgium of ca. 1850, one obtains a relatively clear picture of the family situation in relation to the language. Whereas the older generation still speaks the local variety of German (monolinguals), the middle generation already changes over to the official French while retaining the local dialect (diglossic speakers). The young generation, however, looses the mother tongue and shifts completely to French (monolinguals again), able to understand yet not speak the language of their ancestors. This description appears to be correct, as it seems to conform with other publications on language death. Fifty years later we find a similar situation: the grandparents still use German, the parents are bilinguals and the school-age generation prefers French. Reviewing literature of the 1930s, the participant observer is confronted with an identical linguistic behavior: the "third age" (troisieme age, seniors) speaks only German, the younger adults speak two languages, and the youngsters again replace their low variety by a higher French one. Something must be wrong with this observation. What had happened? If these observations had been true, the low variety should not have appeared in the twentieth century. Without any doubt the linguistic evolution has been regarded as too linear (cf. Neide 1984: 221). The development by many youths away from the Germanic low variety at school, due to official instruction in French, has in many cases been made up for again some years later. After returning from the coal and steel area of Walloonia, where income prospects are better, and taking over the parental heritage such as the house or certain offices, these youths must conform and re-identify with the local vernacular. The limitations of the linear approach become obvious from this illustration, and we therefore urge that non-linear approaches should be taken into consideration. 3.3. In general the socio-economic changes since the technical revolution and their effects and influences on language behavior deserve explicit attention. The discontinuity of the social and ecological conditions is to be found even in marginal linguistic boundary zones such as South Old Belgium. In the southeast of South Old Belgium a rapid industrialization began between the two world wars and again after World War II. Above all,
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the steel industry owned by companies in Luxembourg expanded in the 1960s. The decline of homogeneity in the rural local society and the establishment of industries along a new highway led to a language shift spanning two generations. Language death was predicted by linguists and politicians. The situation changed, however, when the economic recession halted the expansion and factories either closed or destroyed. The period of unemployment for more than ten years resulted in a phenomenon which we call "re-agrarisation": unemployed people returned to their farms and tried to identify with the older local communities by using the local low variety. A manner of language shift took place which will probably repeat several times, making the future situation of the language unforseeable (cf. Neide 1984: 222). This example implies a dangerous conclusion for the autochthonous minority: in case of ecological and economic change where the industrialization and establishment of a modern technically-oriented society influence the language use and behavior of the indigenous minorities, the consequence would be a direct relation between the growth of the gross national product and the decline of the mother tongue. Or when stated the other way around: is socioeconomic backwardness a guarantee for the survival of the low linguistic variety in multilingual areas with a threatened minority? 3.4. Investigations concerning the linguistic domains of minorities prove that the family is the last domain where the vernacular is used before a language is in danger of dying out. As we have indicated, statistics and polls are not able to depict the linguistic family situation. It would be more advantageous to measure or describe the social conditions and relations such as the social pressure on a minority. A socioprofile derived from sociolinguistic surveys could become a useful tool for such an assessment (cf. Neide 1984: 222 — 223). The language situation in an Old Belgian hamlet may show, perhaps, the unexpected consequences of such a research approach. At the time of the present investigation eighty-four people are living in a hamlet north of Arel/Arlon. Each inhabitant understands and speaks French or a variety of French. The German vernacular is used by only sixty people. The conclusions of an analysis not taking into account the specific role of this vernacular for social life may turn out to be premature: since everyone speaks French and only slightly more than two-thirds of the population is able to use the mother tongue, it would be a question of one or two generations before the vernacular is in danger of becoming extinct. An analysis of the social conditions of language use and the
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social network of this hamlet indicates, however, that the few but important social interactions — especially those which have a direct impact on everyday life in the community such as land consolidation (re-allotment), the construction of a road or a house — are all conducted in the German dialect. This dialect is limited to oral conversation only, however, as the written language is always French. In the final analysis this language use could result in a discrimination of the twenty-four monolingual French-speakers. Although French is the official language, it is noteworthy that as far as social interaction and negotiating strategies of the hamlet are concerned, the so-called "stigmatized vernacular" could nevertheless become the most important variety.
4. Conclusions What conclusions are to be drawn from such an observation of bilingual communities which are not recognized and not protected? a) A language census in multilingual areas with non-recognized minorities can only be interpreted as a trend, and not as an exact description of the numerical relationship between minority and majority. b) Extralinguistic features, above all unique group features, must be taken into account for any research. c) Linear conceptualized research methods are to be avoided as they distort the unpredictable irreguliarity of language shift. d) Socioprofiles ("community profiles", "ethnoprofiles"; cf. Wölck 1973, Enninger —Raith 1982) could be of use for arriving at a more precise picture of the language behavior of an unprotected minority. Notes 1. A first draft of this paper has been published in E. Wände (ed.), Aspects of Multilingualism, Uppsala, 1987, 143-152. 2. This discussion started in the 1920s and was continued after World War II (see the journal Land ohne Grenzen — Land zander Grenzen — Pays sans Frontieres, published in the so-called "Three Countries' Corner" in the 1960s).
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References Enninger, Werner—Joachim Raith 1982 An ethnography-of-communication approach to ceremonial situations (Wiesbaden: Steiner) Neide, Peter H. 1980 "Sprachloyalität und soziale Identifikation", Grazer Linguistische Studien 11-12: 201-209. 1983a "A case for a linguistics on languages in contact", in: Peter H. Neide (ed.), Comparability of language contacts (Bonn: Dummler), 3 — 16. 1983b "Language contact and language shift in Brussels", Folia Linguistica Historica 4: 101-117. 1984 "Aspects of linguistic determination along the Germanic-Romance linguistic boundary", Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 5: 217— 224. Persoons, Yves —Mireille Versele 1978 "Die heutige Lage des Deutschen in 'La Wallonie Prussienne'", Germanistische Mitteilungen 8: 5 —14. Verdoodt, Albert 1968 Zweisprachige Nachbarn (Wien: Braumüller). Wölck, Wolfgang 1973 "Attitudes towards Spanish and Quechua in bilingual Peru", in: Roger Shuy — Ralph Fasold (eds.), Language attitude studies: Current trends and prospects (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press), 129-147. DaMiB 1979 Deutsch als Muttersprache in Belgien (Wiesbaden: Steiner).
Language contact and foreign language acquisition William Nemser
1. Introduction The theoretical formulations of Einar Haugen (1953, 1956) and Uriel Weinreich (1953) which inaugurated a new era in the study of language convergence were specifically intended to shed new light as well on the process of foreign language acquisition. Indeed the relevance of the concepts language contact, interference, interlingual identification and so on to the observed behavior of language learners was excitingly evident. A theoretical framework seemed to have been provided motivating a "contrastive" approach to language teaching, one validated by the universality of language borrowing, at the macro level by language communities, as at the micro level by individual language learners importing elements of their base languages into their target languages. Thus the newly-prominent field of language contact studied equally language convergence and foreign language acquisition. In fact, however, the inclusive theoretical principles were never clearly formulated. Concepts intended in the first instance to apply to language convergence often fail in application to foreign language acquisition. Yet we are clearly dealing with aspects of a unified phenomenon. 1.1. Problems begin with Weinreich's definition of language contact: ... two or more languages will be said to be in contact if they are used alternatively by the same persons. The language-using individuals are thus the locus of the contact (Weinreich 1953: 1). Contact languages may include "dialects — and varieties of the same language" (Weinreich's quotation marks). It would be pedantic to object that "language contact" makes only oblique reference to the actual focus of interest, the dissemination of elements among language systems, but perhaps not to note that contact is a necessary but not sufficient condition for such dissemination. Further, restricting contact to the confrontation of (internalized) language systems leaves out of account the adaptation of imported elements by monolingual speakers of the recipient system in "(ordinary) cultural borrowing"
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(Bloomfield 1933: 444—460), surely also an instance of contact. And precisely such adaptation of alien textual elements is, of course, characteristic of foreign ^language acquisition. The concept of contact employed by Weinreich and Haugen was not applied to the relationship between a nascent replica system and a mature model only gradually and fragmentarily revealed in the external form of data. Rather it is the base and target systems which are viewed the contact languages, on the analogy of the alternating systems of a bilingual. Actually, of course, the contact situation is definitionally characterized by the learner's ignorance of the target language but no less by the independence of his provisional (working) version of the target language from the base language, despite his extensive use of the latter system as source. 1.2. The focus of language contact research is interference, in Weinreich's standard definition: Those instances of deviation from the norms of either [contact] language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language, i.e. as a result of language contact (Weinreich 1953: 1). More specifically deviations occurring during the first of a two-phase process: interference in speech, a "generative process", an "on-the-spot borrowing", a "result of ... personal knowledge of the other tongue", rather than interference in language, the "accomplished result", phenomena which are "habitualized and established", with "their use no longer dependent on bilingualism" (Weinreich 1953: 11). Such "non-belonging" elements, intrusions from another system, are "borrowed" or "transferred" (1953: 1). Haugen, on the other hand, citing the frequent uncertainty of bilinguals as to the actual source of such elements, defines "true" interference as "the overlapping of two languages" in which the analyst "must assign [elements] to more than one language at a time" (Haugen 1956: 39 — 40). It is difficult to accept either view even in application to language convergence alone. The motivated character of interference is the very theme of Weinreich's classical study. Yet interference is assigned to parole and excluded from langue. No system underlies its systematic occurrence. Moreover, can we equate a system in the stage before "interference in language"with the system after such interference and still speak of "convergence"? This static view fails to recognize a "product" system distinct from both the donor and recipient systems.
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Haugen's androgynous solution is equally unacceptable if the notion of structure retains any appeal. Against what systemic context do diaphones and diamorphs emerge? To argue that they belong to both the donor and recipient systems is really to say that they belong to neither. As regards foreign language acquisition, Weinreich's formulation offers learners a shuttle system commuting between their base and target systems. Haugen's "diaphones" are "bilingual allophones", regarded as "variants of the phoneme in the receiving languages". (Similarly for diamorphs and bilingual allomorphs.) Thus "learning the sound system of another language could be described a phonemicizing of diaphones" (and morphemicizing of diamorphs) (Haugen 1956: 45 — 46). Haugen's formulations lead to the equally untenable view of the learner's evolving competence as an "interlanguage", a "transitional system" linking the base language and the target language. 1.3. Nevertheless the standard interference types of language convergence also occur in foreign language acquisition with a regularity both demonstrating the unity of contact phenomena assumed by Weinreich and Haugen, and invalidating the fashionable anachronism that foreign language competence develops independently of a substratal native language. Typical of lexical interference in German and English are:1 (1) loanword transfer brills 'eyeglasses' < Brille: I need some new brills. (1) mieter 'tenant' < Mieter: Some mieters are very nice. (2) dement 'deny' < dementieren: Nobody in Bonn demented the statement of the Palestinensians. (2) loan translation ill-car 'ambulance' < Krankenwagen: Ready is the ill-car. (2) alp-dream 'nightmare' < Alptraum: I think I have an alp-dream. (2) lecture-free 'without classes' < Vorlesungsfrei: Is Wednesday lecturefree? (3) side-jump 'extramarital adventure' < Seitensprung: Show me the woman who can laugh at her husband's sidejumps. (3) (3) loan blending2 flutlight 'floodlight' < Flutlicht (1) messing outfit 'gauge, meter' < Meßgerät (2) vizechampion 'runner-up [in sports]' < Vizemeister (2) dursty 'thirsty' < durstig; thirsty (2)3
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(4) semantic borrowing a) homophonous - synonymous mind Opinion' < Meinung: My mind is that the hostage should be released. (2) meager 'thin' < mager: Look how meager she is! (3) b) synonymous lucky Tine, happy' < glücklich: I hope you are fine. At us all is alright and lucky. (1) visit 'attend' < besuchen: Pupils visited private schools. (2) carry 'wear' < tragen: Could I carry something like this? (3) c) homophonous tail 'part' < Teil: This tail of the castle was added 1450. (1) guilty 'valid' < gültig: The Queen must sign a law for it to become guilty. (2) note 'grade' < Note: What note do I have? (3) 1.4. On the other hand equally typical and abundant is acquisitional interference which transcends the convergence framework since other sources replace or augment B. The resultant interference types are, however, familiar from "lineal" diachronic change: (1) internal borrowing (a) analogical replacement says[ey] = [ ] (1, 2, 3) leaved (pt) = left (2) snown (pp) = snowed (2) badder = worse (2) cruelism = cruelty (3) co war dish = cowardly (3) Analogically regularized past tense forms like buyed (1) and thinked (1) may additionally reflect the corresponding German suffixes: kauf-te: dach-te (see 5 below). (b) analogical extension sheeps (pi) = sheep (1) wents (3 sg pt) = went (1, 2) unsmell = air out: Let the kitchen unsmell a little. (3)
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The very current informations (2, 3) may again reflect both internal and external models. (2) blending Historical products like sparsity < sparseness, scarcity; splotch < spot, blotch; to be friends with so. < to be friends, to be friendly with so.4 are also paralleled in acquisitional interference: adjacing < adjacent to, adjoining (3) self-conceited < self-confident (self-assured), conceited (3) semigtide < semivowel, glide (3) foreignger < foreigner, stranger (3) (where B may also play a role: see 4.2. below) / have a colleague of mine < I have a colleague, a colleague of mine (3) (3) metanalysis (a) popular etymology dumbfolded < dumbfounded: I was so dumbfolded that I couldn Ί say anything. (3) refilling < refueling: Four Libyan planes landed for refilling in Brazil. (3) The unfamiliar terminology of linguistics often inspires such improvisation, sometimes to the detriment rather than enhancement of meaning: diphtongue < diphthong (3) matter language < metalanguage: The language of linguistics is a matter language. (3) meaning for a unit = meaningful unit: A morpheme is the smallest meaning for a unit. (3) (b) malapropisms publish < punish: The two boys who threw the stones were published. (2) extradite < expel: Elizabeth the First extradited the Jews. (2) blanket < blank: Fill in the blankets. (3) culprit < pulpit: I refused to stand at the culprit. (3) self-conscious < self-confident: God, are you self-conscious! (3) conscience < conscious: He was without conscience for fifteen minutes. (3)
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(c) resegmentation (back- and "out"-formation) news (pi) < news (sg): The news are on. (3) jean < jeanfsj: I wanted to buy a jean. (3) nocent 'guilty' < [in] nocent: They believe their father was nocent. (3)5 indignate < indignat[ion\: He was very indignated that I called so late. (3) disillusionize < disillusion: When they get to school, the new teachers are disillusionized. (3) enlargen < enlarge: The gap between the haves and have-nots enlargens. (3)
2. The foreign language acquisition 2.1. The foreign language acquisition (FLA) network It is here assumed that foreign language acquisition brings into contact three language systems: a variety of the target language (T), the learner's earlier-acquired or base language or languages (B), and his provisional active version of T, his approximative systems (A). T and A are thus covarieties of the same language, while at the same time forming a filiational sequence. The learner's base and approximative systems, not his base and target systems, establish contact through alternate use by the same person (see 1.1. above). However the major borrowing source for A is obviously T, although Weinreich's criterion excludes contact between these systems. The third donor system is A itself as source of internal borrowing. The conversion of importations from both T (see 1.4. above) and B into elements characteristic alone of A offers one demonstration of the structural cohesion and independence of learner language. Since B not only, like T, initiates transfer, but also, like A, mediates importation from T, the foreign language acquisition network assumes a quadrilateral form (see Figure 1). 2.2. The approximative system as language variety Bloomfield's description of speech-communities, with their intersecting geographical, social and occupational subgroups, leaves, unclear the status of his "foreign speakers" (Bloomfield 1933: 42 — 56). However even
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Figure 1. The foreign language acquisition network T: the target language; B: the base language; A: the approximative systems in recipient and donor function. Arrows indicate transfer routes.
those of them sharing a native language would be ineligible for subgroup membership. While they may, as residents, or even students in the country of the target language or at home, "interact by means of the community language, special "density of communication" is usually undermined by possession of a common native language. And while even native language learners establish peer-group models (Labov 1969: 31—35), the norms selected for emulation by foreign language learners are typically those of T, not A. (However the inadvertant substitution of A models for T models in teaching, it must be admitted, occurs frequently, and approximative norms probably played a role in the establishment of some regional varieties of English.) Conversely, no "lines of weakness in communication" other than those implied by limitations in proficiency isolate active foreign learners, since for them communication with T-speakers is both means and objective. Thus the ideolects constituting an "approximative system" lack the communal cohesiveness of those of the target and base language varieties represented in the same network. Moreover, of course, they differ widely in structural development. Nevertheless these approximative ideolects are unified by characteristic synchronic and diachronic properties. The first is independence of both T and B, an autonomy expressed by the adaptation of importations from both sources to the internal structural norms of the recipient ideolect.6 (The decrease of such adaptation for T elements and its increase for B elements are indicators of progress in acquisition.) In addition, the approximative ideolects are "vector products"7 of influence from the same filiational and external sources, T and B respectively, with the latter system also functioning (decreasingly) as adaptor of importations from T. Finally these ideolects utilize the same modes of
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borrowing (see 1.3. and 1.4. above), modes characteristic not only of foreign language acquisition but of language contact in historical transmission and in language convergence as well.8
3. Direct borrowing The replication in A of a phonological, grammatical or lexical element (of variable type and magnitude) of T or B, as initiating donor system, without the intervention of a second system, is direct borrowing. The donor system element is the model, the facsimile registered in A is the replica or reflex.9 (See routes T—>A and B—>A in Figure 1 above.) Direct borrowing from T is simply the acquisition of an encountered T element: the element is registered in A storage with its intended properties, and marks a step in the convergence of A and T. Some further comments by Weinreich on "interference" may imply a dilemma here. He considers restricting the term to importations causing: ... the rearrangements of patterns that result from the introduction of foreign elements into the more highly structured domains of language, such as the bulk of the phonemic system, a large part of the morphology and syntax, and some areas of the vocabulary (kinship, color, weather, etc.) (Weinreich 1953: 1). Then "borrowing" would cover "mere additions to the inventory" in "the more loosely patterned domains of a language — some of the syntax, or vocabulary of an incidental nature". In practice, however, Weinreich abandons the distinction (his chapter "Lexical Interference" [1953: 47 — 67] deals exclusively with "vocabulary of an incidental nature"), apparently through mistrust of the "borrowing" concept: "even in [loosely patterned domains] the possibility of ensuing rearrangements in the patterns, or interference, cannot be excluded" (1). Weinreich's position, expressive, of course, of the heyday of structuralism, would have, in the present context, the interesting corollary that only elements from "loosely structural domains" of either T or B could be separately imported intact, and that often even such elements could only be assigned provisional properties.10 Direct borrowing from B is illustrated by loanword transfer (see 1.3 above). Among young beginners even function words may be imported:
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außer 'except' < außer: All days außer Sunday. (1) ihr 'her' < ihr: She is washing ihr hands. (1) and sometimes even bound morphemes; in the first of the following examples a particular model was chosen, while in the second a paradigmatic or class model (the translation equivalent, Mädchen, is not marked for plurality in the nominative case): dog-e 'dogs' < Hunde girl-en 'girls' n < Lehrerin-en 'female teacher', SchuleUhren 'clocks', etc.
'schools',
Mature learners in general restrict their lexical importations to words which, as borrowing themselves, are presumed to have international currency: grammatik 'grammar' < Grammatik: It was based on some knowledge of grammatik. (3) konkurrenz 'competition' < Konkurrenz: It's a real konkurrenz! (3) prepotent 'conceited' < prepotent: Don't be so prepotent! (3) Another example is dement 'deny' already cited above (1.3). These examples from Hungarian-English, which include borrowings from German, belong in the same group: Storno 'cancellation', lavina 'avalanche', gloria 'halo', fabrik 'factory'.12 Direct borrowings from B also include syntactic patterns, among them those of statement word order: His work is it to gather information. = It his work ... (3) All of a sudden will be coming too much [ketchup] out. = too much will be coming ... (3) question word order (by less advanced students): Want you yoghurt? = Do you want ... (1) Went you home? = Did you go ... (2) possessive constructions: David his parents were poor. : David's parents ... (1) She took a woman away her husband. = ...a woman 's husband away. (3)
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and negative constructions: We are both not here tomorrow. — Neither of us is ... (3) Before you haven't sold your house, you can't buy another one. = before you have sold... (3) The source of the first possessive construction, it should be added, is not standard Austrian but the Carinthian dialect, an instance of input from a second base German system characteristic of much of the Germanophone area (see James — Kettemann 1983). The freedom of transfer of such syntactic elements suggests a status less "in-awareness" than that of loanwords.13 The direct transfer of prosodic elements from B might be anticipated for the same reasons, and indeed the importation of intonation patterns from local varieties of Austrian-German is documented for Styria (Karpf et al. 1980), and Upper Austria (Grosser 1983). Investigation of the Klagenfurt region, with learners including bilingual Slovene speakers, is in progress.14
4. Secondary borrowing The transfer of elements from a primary donor system, T or B, frequently initiates transfer from a secondary donor system, a role also assumed by B, for input from T, and by A itself, for input from both primary sources. Such secondary transfer occurs when the learner, on the basis of partial evidence, equates a primary system element with an element, or class of elements, in his A or B repertoires. His ascription of unattested features to the former on the basis of their presence in the latter, typically a reflexive process, is secondary transfer. (Note that where the primary model derives from T, inferences from A or B will often prove correct, and acquisition occurs without direct input. The fact that attention generally [as here] focuses or false inference and interference is a concession to expediency which should no longer be made.) The primary and secondary models (M, and M2) intersect to form a chain, with shared features as the overlap, and unshared features as the complements. In direct transfer the replica registered as a new element of A is congruent with M!. However in mediated borrowing where a deviant secondary model intervenes, the replica shifts toward M2: features belonging to the M2 complement are included at the expense of M! features. Balanced principles of economy clearly govern the use of secondary borrowing: to minimize change in the status quo of internalized reper-
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toires while, at the same time, maximizing input through the productive use of this status quo in interpreting the input. In reference to this process terms like "adaptation" and, for phonological input, "filter", "screen", or "sieve" (the latter Trubetzkoy's choice) are thus inappropriate since a) they inply the reduction rather than creative elaboration of input and b) it is a secondary system element, not a modified version of a primary system element, which is actually transferred to A. The role of the primary system in secondary borrowing is, however, not only to activate a secondary system element for transfer but, through concomitant direct transfer, to provide a context for its reception. From the learner's point of view, a familiar element has occured in new surroundings. Thus, for example, the acquisition of vocabulary from T occasions, and provides for, the dissemination of phonological elements of B; and transfer of vocabulary from B, for the extension of the distributional ranges of inflectional morphemes of A (see below). 4.1. Mediated borrowing from T In replacing T elements with those of B or A, the learner employs two types of inference to justify the secondary transfer of two types of feature. Unfamiliar data from T approached from the standpoint of a secondary system reveals familiar features. On the basis of these shared features (the overlap), identity or class equivalency between primary and secondary elements is inferred. Then, on the basis of this inferred identity or equivalency, first the presence (or absence) of additional textual features, namely those completing the resemblance, is inferred; and next additional systemic features appropriate to other contexts are ascribed, in potential form, to the T element. The application of inductive and deductive inference in the interpretation of the text is here called "analytic reconstruction", that of further deductive inference in the ascription of additional systemic features, "synthetic reconstruction". 4.1.1. Replicas of the type TB The transfer route T—>B—»A (see Figure 1 above) and the analytic reconstruction of phonological elements are illustrated by the frequent identification, by learners at all levels, of E. /ae/ in words like taxi, sat, and Ann, with G. /e/ [ ] of Text 'text, libretto', setzen 'set, place', ändern 'alter, change'. On the basis of overlap features, both higher tongue position
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and distinctive brevity are ascribed to the English phoneme. The same interpretive process permits the identification of E. /i/ (seat), and G. /i:/ (sieben 'seven'); E. /9/ (luck) and G. /a/ (Lack 'varnish'); Ε. /Θ/ (thin) and (Austrian-) German /s/ (Sinn 'sense, mind'), and so on. On the other hand, use of a non-velarized variant of /!/ in final position (sometimes resulting in homophony between pairs like E.feel and G. viel 'much, plenty') may reflect either the analytic reconstruction of a native speaker's dark /!/, or the synthetic extension of an accurately interpreted clear /!/ to final position, a generalization then insulated from corrective data from T by analytic inference. The use of carry in the sense 'wear' is an example of TB semantic transfer. The term was necessarily acquired in a context calling for the meaning 'transport', its link with the secondary model, G. tragen 'transport, wear'. Thus synthetic reconstruction, also excluding the meanings 'sing on key', 'be protected by [insurance]' etc., must have occurred (see 1.3., semantic borrowing, synonymous).15 The overlap in the case of meager, with the borrowed meanings 'gaunt' and 'low in fat content', where the German model is mager, includes both formal and semantic features (see 1.3., semantic borrowing, homophonous-synonymous). Where secondary transfer produces German-English terms like guilty 'valid', from G. g ltig, and note 'grade, mark', from G. Note, the association between the primary and secondary models is purely formal (see 1.3., semantic borrowing, homophonous). However some of these cases may be instead examples of direct loanword borrowing from B (see 3 above). Secondary grammatical transfer from B of the synthetic type is attested by sentences like: It's a nice joke, or? (3). The intersection of the functions of or and G. oder as alternative conjunctions catalyzes the transfer of the latter's interrogative function. 4.1.2. T A replicas Here the transfer route is T—»A—>A, the mediating system being the stored elements of the approximative system itself. It was noted above (4.1.1.) that the identification of E. /ae/ with G. /e/, an example of TB replication, was characteristic. However equally characteristic, especially of advanced learners, is the reverse identification of Ε. /ε/, in words like select, next, and set, with the newly-installed /ae/ category of their ap-
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proximative systems. Such "hypercorrection" is also exemplified by the frequent aspiration of post-sibilant occlusives in words like speak and stand, where synthetic inference has operated. The use of analytic inference in the interpretation of lexical items is illustrated by the registration of diphthong as diphtongue, and refueling as refilling on the basis of both formal and semantic overlap with earlieracquired elements (see 1.4. above for additional examples of "popular etymology"). Thus we have a parallel with homophonous-synonymous transfer from B. The interpretation of customer as 'customs officer': The customer was very friendly (3), equally resembles homophonous transfer from B (see 4.1.1. above). The selection of the past tense variant for leaved again illustrates synthetic inference (see 1.4., internal borrowing, analogical replacement). Here, however, the secondary model is not an individual element (that is, another verb), but rather a class of elements, namely those "regular" verbs of English, perhaps including learn, study and carry, which the learner has already acquired. The overlap is shared membership in the verbal category. On the other hand the form snown shows the productivity in A, at least as regards past participle formations, of the verb class including know, grow and draw. The absence of root alternation before the third person singular inflection of says [ey] is a feature shared by most verbs the learner has acquired. Secondary borrowing with synthetic inference also accounts for the derivatives badder, cruelism, and cowardish, although whether the transferred element is a morpheme or a variant depends on the status of the suffixes in Λ.16 The generalization of the third-singular morpheme from the present tense to other contexts, as in wenls, is presumably motivated by ties both to the present tense root, and to the verb class in general (see 1.4., internal borrowing, analogical replacement). In the ingenious derivative unsmell 'air out', where the verb is treated as a causative and the prefix has a reversative meaning, the model is the class of unfold, untie, unwind (see Marchand 1969: 279). A combination of analytic and synthetic reconstruction created forms like nocent 'guilty' and jean 'jeans' (see 1.4., metanalysis, resegmentation). Innocent and jeans were interpreted as complexes on the basis of formal (and even semantic) resemblance to classes of negated and pluralized forms respectively; the same model then authorized the truncated forms.
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4.2. Replicas of the type ΒΑ The direct borrowing of Β vocabulary (see 3. above) is typically accompanied by phonological and grammatical adaptation to the current structure of A, that is, by mediated transfer following the route (B—»A—>A) (see Figure I). Such adaptation, in fact, provides one indication of the learner's progress. Since the imported phonological and grammatical elements are natively familiar to the learner, his task is reinterpretation rather than interpretation as in the case of Τ importations. However during this commerce between two internalized systems inference about T, the inactive system, again plays a crucial role. Here, as in the importation of vocabulary from T, one must distinguish between lexical and phonological form. As importations from T, [CES] for jazz and [frents] for friends are only phonologically deviant, while foreignger [formp] for foreigner (see 5. below), and veneral [venaral] for venereal, are lexically deviant. Conversely when the transfer of G. dementieren 'deny' was mediated by the A of an advanced learner and the term entered the repertoire as [dsir^nt], a regular verb, it remained only lexically anomalous (see 1.3., loanword transfer). The conversion of lexical form is a separate function of A. Examples are mediated imports (not translations) like ill-car 'ambulance' lecturefree 'without classes' (see 1.3., "loan translation"). Concomitant transfer of figurative content occurs in side-jump 'extramarital adventure'; to blow someones horni7 'to chime in with someone': She blew on your horn: she said I was bissig. (3);™ through the flowers™ 'in a veiled manner': He told me through the flowers I should do more. (3)20 4.3. In summary, our data suggests that lexical elements are the typical currency of mediated transfer. In such importation of morphemes from T, the primary model dominates in determining the lexical shape of the replica although its constituent phonemes owe their basic characteristics to the secondary model. The latter model also dominates as source of the grammatical and semantic properties of the replica. In terms of our model chain, the replica shape derives from the primary complement and any overlap, but its content and grammar from the obligatory overlap and the secondary complement. This derivation can be represented as: p(ps)/ps-s. Its phonological characteristics also derive from the overlap and secondary complement: ps-s. The replicas of mediated borrowing from B, as regards the origin of their shape, content and grammar, are the mirror image of those from
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T: the secondary model dictates the shape, and the primary model the content and grammar. Again, however, semantic or grammatical overlap is obligatory: s-(sp)/ps-p. And, insofar as the phonological system of A differs from that of B, phonological imports are again dominated by the secondary system: ps-s.
5. Double transfer Overlapping features may also unite replicas. Such complexes combine directly-transferred reflexes, mediated reflexes, or reflexes of both types. Double direct transfer from T is very common. Examples are semiglide', adjacing (see 1.4., "blending"); despite of < despite, in spite o/(3); The Foreign Secretary of State < The Foreign Secretary, The Secretary of State (3); and once and then < now and then, once in a while (3). In all of these cases, the underlying T elements have converged in the process of transmission to A. The merger was prompted by formal overlap as well as synonymy for all terms except semiglide. Self-conceited < self-confident, conceited (3); packed out < packed, sold out: The auditorium was packed out. (3), approach portmanteau status since the meanings of the united replicas only overlap. Forms like publish 'punish', and culprit 'pulpit' (see 1.4., "malapropisms") again resemble the reflexes of homophonous semantic transfer (see 1.3., semantic borrowing, and 4.1.1.) since only formal overlap connects the underlying T elements. Direct transfer from both T and B produced untis < until, bis: I skied from 10 o'clock until 4. (2), where functional similarities connected the prepositions. Phones like [9s], combining features of T and B phonemes, are common at all levels. Double borrowing from B also occurs, with A mediation. The term foreignger (see 1.4.) is a portmanteau of the two English terms required to express two meanings of G. Fremde 'foreigner, stranger'. The examples of double borrowing cited so far have shown two models in competition. The following examples may illustrate cooperation between approximative system and base language models. However since secondary shapes could normally derive only from A, participation of B as reinforcing model cannot be documented in the data (although learners themselves have sometimes offered supportive judgements).21 The analogical form buyed (pi) —bought (2), for instance, may be reinforced by the G. form kauf-te with its grammatical and even phonetic similarities.
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Other possible instances of reinforcement are sheep-s (G. Schaf-e; the back-formation scissor (G. Shere-n, the resegmented new-s (G. Nachrichten): The news are on in the other room. (3)22 (see 1.4., internal borrowing; resegmentation). The participation of B as model for the following lexical formations, with their clear formal parallels in German, seems evident: nervosity (3) (G. Nervosität); unguilty (3) (G. unschuldig); respectless (3) (G. respektlos). Where such reinforcement occurs and the parallels between T and B are actual, the result, of course, would instead have been covert positive transfer. The double transfer of syntactic patterns may also occur in cases like the following where both a class of A verbs, and a particular B verb, provide models for subcategorization: Explain me something, = ... something to me (2) A tell, give, lend, etc.; G. erklären: Erklär mir was. I would suggest him to go. = ... that he go (3) A like, expect, tell, etc.; G. empfehlen: Ich empfehle ihm zu gehen. You just finished to eat. = ... eating (3) A refuse, agree, start, etc.; G. aufhören: Du hast gerade aufgehört zu essen. Finally, direct and mediated replicas may complement each other. The following compounds have their origin in B, but one element is directly transferred while the other is mediated by A. Examples already mentioned (1.3., "loan blending") include flutlight, messingoutfit and vizechampion. Others are lederpants 'leather shorts' < Lederhose (2); wellenriding 'surfriding' < Wellenreiten (2), and, with the order reversed; the Middlemeer The Mediterranean Sea' (2). The form dursty (see 1.3.) combines a directly-imported root and a mediated suffix.23 Direct acquisition from T is complemented by mediated borrowing from B in high-shot: One relative is a high-shot in the German airforce (3). The sources are E. big-shot and G. hohes Vieh, lit. 'high-ranking animal'. Semantic overlap between big and hoch 'high, great, tall, noble' prompted the intervention of B, which in turn led to the deviant reconstruction of the T model.
6. Conclusion The data presented here on the English of Austrian-German learners, typical of a corpus of some 6000 items, suggest a theoretical framework for the study of language contact in foreign language acquisition which appears to warrant testing for general validity.
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The findings also offer further evidence in support of the supposition of Einar Haugen and Uriel Weinreich in their classical work on language contact that common manifestations of contact unite the processes of language convergence and foreign language acquisition. However the data also help to document a further connection with the general process of diachronic change implicit in Meillet's emphasis on the discontinuous nature of historical transmission (Meillet 1921, 1938), Hoenigswald's description of historical development as a succession of stages linked by borrowing (1960), as well as Bloomfield's assertion that the native speaker "to the end of his life ... keeps on doing the very things which make up infantile language learning", "adopting [i.e. borrowing] features from his fellows", which, if less fundamental than those acquired during childhood, "are very copious and come from all manner of sources" (Bloomfield 1933: 46; 444).24 It thus seems clear that in progressing from foreign speakers to full members of the speech community, the foreign language learner does not fundamentally alter his role as language borrower. Notes 1. The data of foreign language acquisition is drawn from the spoken and written English of Austrain learners of English. The numeral (1) designates beginners, normally in the first two years of (non-intensive) secondary school study, (2) intermediate students, with three to eight years of training; (3) advanced learners including university students specializing in English and teachers of English. Unless indicated, contextual sentences are unedited and may contain additional deviance. 2. The lexical units combining the process of loanword transfer and loan translation are called "hybrid compounds" by Weinreich (1953: 51-53). 3. A subtype also observed in language convergence (Weinreich 1953: 52). 4. Such synonymic blends, normally inadvertant, must be distinguished from "portmanteau" coinages like chortle, smog, motel, palimony, etc., artful creations unsurprisingly atypical of acquisitional data; however see the term foreignger discussed in 5 below. 5. As frequently, the learner's analysis finds historical justification. 6. To a lesser degree such adaptation presumably occurs even in borrowing between ideolects within the same language variety, and certainly in borrowing between subgroups; it is also, of course, characteristic of child language. 7. The late John Lotz, who proposed the term "approximative system", also offered the alternative "vector system" (personal communication). 8. For an overview of research on second language acquisition, and learner language of both the "natural" and "tutored" varieties, see Nicholas Meisel (1983), which includes detailed descriptions of current West German projects on the natural acquisition of German. See also Sharwood Smith (1979) for a concise history of the status of transfer from the mother tongue as a determinant of learner behavior. A "classical" era, during
362
9. 10.
11.
12.
13.
14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
21. 22. 23.
William Nemser which the role of transfer was viewed as dominant, extended to the late 1960s. During the second era, this view was denigrated as the behavioristic reduction of "creative construction" common to both first and second language development to "habit formation" (see Dulay —Burt 1973). A third era, beginning in the late 1970s, is marked by renewed interest in transfer as a significant "creative" process. This interest is exemplified by Sharwood Smith's own attempt to sketch a model of learner behavior in accordance with recent cognitive approaches to transfer (see also Jordens — Kellermann 1981). Replicas are classified by reference to their sources, as types T and B for direct transfer, and types TB, BA, etc. for mediated borrowing (see below). The radical implications of the extreme structuralist position (as well as that of generative grammar) for contrastive research were wittily drawn by John Lotz (1965:9-10). That the term is intended as a plural formation and not a blend of Mädchen and girl is clear from the context which includes a singular form produced by the learner, and which demands a plural. That the process illustrated is loanword importation and not code-switching is assumed from the absence, in speech, of "special voice modifications (slight pause, change in tempo, and the like)", and in writing (less reliably) by the absence of quotation marks (and other indicators) (see Weinreich 1953: 73). In some cases the learners themselves supplied confirmation. Weinreich cites instances of word-order transfer from Swiss-German to Romansch (by children), Spanish to Yaqui, and English to Portuguese, stating that examples of the transfer of grammatical relations "could be cited without limit" since such relations "not being segments of utterances are least noticed by naive speakers" (Weinreich 1953: 38 — 39). Thus even thirteen years ago, in the heyday of a new orthodoxy, teachers had grounds for questioning the tidings, announced "with great pleasure", that the role of syntactic transfer was minimal, and that acquisition of syntax should be left to the pupil (see Dulay-Burt 1973). Within the framework of the project Handbuch zum Erwerb der englischen Aussprache, directed by Wilfried Wieden of the University of Salzburg. Note that as regards form (lexical shape), it is the T model which dominates (see also 4.3. below). That is, on whether the learner treats -ism and -ty, and ish and -ly, as contrasting or alternating elements. (For the status of the suffixes in English see Marchand 1969.) In dasselbe Horn stoßen. 'Sarcastic, biting'. Durch die Blume [sagen]. Our informants vary greatly in their readiness to transfer such figurative expressions. However the view that non-core meanings are considered less transferable than core meanings, sometimes inhibiting positive transfer (see Kellermann—Joren 1981), certainly receives informal support. See Kellermann (1974) for the utilization of the learner himself, in the fashion of a native informant in linguistic field work, in the analysis of data. The singular form new, however, does not occur in the corpus. Among the examples Weinreich cites of the English interference in Pennsylvania German isfils-ig 'filthy' (1953: 52).
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24. See also Slobin (1977), where common principles, often in competition, semantic transparency, easy processibility, efficiency, and expressivity, are seen to guide both the construction of their native language by children and the historical development of language through time. That the first of these principles, a preference for "one-to-one mapping of content and form", also guides the construction of foreign learner language is strongly suggested by our data. The prevalence of metanalysis (including folk etymology) is only the most striking evidence; and if English-speaking children often prefer the "exaggerated analysis" of contracted auxilaries, and tend to avoid syncretic forms, favoring hitted to hit, for example (Slobin 1977: 189 — 190), the same predispositions are often evident among our informants.
References Bloomfield, Leonard 1933 Language (New York: Holt). Dulay, Heidi C. - Marina K. Burt 1974 "Should we teach children syntax?", Language Learning 23: 245 — 258. Grosser, Wolfgang 1983 "Interferenz in der Prosodie: Oberösterreichisch-Englisch", in: James-Kettemann (eds.) 1983: 235-254. Haugen, Einar 1953 The Norwegian language in America 1 — 2 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). 1956 Bilingualism in the Americas: a bibliography and research guide (Publication of the American Dilaect Society 26) (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press). 1973 "Bilingualism, language contact, and immigrant languages in the United States: a research report 1956 — 1970", in: Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current trends in linguistics 10 (The Hague: Mouton), 505 — 591. Hoenigswald, Henry M. 1960 Language change and linguistic reconstruction (Chicago: Chicago University Press). James, Allen 1976 "Dialektaler Transfer in der Prosodie": Auswirkungen des Schwäbischen in der englischen Intonation", Linguistik und Didaktik 28: 261 —272. (Reprinted in: James-Kettemann (eds. 1983: 208-219.) James, Allen — Bernhard Kettemann (eds.) 1983 Dialektphonologie und Fremdsprachenerwerb (Tübingen. Narr). Jordens, Peter — Eric Kellerman 1981 "Investigations into the 'transfer strategy' in second language learning", in: Jean Guy Savard —Lome Laforge (eds.), Actes du 5e Congres de l'Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquee (Quebec: Les Presses de 1'Universite Laval), 195-215. Karpf, Annemarie — Bernhard Kettemann —Wolfgang Viereck 1980 "Phonology of dialect interference in second language learning: Styrian dialect and English language learning", IRAL 18:193-208. (Reprinted in: James-Kettemann (eds.) 1983:220-234.)
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Kellerman, Eric 1974 "Elicitation, lateralization and error analysis", York Papers in Linguistics 4:165-189. 1978 "Giving learners a break, native language intuition as a source of predictions about transferability", Working Papers in Bilingualism 15: 59 — 92. Labov, William 1969 The study of non-standard English (Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics). Lotz, John 1968 "Introductory remarks", Georgetown University Monograph Series on Language and Linguistics 20: 9 — 10. Marchand, Hans 1969 The categories and types of present-day English word-formation (München: Beck). Meillet, Antoine 1921 —1938 Linguistique historique et linguistique generate 1 — 2 (Paris: Champion). Nemser, William 1981 "Diachronie lexical change and foreign language acquisition", Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 6.1: 73 — 118. Nicholas, Howard — Jürgen M. Meisel 1983 "Second language acquisition: the state of the art", in: Sascha W. Felix—Henning Wode (eds.), Language development at the crossroads (Tübingen: Narr), 63-89. Sharwood Smith, Michael 1979 "Strategies, language transfer and the simulation of the second language learner's mental operations", Language Learning 29: 345 — 361. Slobin, Dan I. 1977 "Language change in childhood and history", in: John Macnamara (ed.), Language learning and thought (New York: Academic Press), 115 — 213. Weinreich, Uriel 1953 Languages in contact: findings and problems (New York: Linguistic Circle of New York) (Reprinted: The Hague: Mouton, 1963).
On the struggle of underlying vowels for a voice in surface phonetic structure* Midhat Ridjanovic
It was with great pleasure that I accepted the honor of contributing an article to the present volume, dedicated to Professor Rudolf Filipovic. Those of us who have been privileged to work with Professor Filipovic cannot but rejoice at the opportunity of thus honoring a scholar whose world-renowned professional achievements are matched only by his human qualities and personal charm. My own initial interest in phonetics (which was to develop into a broader interest in linguistics) was prompted by contact with Professor Filipovic's early work in English and general phonetics. It therefore seemed appropriate that my contribution to this volume should also be in phonetics. I offer it as a modest token of gratitude to Professor Filipovic for the inspiration, encouragement, and assistance which he has lavished on his collaborators and which have made a crucial difference in my own endeavors in linguistics.
1. Problem A striking characteristic of the variety of Serbo-Croatian spoken today by most people who have grown up in the city of Sarajevo is centralization or elision of short unstressed vowels of standard Serbo-Croatian. Among these, the high vowels [i] and [u] seem to be particularly prone to elision, especially if they are surrounded by single consonants and occur in a syllable immediately following a stressed one. Thus, standard radila 'she The work reported in this paper was done during the academic year 1985 — 1986, which I spent as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. I would like to thank the Fulbright Commission in Belgrade and its counterpart in Washington D.C. for their support, the Ohio State University for allowing me to use the excellent facilities of their Linguistic Laboratory, Dr Mary Beckman for her part in defining the topic and for advising me on how to set up and carry out the experiment, Dr Ilse Lehiste for her invaluable comments on the first draft of the paper, and Mr Kenneth de Jong for his help in various stages of the experiment.
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worked' and krenula 'she set out' become radio, and krenla in the colloquial speech of most people from Sarajevo.1 The scope in which this phenomenon occurs is the phonological phrase (a stretch of speech bounded by pauses), as evidenced by Sta si pio 'What did you drink?' and Sta su pili? 'What did they drink?' also losing the unstressed [i] and [u] respectively to become Sta s pio? and Sta s pili?. The omission of two frequently occurring vowels is bound to give rise to numerous homonymous utterances corresponding to clearly distinguished minimal pairs of utterances of standard Serbo-Croatian, in which there is no such omission. Thus the elision of unstressed [i] and [u] from standard Gdje si to sada? 'Where are you now?' and Gdje su to sada? 'Where are they now?' results in what is generally perceived as the homonymous utterance £>e s to sada?,2 which, in the Sarajevo variety of Serbo-Croatian, means both 'Where are you now?' and 'Where are they now?'. Even superficial observation suggests, however, that the number of such homonymous utterances would be too great for them not to present a hindrance to communication in contexts which may lack other cues for proper identification of the intended meaning. This, in turn, suggests that the elision of [i] and [u] is not total, that audible traces of these vowels may linger in adjacent segments. Accordingly, the central problem of the present work is to test the hypothesis that underlying unstressed [i] and [u] of Sarajevo speech have a differential effect on adjacent consonantal segments, particularly on the preceding one. A parallel problem is raised by frequent omission of voiceless [i] and [u] preceded by [s] in the Tokyo variety of Japanese (see Beckman — Shoji 1984).
2. Experiment In order to test the hypothesis that underlying [i] and [u], although elided in the colloquial speech of Sarajevo, leave traces in the immediately preceding segment, the following experiment was carried out. A tape recording was made of 60 short sentences, each spoken twice, first by a male and then by a female speaker of the variety of SerboCroatian typical of everyday speech in Sarajevo. The 60 sentences included 14 randomized sentences making up 7 pairs of "homonymous" utterances, i.e., those which were hypothesized to differ only in audible traces in the segment preceding either an elided [i] or an elided [u]. The following is the list of the 14 sentences in the same relative order in which
Underlying vowels in surface phonetic structure
367
they appeared in the corpus of 60 sentences (paranthesized (i) and (u) stand for vowels usually omitted in Sarajevo speech): (1)
Dode i da m(i) ga.
'He comes and gives it to me.'
(2)
De s(i) to sada? 'Where are you now?'
(3)
Dode i da m(u) ga.
(4)
De s(u) to sada? 'Where are they now?'
(5)
Sta m(u) hi? 'What happened to him?'
(6)
Sta m (i) radi sada?
(7)
Dace m(i) to sutra. 'S/he will give it to me tomorrow.'
(8)
Par(i) ne daj öd sehe. 'Don't let the money out of your hands.'
(9)
Sta m(i) mores? 'Just try and hurt me.'
'He comes and gives it to him.'
'What's he doing to me now?'
(10)
Sta m(i) hi? 'What happened to me?'
(11)
Sta m(u) radi sada? 'What's he doing to him now?'
(12)
Dace m(u) to sutra.
(13)
Sta m(u) mores? 'Just try and hurt him.'
(14)
Paru ne daj od sebe.
'S/he will give it to him tomorrow.'
'Don't let the money out of your hands.'
In this list, sentences (1) and (3), (2) and (4), (10) and (5), (6) and (11), (7) and (12), (8) and (14), and (9) and (13) constitute minimal pairs with the hypothetically elided [i] in the first and [u] in the second member of each pair. The tape recording of these sentences was then used for two kinds of tests. A perception test was carried out to verify whether native speakers could detect any difference between an utterance with an elided [i] and an otherwise identical utterance with an elided [u]. In this test eight native speakers listened to the 60 sentences as recorded by the two speakers from Sarajevo. The eight subjects were told to write down each sentence in its standard form (the clarification given was "as it would be pronounced by a radio anouncer"). The purpose of this instruction was to induce the subjects to make a serious effort to identify the elided vowels. If they could not decide whether a given sentence had an [i] or an [u] in place of the elided vowel, they were instructed to respond simply with a
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question mark, and if they hesitated but still believed they had heard one sentence rather than the other, they were to respond by placing a question mark before the sentence which they eventually wrote down as the more likely one. Four of the eight subjects were speakers of the Sarajevo dialect; the other four were not. The second test was an acoustic one and consisted of two parts. In the first part of the acoustic experiment, spectograms were made of the 14 sentences forming 7 hypothetical near-minimal pairs, each pair consisting of one utterance with an elided [i] and another with an elided [u]. (After spectrograms had been made of the sentences as recorded by the male speaker, a couple of spectrograms were made of the same sentences as spoken by the female speaker. When, however, the latter spectrograms were compared with the former, it was decided that there was no significant difference between them and that nothing would be gained by continuing to make another set of practically identical spectrograms.) The spectrograph used was Voiceprint 700, made by Voiceprint Laboratories Inc. The goal in this part of the acoustic experiment was to find "visible" spectral traces of the elided vowels in adjacent segments, primarily the preceding ones. In the second part of the acoustic experiment, the main portion of the wave form of each consonantal segment preceding an elided [i] or [u] was subjected to computer analysis on a DEC PDF 11/23 computer. The purpose of this analysis was to compute the values of the relevant formants in the preceding segment and/or other possible acoustic cues of the particular elided vowel.
3. Results 3.1 Results of the perception test The results of the perception test are shown in table 1. It should be noted that the subjects who are not speakers of the Sarajevo dialect (S5 through S8) reported a larger number of incorrect identifications than the Sarajevo-dialect speakers. The former group of subjects also had more misidentifications than the latter in the remaining 36 sentences, among which the 14 were randomized.
Underlying vowels in surface phonetic structure
369
Table 1. SI
S2
S3
S4
S5
S6
S7
S8
1 2 3
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
?+ +
+ + +
— + ?+
4
J"Τ
Jι
~~
—-
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
+ + + — + + + + + +
+ + ?+ + + + + + +
+ + + ? + + + + + ?-
+ + + ?— +
— + ?+ + +
+ —
+ + + + ?+
+ + + + ?+ + —
?+ + ?+ ??+ + + + ?—
Correct identification total by subject
13
13
11
11
10
9
8
7
Sentence number
+ ?+ + +
+ + + + + +
Correct identification total by sentence 5 8 6 2 8 7 6 1 8 5 8 5 8 4
Explanatory notes: — The numbers of the test sentences correspond to their numbers in section 2. — S stands for one of the eight subjects who listened to the test sentences. The vertical line in the middle of the table separates subjects 1 through 4, who are speakers of the Sarajevo dialect, from subjects 5 through 8, who are not. — " + " and " —" stand, respectively, for "correct" and "incorrect" identification of the sentence numbered in the first column. 3 The "?" means that the subject could not decide between two possible interpretations; the "?" placed before a " + " or " —" response means that it was given after some hesitation.
3.2. Results of the acoustic test Both the spectograms and the computer-analyzed formants as well as other spectral cues showed differences between segments preceding elided [i]'s and [u]'s. Figure 1 shows spectrograms of the consonants preceding and following the elided vowel, along with the formants of the actual vowels in some cases, in six of the seven pairs of test sentences. Due to the specific acoustic nature of the fricative [s] occurring before the elided vowel in the seventh pair of sentences (2 and 4), the spectrograms of this consonant did not reveal enough difference between the (i) and (u) environments to justify their inclusion in this figure.
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Midhat Ridjanovic
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Table 2. C preceding elided vowel
F2 value of the C before before elided [i] elided [u]
Difference between the two F2's
Number of measurements
C following elided vowel
[m] [m] [m] [m] [m] [r]
1252 1544 1726 1456 1391 1568
117 192 463 307 248 174
7 10 7 7 7 2
[m] [b] [t] [g] W [n]
1135 1352 1263 1149 1143 1394
(C stands for "consonant")
Table 2 shows the computed numerical values of F2 vestiges in voiced consonants preceding the elided vowels in six of the seven pairs of test sentences;4 the [s] preceding the elided vowel in the seventh pair had to be analyzed by a different technique, the results of which will be shown separately. Each F2 value in table 2 is the average of several measurements obtained from the recording by the male speaker at consecutive intervals of 10 milliseconds. Figure 2 shows the spectra of s(i) in £)e s(i) to sada? and s(u) in De s (u) to sada?, obtained by means of a 12-order LPC analysis.
4. Discussion The most conspicuous result of the perception test was a marked difference in the number of (in)correct identifications of the 14 test sentences between the four subjects from Sarajevo on the one hand and the four other subjects on the other. The average number of correct identifications by the Sarajevo-dialect speakers was 12 sentences (of a total of 14), or 85.7%, while the average number of correctly identified sentences by the other four subjects was 8.5, or only 60.7%. The fact that minimally contrasting utterances different only in vestiges of an elided [i] as opposed to an elided [u], typical of the variety of Serbo-Croatian spoken in Sarajevo, are more readily distinguished by speakers of that variety than by speakers of other varieties of the language hardly needs any special discussion. Both ordinary observation and research show that people generally understand speakers of their own, native variety of a language better than those of a different variety. This is an instance of the wellknown principle that, apart from special cases, mutual intelligibility is
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κ CS
II
8 c§