Next session of the Linguistic Theories and Data seminar

Date: Friday, March 10, 2023 - 14:30 - 17:30
Location: Inalco, Pôle des Langues et des Civilisations, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, room 3.15

Letizia Volpini
INaLCO, Master 2, SDL

Subject, determination, word order: a special case studied in Modern Greek and ItalianThe talk will focus on the relationships between determination, word order and subject and present the progress of research for my Master II dissertation.
Specifically, the aim will be to study the subject at the beginning of the sentence - or at least pre-verbal - undetermined, in Modern Greek and Italian.
We know that the determination systems of Modern Greek and Italian show significant differences (Giannoulopoulou 2016, Holton et al. 2012, Renzi et al. 1988, Stark 2008, Tsamadou-Jacoberger 1998). On the other hand, in both languages, expression of the subject is not obligatory and, in cases where the subject is expressed, it is not necessarily preposed to the verb; the preverbal subject is in fact most often determined, with undetermined subjects usually found after the verb.
However, in both languages it is possible to find sentences with a preverbal subject without a determiner, sentences that are perfectly grammatical and in their place in a given context.
This is a phenomenon considered to be more or less "marginal", having a different frequency of appearance in the two languages and above all a distribution that is far from homogeneous from one type of text to another as well as within the same text. The non-determined preverbal subject must therefore find its raison d'être in the role played by these phrases in the texts within which they appear, a phenomenon to be analyzed in particular in relation to the specificities of different textual genres.

Christine Bonnot & Sophie Vassilaki
INaLCO, UMR8202, SeDyL, CNRS, IRD135

Between syntax and discourse: pseudo-coordinated constructions in Russian and modern Greek The presentation will focus on the operation in Russian (R) and modern Greek (GM) of structures where two verbs united by a relator (R : I, GM: KE) with the dual status of coordinating conjunction ("and") and discourse marker (common values: "also", "same", "precisely", "moreover", etc.) designate a single process, the "and".) designate a single process, with V1 losing its autonomy and expansions to specify or inflect the interpretation of V2. Cf. (1) and (2):

(1) R: [Beginning of an Internet post reacting to an article giving advice to webdesigners]
Kogda vižu i čitaju takie stat'i, vot sižu i dumaju xot' komu-to èto prinosit pol'zu?When I see and read such articles, I really wonder [litt. I think'] if there are people to whom it brings something?

(2) GM: [twitter thread: it's about criticizing a justice under orders]
Ti kaθonde ke kanun erevnes, anakrisis, ðikoɣrafies, su'pa, mu'pes? Jiati ðen kanun ena pol sto tuiter pçon na silavun, na telionume?
Why do they insist on doing [lit. '(they) are-assis KE do'] investigations, interrogations, investigative files, and all the rest? Why don't they just do a Twitter poll: "who to arrest?", and leave it at that?

In (1) and (2), the V1s "être assis/s'asseoir" do not designate a concrete physical posture, here irrelevant, but announce an opposition between two points of view. In (1), the V1 sižu (lit. 'suis-assis') indicates that the V2 dumaju is not to be interpreted with the processual value ('reflect') it normally has when governing an indirect interrogative, but introduces a rhetorical question calling into question the usefulness of the article presupposed by its publication. In (2), the V1 kaθonde [lit. 'are-seated'], on the contrary, underlines the processual value of the V2, but also serves to have the direct interrogative interpreted as a rhetorical question questioning the usefulness of a long and complex procedure whose outcome is known in advance, hence the analogy with the 'Twittosphere' and 'twitter polls' (GM: pol).
Such constructions, known as "pseudo-coordinate", are attested in languages of diverse linguistic families and areas and generally seen as intermediate between coordination and subordination [Ross 2016]. The preferred framework for addressing them is that of grammaticalization: deprived of its arguments and taken in its relation to the V2, the V1 would be emptied of its lexical substance to be transformed into a simple grammatical marker of aspectual or modal categories such as "progressive/durative" [Kuteva 1999 about V1s of static posture "to be standing/sitting/lying"], "intentionality" [Svorou 2018 about V1s of movement in modern Greek] or "miratifying" [Weiss 2022, about the Russian V1 vzjat' "to take"].
We will try to show that these constructions are in fact molds for forming syntagms with a hybrid status, both partially lexicalized and closely dependent on contextual determinations, and that their meaning, often opaque to non-native speakers, is constructed in discourse according to regular common principles based on the same enunciative mechanism.
We will base our analysis on examples illustrating the functioning of two comparable types of V1 in the two languages:
static and dynamic posture verbs: "to be seated" / "to sit", "to be standing" / "to stand up". Comparison of the two languages shows that the representations respectively associated with sitting and standing postures are broadly similar;
grip verbs: R: brat'ipf/vzjat'pf "to take"; GM: piano "to seize, to catch". The discrepancies here are greater, which we attribute to the fact that the two verbs focus on two different phases of a grasping gesture, initial for Russian, final for Greek.

References:
Bonnot, Ch. and Vassilaki, S. (2017) "Categorial variation and polysemy: comparison of coordinating conjunctions/discourse markers I (Russian) and KE (Modern Greek)". In D. Paillard (Ed), Comparaison des marqueurs discursifs, Langages 207, pp. 65-78.
Bonnot, Ch. & Vassilaki, S. (2021) "Entre phraséologie et conditionnement contextuel: le cas des constructions pseudo-coordonnées en russe et en grec moderne". In G. Dostie & D. Sikora (Eds), Les phraséologismes pragmatiques. Prefabrication and lexiculture, Lexique, 29, pp. 191-209.
Bonnot, Ch. and Vassilaki, S. (2022) "Les constructions pseudo-coordonnées en russe et en grec moderne : énonciation, dynamique des forces et gestes mentaux", paper at the 1st International TOPÉ Colloquium, University of Tours, June 23-24, 2002.
Kuteva, T., (1999), "On "sit"/"stand"/"lie"/ auxiliation", Linguistics, vol. 32, 2, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 191-213.
Ross, D. (2016). Between coordination and subordination: Typological, structural and diachronic perspectives on pseudo-coordination. In F. Pratas, S. Pereira & C. Pinto (Eds.), Coordination and subordination: Form and meaning, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 209-243.
Svorou S. (2018) "Motion Verb Integration and Core Cosubordination in Modern Greek. In R. Kailuweit, L. Künkel, E. Standinger (Eds), Applying and Expanding Role and Reference Grammar, pp. 281-304.
Weiss, D. (2022), "Mirative 'take and do' constructions in Russian. The impact of negation", Lifetime linguistic inspirations: To Igor Mel'čuk from colleagues and friends for his 90th birthday. Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Sonderband 101, pp. 443-453.